Conference Sketches

By Lesley Patten, ASPECT

ASPECT Provincial Conference 2001

Delegates from community-based training organizations came from Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland and around BC to attend a two-day professional development conference on November 1st and 2nd at Harbour Towers Hotel in Victoria. The conference, presented by the Association of Service Providers for Employability and Career Training (ASPECT), gave delegates an opportunity to attend a variety of presentations and workshops related to the community-based training sector.

A range of dynamic speakers delivered sessions covering such varied topics as violence in the workplace, building social capital, distance education opportunities, generating alternative sources of revenue, employment in the First Aid industry, electronic communication and Internet marketing. In-depth workshops also included an introduction to the Partnership Tool Kit, a resource developed by the Collaborative Roundtable organization that explores various issues around how to build and sustain effective partnerships; a seminar on ASPECT’s Employability Skills Curriculum; and a session on the National Standards and Guidelines for Career Development Practitioners. A wine and cheese event hosted by ASPECT staff on the first night of the conference also offered an exceptional opportunity for networking among the representatives of various agencies.

Delegates described the conference as informative and extremely well organized, and found the ASPECT staff particularly helpful. ASPECT’s conference organizers were pleased with the outcome and look forward to their next event, scheduled to take place in Richmond on May 2 and 3 of next year.

For more information on ASPECT, visitwww.aspect.bc.ca.

By Lise Simard

ARE YOU READY FOR E-COUNSELLING?
IACMP – SEPTEMBER 25th 2001 – MONTREAL

With the emergence of technology, the globalization of economy and the resulting expansion of worldwide communication, we have begun to relate to people in new ways. E-learning, with its facilitated access to training and formal programs, is at the heart of a revolution in education. Electronic delivery of career services is also a new reality: career and recruitment web sites are invaluable sources of information and you can easily find help online to conduct your job search, market yourself and prepare a resume or a job interview. Coaching and career counselling are available through e-mail or private online chat and face-to-face interaction between counsellors and/or clients is being replaced by Internet networking.

How will this revolution affect the work of career management professionals? What profile will a practitioner of the future have? Will the human factor be as present in this new type of communication? To answer questions on this new trend, which both firms and counsellors can’t afford not to follow, the Montreal Chapter of the International Association of Career Management Professionals hosted a conference on e-counselling on September 25th, at Montreal’s Hotel Omni.

DBM Montreal’s Vice-President and Managing Consultant, Louis Verreault, was our guest speaker. Drake Beam Morin offers a broad array of services including executive coaching, career transition consulting, assessment, recruiting, outplacement assistance, training, career relocation, retention diagnostic, organizational development and job design, change management education, and e-learning.

Demand for e-counselling is growing, partly in answer to the need for career services in outlying areas but mainly because it is in line with the principal means of communication used by the new generation of young high-tech clients, which represents a growing clientele for career transition. Online consulting is presently still combined with traditional services: face-to-face counselling is usually available at the beginning of the relationship between consultant and client, then for several weeks, they resort to e-counselling before meeting again in person. Weekly telephone calls allow the consultant and the firm to evaluate and validate their services.

In e-counselling, career services are offered through internet, e-mail, instant messaging and video. Tests can be administered online and an interpretation can be computer-generated. Some firms organize webinars which are interactive multimedia presentations conducted from a web site. These virtual seminars can be live or replayed. While one or several presenters speak and the webinar progresses, usually with streaming audio and video, a slide presentation can be viewed or a chat session shows typed-in questions and answers. In some webinars, the auditors, equipped with PC cameras and microphones, can also talk to the presenters. In others, a conference call can be going on simultaneously.

DBM Consultants network on the firm’s web site and have ready access to each other when looking for resources for a particular type of client. Both actual and alumni clients will soon also be able to network on their own site and have access to mentors. On this virtual network, a client will be able to keep in touch with another who has received career services from the firm, as well as with the practitioners who are working with him.

Such major change will obviously have an impact on the career consultant’s profile. What type of skills will be required of him or her in e-counselling, as the focus changes from process management to coaching? Practitioners will obviously have to be computer literate. Because interactive online counselling accelerates the rendition of career services, they will also have to be flexible and quick to react. Verbal contact will often be replaced by written communications. For many persons, technical innovations can seem impersonal. In e-mail, where exchanges are not in real time, we do not have the benefit of the verbal and non-verbal cues which are transmitted by the tone of voice, eye contact and body language which are part of an in-person conversation. Career consultants will thus have to learn to “read between the lines”. Determining the client’s needs is more challenging since both the questioning techniques and the validation of answers will change. With clients who can be anywhere on the planet, global thinking is necessary and multicultural counselling the new reality.

Knowledge management is also a concern for practitioners as there is more and more information available and less time to organize it. Consulting services could possibly be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for the client. E-mail and voice mail must be checked several times a day and a reply must be on its way to clients within a few hours. To do this, more than one counsellor could work with a client. Consultants will work from home rather than from a traditional office. Since many of their clients no longer come into their offices for services, firms will reduce their working space. Finally, some online hiring sites already match the job seeker’s qualifications with the company’s requirements. We can probably expect in-person interviews to be the next area of transformation and since technology is in constant progress, it should soon be commonplace to have live interviewing of a person halfway across the globe.

The International Association of Career Management Professionals has more than 2,000 members worldwide. It’s main objectives are to offer an environment that favours professional and personal development, to keep members informed on the profession, to ensure they benefit from a well-structured network and to offer them the possibility of contributing to the development of the profession. For more information on the IACMP, visit the international web site at www.iacmp.org or call the Montreal Chapter at (514) 990-9257.

Lise Simard is a Guidance Counselor. She is currently setting up socio-professionnal networks in several programs at the “Université du Québec à Montréal” and is working on a web version of these career development associations for both students and graduates. She can be reached at lisimard@videotron.ca.