Spring 2004

By Marc Verhoeve

The final stage in Donald Super’s career development matrix is the Decline Stage. By age, it is designated as “65 +”, and is characterized by two activities:

By Bruce Andor

A Practical Guide to Self-employment for People with Disabilities

The Center for Self-employment Excellence, a Canadian-based online resource center and volunteer organization, is sponsoring a new project aimed at helping people with disabilities better pursue self-employment as a viable career path.

By Susan Qadeer

In the Winter 2003-04 edition of the Contact Point Bulletin, Cathy Keates points out the conflicted feelings of networking among Career Practitioners. Networking is one of the current mantras for Employment Counsellors. This is the activity that encourages job seekers to cultivate contacts and use them for securing a job. Many jobs are now found through networking and are seldom advertised. Is this a good social practice? As a career counsellor, I also have some reservations about networking.

Coming to Your Senses: Soaring with Your Soul
By Sally M. Veillette
Hara Publishing Group, 2003
ISBN: 0974185418

Sally M. Veillette rediscovered her passion and reclaimed her life. In Coming to Your Senses: Soaring with Your Soul, she wants to help her readers do the same.

This is a book for exhausted over-achievers—folks who’ve realized that doing it all just isn’t working for them any more. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) was the stimulus that started Sally on her life-changing journey. This book isn’t just for CFS sufferers, however. Sally’s hope is that the framework and activities she provides will facilitate “soaring” for all of us–leaving behind all that keeps us stuck and effortlessly living our lives to the fullest.

Sally identifies an eight step process for reconnecting with ourselves, beginning by reawakening our senses, then decluttering our chaotic, busy lives. Next, begins the “push-pull” of unravelling our potential, learning “to stay our light, bright, shining selves more hours of every day.” (p. 93). The final four steps involve pursuing our passions—less “doing” and more “being.” Sally reminds us that “we’re after one thing and one thing only: a life that’s completely, authentically, and wholeheartedly alive” (p. 124).

In an era where work-life balance is increasingly eluding us, this book is a welcome resource for overworked career practitioners and many of our clients.

Dr. Roberta Neault is a career development specialist and counsellor-educator. Her current projects include developing the online Career Management Professional Program and researching the challenges of attaining work-life balance. You can reach her at info@lifestrategies.ca.

By Linda Matias

It is rumored that the only word William Shakespeare wrote on his resume was “Available.” We’ll probably never know if that is true. But it raises an interesting question. How much information is too much and how much is too little when dealing with resume copy?

By Sarah Welstead

Retired Worker Releases Survey Results

Retired Worker (www.retiredworker.ca), the first employment website created specifically for retired people, has just released the results of their first comprehensive survey of older workers. It sheds some surprising new light on the post-retirement worker, particularly their use of the internet in their job hunting.

By Rick Klumpenhouwer Privacy Specialist, Canadian Career Partners

Last issue, I proposed that three key conditions have dominated the career service industry’s response the new privacy regulation in Canada: a lack of basic knowledge, confusion about jurisdiction and scope, and some assumptions about current industry standards. I addressed the first condition to some extent by laying out a brief overview of the new legislative environment in Canada for privacy in the private sector and some of the implementation measures required. Drawing on this basic knowledge, which seems reasonable enough, how will the jurisdiction and scope of the legislation specifically affect the way career service providers work? The answer to this practical question will likely give credence to the otherwise dubious contention that, sometimes, there are things you don’t want to know about. The journey is necessary, though, to realize reasonable standards for private sector privacy compliance in the career counseling industry.