Summer 2008

By The CANNEXUS Staff

CANNEXUS 2008, National Career Development Conference

The second annual CANNEXUS National Career Development Conference took place this past Spring. The setting was beautiful downtown Montreal at the Delta Centre-Ville Hotel, April 14 through 16, 2008. The event boasted more than 500 delegates and, as the conference enters its third year, has established itself as the “go to event” for professionals interested in or working within the field of career counselling and career development.

By Susan Qadeer

The increasing diversity in our major cities requires that career counsellors develop and continue to acquire competencies in working with a multicultural population. When working with clients who are very different from ourselves, we will want to rethink some counselling practices that may not be useful across cultures and to incorporate more effective ones. For instance, some erosion of traditional barriers between the counsellor and client including a more liberal use of self disclosure may facilitate a working relationship. Here are some things we might keep in mind as we try to help newcomer clients make career and academic decisions and work towards securing employment.

By Mark Larson

From Nova Scotia

Find Distance/Online Services – Workplace Skills Initiative

Here is a situation you may be familiar with: – as a career practitioner / employment specialist you are faced with a client looking for advice and guidance concerning their need to find employment in their field. Add to this mix, the fact that this client is an immigrant and has unique challenges regarding the integration into not just the Canadian labour market but a new country as well. In addition, this individual has chosen to live in a smaller urban center far removed from your location and cannot take advantage of the face to face services your organization offers.

By Anne Senior

The Centre for Canadian Language Benchmarks (CCLB) is celebrating its 10th year as the centre of expertise in support of the national standards – Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB) and les Niveaux de compétence linguistique canadiens (NCLC). These benchmarks are used for describing, measuring and recognizing the second language proficiency of adult immigrants and prospective immigrants for living and working in Canada.

By Christine Gertz

You may be surprised to know that most people don’t know what blogs are. It almost floored me when I presented at a conference this summer. There were several people in the room who wanted to know more about them, and I, in my social networking arrogance, thought that blogs were dead.

By Jan Sheppard Kutcher

When the question arises of why skilled newcomers are so often frustrated in their efforts to become employed in their professions – the usual answer is that they do not have Canadian work experience. This apparent “catch 22” of no Canadian experience/no job is inevitably raised in any discussion of the workforce integration of immigrant professionals. I would argue that this is not, in fact, the answer. Instead, I would suggest that the central reason highly qualified newcomers struggle so hard to integrate into the workforce – is that employers do not like to take risks. When faced with a resume which includes education from a university or college in a distant part of the world or work experience in a company they have never heard of in some far away place, many employers don’t trust it.

By Donald Macnab Ph.D.

As a practitioner, it is part of your role to help the client discover and prioritize their values. This will be helpful to clients in a number of spheres: career counselling, retirement counselling, leisure counselling, team building, organizational planning and other activities in which this type of self-knowledge is important.