Follow jacquie johnson’s road to a great new job

Jacquie Johnson, 54, lost her job by choice — the kind of choice most of us wouldn’t hesitate to make. When it came to getting back to work, she made another choice she won’t ever regret.

Jacquie was working as a supervisor of environmental services at a major hospital in Indiana when she made the difficult decision to resign her position so she could help take care of her

ailing mother in Oklahoma, who had chronic kidney failure and had developed dementia. Having previously experienced a layoff, Jacquie had learned to put money aside for an emergency, and

this certainly qualified. Her personal savings, she says, “allowed me to not only eliminate the stress of relocating, but also allowed my mother to not feel guilty about me leaving Chicago

to come and take care of her.” Jacquie was away from her home, relying on savings and family support for almost a year and half, until her mother died. Then it was back to her home in

Chicago in early 2020, and the search for a new job began. It was tough going, even in the days before COVID. She tried to find work on her own but couldn’t get any interviews. While

attending a program that offered computer classes, she heard about a program being offered by AARP Foundation through the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership: BACK TO WORK 50+. HOW A COACH

HELPED MAKE GETTING BACK TO WORK HAPPEN She signed up for a BTW50+ workshop but wasn’t hopeful, figuring “I’m just a number to them.” Then she met Sherri Chrisman, a job search coach, who

“changed my perspective on the whole program.” She learned to “embrace the little things”: fine-tuning her résumé, becoming more active on LinkedIn, doing mock interviews, networking. “All

those little things helped propel me to where I am now,” she says.