Why a Career Readiness Center?

Nichole Stinson
Jul 17, 2024
2 min read

For those that don't know, Thomasville, AL is located in rural Southwest Alabama! In the words of our mayor, "Thomasville might be 2 hours from anywhere, but we are 2 hours TO anywhere!"

It's true, we are 2 hours from Tuscaloosa, 2 hours from Mobile, 2 hours from Montgomery, 2 hours from Hattiesburg . . . you get the picture . . . but we are blessed with the opportunity to experience small-town life that is a fairly close(ish) drive to a large city. No matter how positively you try to spin our location, and bless his heart our mayor sure does his best to do just that, being as rural as we are does have some disadvantages. One of those is the distance between even small-medium towns and cities. With Alabama Career Center offices located 75 miles apart, it is hard for someone in the Black Belt Region, notably the poorest counties in Alabama, possibly the poorest in the nation, to drive that far to get job assistance.

While Clarke County, where Thomasville is located, is technically not a part of the Black Belt, our neighboring counties are and Thomasville's position is in north Clarke County, which means that there are 2 other counties with addresses outside of our city limits that have Thomasville zip codes (Marengo and Wilcox). In true library fashion, when the need for job and career services was recognized, our library took the opportunity to expand services to meet those needs. While I can't take credit for the initial introduction of career services to our library in 2015, we have worked diligently in my 7 years as director to expand our offerings to better meet the needs of those in the surrounding area.

On the first floor, we have 16 computers in our public computer lab, which is free for anyone to use, we also have 4 workstations in the lab without computers but have partitions between them for people to use their own devices. On the second floor, 2 glass study rooms allow for working, online classes, training, and studying. There is also a 14-computer training lab. The training lab was designed for our local business and industry, but has also been used for training sessions, homeschool cooperative classes, workshops, and more! Our final and most important component of our Career Readiness Center is a full-time Career Coach that provides classes, training, workshops, and one-on-one assistance, not only for job seekers, but also for those preparing for promotion. If you are in the area and would like to meet with our amazing staff, please stop by or call (334) 636-5343.