F09 – Features

By Juliet Wehr Jones, Vice President, Career Key

With education costs going up and more people returning to school, the stakes are higher than ever for making a good program choice. Choosing the wrong major or instructional program is inconvenient, expensive, and increases students’ incompletion rate. Fortunately, we know how to help people make a successful choice, one likely to result in a higher GPA, degree completion, and higher post-graduation earnings.

By Nathalie Perreault, c.o.

Hi Everyone,

Some of you may remember me from past conferences where I co-presented for Contact Point’s sister site OrientAction. Since I’ve decided to return to career counselling after a maternity leave, I thought I would update you on what I am doing now. As a career counsellor who worked mostly on specialised website development, I wanted to refresh my counselling skills.  I was able to do this last year while working in a school setting. Recently, I had the opportunity to do a more in depth investigation of a great assessment tool that I have used in the past and which was updated last year. This test is already very popular in Quebec and francophone communities across Canada. The main reason I am taking this opportunity to introduce it to you is that it is now available in English!

By  Krista Maydew, MA, GCDF, and Roberta Neault, PhD, CCC, RRP, GCDF

When you hear someone talking about diversity in the workplace, people often assume the discussion is about cultural or ethnic diversity. Although programs to increase diversity in the workplace have been used by both public and private sector employers for many years; the main focus has typically been on increasing representation of women, visible minorities, Aboriginals, and sometimes, persons with disabilities.  However, diversity in its broadest sense is inclusive of all people. In our own diversity work, we use the term to describe a wide-range of differences, including but not limited to:

By Di Wright

No one can accurately, or consistently predict the future. That said, it is important , like Richard Worzel- known as “The Futurist “(futurist@futuresearch.com), recommends that you have plan B and even C ready to be implemented, especially when it comes to your career.

By Krista Maydew, MA, GCDF Cassie Saunders, BA

Increasingly, we are seeing a trend toward the development and delivery of Internet based e-services.  Although e-services are typically provided directly to clients (e.g., online career management services), there also exists the possibility of providing e-services to practitioners and employers via “communities of practice” or practitioner networks. Such communities are “groups that form to share what they know and to learn from one another regarding some aspects of their work” (Nickols, 2003).

 By Denise Feltham

The National Occupational Classification (NOC) System is no stranger to career and work counsellors.  Used by HRSDC (Human Resource Skills Development Canada) to classify all the types of jobs that exist in Canada, it is often a referral source for career exploration and labour market research.  Yet, are we getting the most out of the NOC?

By Mohammad Habib Ullah

Promoting Internationally Educated Professionals (IEPs) to Canadian employers is a challenging task. In a not for profit setting, employment counsellors and job developers use various techniques and methods to help IEPs find meaningful employment. Internationally educated professionals bring various employability skills, which include both soft and hard skills. Employment counsellors and job developers need to be able to identify these skills for promoting them to employers.

By Melissa Martin, B.A. B.Ed. TEFL, Bilingual career coach

In my quest to elevate my professional profile and strive to be an expert in the counselling field, I used the six degrees of separation. A colleague recommended that I complete certification in solution-focused interviewing and counselling training, delivered by Dr. Ronald Warner, from the Dept. of Social Work at the University of Toronto.

By Christine Gertz

Twitter has been popping up all over lately: the entertainment news regularly sources celebrity tweets—the name for a Twitter posting—and local and national news use Twitter to post news stories and traffic updates. I attended a conference where a presenter ran one screen with slides of the presentation and used another screen to “Twitter jockey” showing tweets from the audience about questions from the presentation, effectively replacing clickers with the cell phones of persons in the audience.

By Psychometrics Canada

The Other Side of the Front Line

There are few positions that demand a more complex set of skills than managing staff on the nursing front lines. Nursing is part of a complex health care system. Constantly evolving, like an ecosystem, it is under pressure from economics, science, and human relations. To be successful in this field, you have to make tough decisions, but demonstrate caring. You have to be cognizant of strict guidelines, procedures and rules, but still be flexible. You must communicate well within your team, and also across diverse levels of the organization—doctors, front line nurses, clerical and other professional staff. Personal insight is critical to successful management in these kinds of dynamic work environments.