Lawrence Countian Tanner Waugh Credits Northeast Kentucky JobSight with Helping Him Make a Change for the Better

Tanner Waugh was at a bit of a crossroads. It was June 2021 and he was homeless and struggling to find a new job.

“In the area that I live in, ever since the COVID pandemic, it’s been hard to find work,” Waugh explained. “I had moved back to Louisa and was couch surfing with a couple of my friends.”

Tanner Waugh

With the pandemic exacerbating Waugh’s struggle to find work, it was a suggestion from an acquaintance who mentioned that he may be able to get help with his job search at Northeast Kentucky Community Action in Louisa that started the ball rolling. It was a suggestion that Waugh said he was happy to follow up on.

A partner in the Kentucky Career Center JobSight network of workforce centers, Northeast provides Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) services in Carter, Elliott, and Lawrence counties under contract with Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program (EKCEP). Those services include programs for adults, dislocated workers, and youth who may need assistance honing skills such as résumé building or networking with local employers, or who need assistance being retrained or going to school.

Waugh decided to pay Northeast a visit and see what assistance might be available, and was happy to discover that not only would he be eligible for services, but the staff in his local office was prepared to invest the time and funding necessary to ensure that he could land a new job and step onto a career path that could last a lifetime.   

“I was kind of nervous going into a situation like that because I didn’t want to be looked down upon from where I was at in life,” Waugh said. “None of them ever looked down on me like that. They were all 100 percent there to help me and make sure that was my lifetime rock bottom, and I never hit that again.”

Waugh enrolled for services with Northeast in fall 2021, where the staff there, including Career Advisor JoAnn Chaffin and Workforce Services Director Bonnie Conn, helped him through the process and determined his eligibility for the JobSight’s out-of-school youth program. Chaffin also reached out to local partner organizations for resources to help him obtain housing and other necessities during the course of his enrollment.

Waugh was ultimately interested in earning a commercial driver’s license (CDL), so Chaffin helped him enroll for training at Ashland Community and Technical College, where Northeast could cover the cost and also provide Waugh assistance with transportation. He was also placed into a work experience program with a local employer where he could gain valuable on-the-job experience and get paid at the same time.

“They were very willing to work with me,” Waugh recalled. “I look back at it now and I was very stubborn about the situation I was in, very hard headed about it. They never got irritated, and were always right there. If I questioned something, they always went out of their way to find another solution that fit well with what I wanted.”

Having Chaffin in his corner was a big relief, Waugh said. It was already a stressful time in his life, and his training and work experience were time consuming, but not having to worry about things like transportation costs just to get to the training was a significant help. He noted that Chaffin was even able to reimburse fees incurred during his final testing to obtain his CDL.

“Having them there and knowing that was a weight lifted off my shoulders,” he said. 

Fast forward to April 2022, and that decision to visit Northeast’s office in Louisa has paid off quite literally. It didn’t take long before Waugh received a job offer from Western Express, Inc., a transportation company headquartered in Tennessee but with locations across the country. By December 2021, Waugh was on the road and earning a living in one of the nation's high-demand industries. 

Since starting his new job, Waugh has logged thousands of miles, having driven as far south as Miami and as far north as Kingston, Maine, and traveling to 25 of the lower 48 states so far. It’s a job he’s delighted to have and one he expects to make a career out of, he added, and said he owes it to his decision to visit Northeast, something he would recommend for others who are looking to get a new start.

“Anybody that asks me how I did this, I always give 100 percent of the credit to JoAnn and Bonnie,” he said. “Yeah, I did the class, I took the test, but without them I would not be where I’m at today.

“The biggest thing I like to tell people is not to get discouraged,” he continued. “There will be times it feels like you're going to just explode with anxiety because it’s so stressful, but just weather the storm and keep calm, because it’s going to be worth it. Everything they do is worth waiting for because it can completely change someone’s life. It has mine.”

For more information about the services available at the Northeast Kentucky Career Center JobSight, visit jobsight.org or call 606-638-4949.

EKCEP, a nonprofit workforce development agency headquartered in Hazard, Ky., serves the citizens of 23 Appalachian coalfield counties. The agency provides an array of workforce development services and operates the Kentucky Career Center JobSight network of workforce centers, which provide access to more than a dozen state and federal programs that offer employment and training assistance for jobseekers and employers all under one roof. Learn more about us at http://www.ekcep.org, http://www.jobsight.org and http://www.facebook.com/ekcep.