The Bulletin

By Roberta Neault, PhD, Cassie Saunders, BA, and Fiona Glendinning, BA, Life Strategies Ltd.

It can be tempting for career practitioners and counsellors working with groups to find a comfortable style and stick with it. However, adding new activities, resources, and techniques to your toolkits can help to keep both you and your group members interested and engaged. Here are a few that the Life Strategies team finds particularly helpful, with information about where to order them. If you’re looking for professional development as a group facilitator, we’ve added a few opportunities here as well.

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 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: