Job Club
Luminiţa DANE Ş
National Agency for Employment, BucharestHistory
During the depression years in the USA, workforce placement agents started to
systematize their activity in the Thursday Night Club, Man Marketing Group, and later,
Job Club.
In the 1970s, the US National Department for Defence faced a major problem that was
not related to any armed conflict or strategy. At the end of the Vietnam War, thousands of
soldiers were returning from the front and about to re-enter the civil society. Many of
them had suffered sever trauma during the war, not being ready to start working again,
and the skills, aptitudes and experience acquired on the battlefield were no immediate
recommendation for civil professions.
Eager to recuperate as soon as possible these soldiers and give them back to their old
professions or find them new ones, the US Government sought for the aid of experts in
experimental and industrial psychology Dr. Nathan Azrin (behaviourist) and Victoria
Besalel. They developed a new concept: Job Club, a model of group counselling that
ensured the necessary support for people who want to start again with their professional
activity. On the basis of Azrin’s model many subsequent models of Job Club were
developed, under new forms and names (Job Searching Club, Professional Development
Program ).