Standard Job Club was an eight-week program broken into three-week and five-week segments. The first segment required enrollees to attend one week of daily, eight-hour group classes on workplace behavior skills and two weeks of daily, eight-hour group classes on job search skills. The second segment required enrollees to complete five weeks of supervised job search. During this time, enrollees had to make daily trips to the Standard Job Club office, where they received individual assistance from program staff. Enrollees also had access to supportive services during the program, employment retention services after finding employment, and additional employment services for those who did not find employment after five weeks. Noncompliance with the program could lead to enrollees losing part of their public welfare benefits. This intervention served people who received cash assistance via the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) program, California's county-administered TANF program. Standard Job Club was implemented in Sacramento, CA.
The effectiveness of Standard Job Club when compared to Fast Track Job Club indicates the effect of being referred to a set of services that includes those unique to Standard Job Club, or how much better the offer of Standard Job Club meets participants’ needs than the offer of Fast Track Job Club. In contrast with Standard Job Club, Fast Track Job Club participants attended three days of group classes on job search skills and one half day of individual meetings and activities with Fast Track Job Club staff. They then participated in seven weeks of an independent job search with weekly check-ins. They had access to the same supportive services as Standard Job Club participants.
Standard Job Club offered workplace behavior skills, job search skills, and job search assistance to help participants move from receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance to working. This evaluation directly compared Standard Job Club with a separate intervention, Fast Track Job Club, to understand which of the two interventions might be more effective; the distinctive features of Standard Job Club are its group classes on workplace behavior skills, duration of group classes on job-search skills, and supervised job search.