PCS Helps Thousands of Orthodox Jews Find Good Jobs

By Yehudit Garmaise

Need a job or capable employees for your growing business?

For the past 20 years, Professional Career Services (PCS), a nonprofit division of Agudath Israel’s job placement organization has been helping community members get good, quality jobs.

PCS employs five people in its Boro Park office, which is located at 4520 18th Ave, to assist job candidates who live not only in Boro Park, but throughout the tri-state area.

Many young chassidishe men go to work as a result of the encouragement of the Satmar Rebbe, the Belzer Rebbe, and many other rabbanim and rosh yeshivas who encourage Jews to go to work after they finish their learning.

Catering to Orthodox Jewish candidates with a wide range of skills, PSC finds perfect positions for CPAs, lawyers, accountants, bookkeepers, store managers, warehouse workers, and maintenance workers, said Avrohom Moshe Brown, PCS’s director of job development.

“While some of the candidates come in with more skills than others, PCS finds places for all kinds of employees with all different kinds of skill sets,” said Daniel Soloff, PCS’s national director, who runs the day-to-day, hands-on operations of the organization that has helped to place 7,000 Yidden in good jobs. “Each job placement involves a tremendous amount of work, and, BH, the staff members are extremely dedicated to trying to help as many people as they can."

Gedalia Weinberger, the legendary askan, and PCS’s chairman of the board is the guiding force of the nonprofit employment agency, who often quotes Rambam by saying, “The highest level of tzedakah is to find someone a parnassah.”

The parnassahs that PCS helps candidates to find are quite impressive, with some jobs paying anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000 a year, Soloff said.

Sometimes, Brown said, “we see candidates who are smart and intelligent, but we see that they might need to brush up on a few things, such as computer skills, and then we direct them to take PCS courses that provide training for a variety of professions, such as accounting, computer programming, Desktop, and networking support.

Many successful Chassidic business owners and employees credit their yeshivah backgrounds for instilling within them discipline and strong analytical skills that help them to succeed in the business world.

“Learning Torah sharpens your brain and provides a tremendous amount of life skills and humanity to entrepreneurs,” one successful business owner on 13th Avenue said.

Moshe Tyberg, PCS’s director of job development, said many of the hundreds of business owners who contact PCS “are extremely successful” and employ anywhere from a handful to hundreds of people including creative thinkers who come up with “extraordinary, complex ideas, and then just decide to run with them.”

“People in the community know to start small and build from there,” Tyberg said. “Then, the businesses take off. It is amazing.”

Although before setting up shop, many Heimish business owners ask their rebbes or rosh hayeshivas to provide their blessings, of course, business owners also know that a lot of work, dedication, and tefillos are required to create growing businesses.

“Success is just not manna coming down from heaven,” Tyberg said. “You have to hustle, and you have to roll up your sleeves and put in a lot of sweat, toil, and tears.

“Thomas Edison, the inventor of the lightbulb, said, ‘Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.’”

Torah learning, ingenuity, and hard work, however, are not the only secret weapons of Boro Park business owners.

While secular businesspeople learn how to network and work together in many manufactured group settings in business schools, Orthodox Jews have strong community ties and create built-in infrastructures for creating business opportunities.

Besides shuls, schools, and many other neighborhood connections, for instance, several Jewish business expos that host thousands each year provide crucial opportunities for business owners to connect.

The business expos, Tyberg explains “are all about networking, which is so critical in establishing business relationships.

“At the expos, people develop new relationships, new pathways, and new ideas. People start friendships that often develop into business partnerships.

“Some people get jobs at these events, but mostly people focus on expanding their businesses and putting themselves out there at these events."

Job candidates and business owners who would like to reach out to PCS can call (718) 436-1900  or visit www.pcsnynj.org.