Showing Up for the Whole Person: Employment Search Assistance at CMC
When someone walks through the door at the Catholic Multicultural Center looking for help finding work, they rarely arrive carrying just one need. They arrive carrying a life. A background that does not fit neatly onto a résumé. A language barrier that makes prospective employers hesitate. A family to feed while all of it gets sorted out.
The Employment Search Assistance Program was built for exactly that person.
Dina and Fernando, the program’s two employment specialists, start every conversation by listening. What is your background? What kind of work are you looking for? What does your life need right now? The answers shape everything that comes next.
For most guests, the work begins with job search fundamentals: building or updating a résumé, working through applications, preparing for interviews, and interpreting on phone calls when language is a barrier. The program maintains relationships with employer partners who are open to candidates like those served by the CMC, and it actively connects guests to those opportunities rather than simply pointing them in a direction.
When someone needs more than job placement to achieve stability, the program goes further. A guest with questions about immigration status is referred to Immigration Legal Services. A guest whose children need to be enrolled in school gets help with that. A guest who needs English classes, access to technology, or food assistance gets connected to those resources, all of which are available at CMC. Staff can also refer to other community organizations when particular services are not available in-house.
These are warm referrals, not handoffs. That means calling ahead. It means introducing the guest by name. It means following up to make sure the connection actually happened. For people navigating systems they did not grow up in, that difference is not a small thing.
Consider what that looks like in practice. A man arrives at CMC with years of professional experience in his home country, fluency in multiple languages, and a genuine desire to work. He also arrives without a local work history, without familiarity with how American hiring works, and without the kind of résumé that opens doors here.
The program helps him translate his background into a language employers recognize. It connects him to an opportunity he would not have found on his own. He gets hired.
That is not where the story ends. Over time, he moves into work more closely aligned with his professional background. He comes back to CMC, this time with his wife, who is now looking for work herself. What started as one person getting help has become a family building a foundation.
That kind of outcome does not happen by accident. It happens because a program stayed with someone long enough to see the whole picture, and because it had the relationships and the reach to act on what it saw.
The Employment Search Assistance Program at the Catholic Multicultural Center is one of more than a dozen programs operated by Catholic Charities of Madison, which has served southern Wisconsin for more than 80 years across six service lines and 11 counties. At the Catholic Multicultural Center, neighbors — including immigrants and refugees — find legal services, English classes, meals, job support, and people who will make the call on their behalf. “We want to help people,” Dina says. “We will keep our doors open to people in need.”
That work is made possible by donors who believe that a person’s potential should not be limited by the barriers they arrive with. If you would like to support the Catholic Multicultural Center, Catholic Charities of Madison, and the people we serve, we invite you to make a gift at CCMadison.org.
