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Paul Stevens approached us at Contact Point to provide feedback on the SUPER SERIES (Vol. 7 No. 1). Contact Point encourages all Bulletin readers to comment on the articles presented and submit their contributions. See back page for details.

By Paul Stevens

It is inevitable that, as time passes, researchers or practitioners in career and worklife counselling evolve new theories and models or refine those already well known. The Stevens’ Model of Career Development is one of them. I devised an early version of the model in 1981 and since that date, considerable refinements and extensions have been made.

By Sandra Lim

I had the opportunity to hear Gillian Johnston deliver a presentation entitled Honouring Boundaries at the OACDP 2001 Annual General Meeting. Using Gillian’s presentation as a framework, this article will highlight the insights I gained with respect to several different boundary issues including: professional, time, and information boundary issues.

By Gisela Theurer and Roberta Neault

Jennifer works in an agency that provides employment services to individuals with disabilities¹ . One of her colleagues, Margaret, has been struggling with her workload and the stress of the job, and is occasionally very abrupt and impatient with clients. Jennifer observes this behaviour, and tries to talk to Margaret, who brushes her off. Management of the agency appears tolerant of Margaret’s behaviour, as she is a long–term employee and her productivity appears satisfactory.

By Marc Verhoeve

Last month, I was cleaning out some cupboards in our Counseling Office when I came across the Occupational Card Sort. The concept of the use of an awl to continually release occupational cards whenever an additional parameter was chosen was brilliant in its apparent simplicity. The evolution of career assessment from this low–tech tool to the present web–based assessment “virtual tools” in less than thirty years is extraordinary!

By Angus McMurty

I got my introduction to assessment tools in the late 90’s. I was working with a number of other researchers on Career Cruising’s occupational database. We had just completed putting together several hundred in-depth occupation profiles and almost one thousand multimedia interviews for our CD-ROM and online versions of Career Cruising.

By Peter Cameron

Career counsellors, labour market analysts, employers and individual job seekers use the National Occupational Classification (NOC), the Career Handbook (CH) and Job Futures (JF) as a standardized way to of describing and understanding the world of work.

In writing about the use of career assessments, Spencer Niles, president of the National Career Development Association in the US, cautions, “[Some] practitioners… conceptualize career counselling as a process of administering tests and providing occupational information. Such views freeze career counselling at the turn of the last century.” (Niles & Harris–Bowlsbey, 2002, p. 123). Thankfully, most of today’s career practitioners have moved far beyond this “test and tell” approach to career decision–making. However, appropriate use of career assessments can certainly assist clients and career practitioners to form a clear picture of skills, interests, values, personal style, barriers and other characteristics that might impact job satisfaction or career success.

By Malcolm Stewart, Ph. D.

In each decade since the 1950s, the average retirement age of Canadians has fallen. In 1994, the average age at first retirement was 60.4. By the mid-1990s the median age of retirement was about 61 for men and 58 for women – well below the ‘traditional’ retirement age of 65 (when pension benefits typically begin). Moreover, most retirees remain retired. In the mid-1990s only a small proportion — around 16 percent of men and 9 percent of women age 45 and over– returned to paid employment after formally retiring. However, the latest figures from Statistics Canada show a significant increase in employment among older Canadians, mirroring a trend that researchers have been tracking in the United States since the 1980s. In 2003, 11.5 percent of men and 4.1 percent of women age 65 and over – over a quarter million seniors — were engaged in paid employment, compared with 9.8 and 3.4 percent respectively in 1999. Why is this ‘up tick’ in labour force participation of older people occurring? Is it likely to continue and perhaps intensify? Are more and more of us likely to be working into our later years, as long as we are physically able to do so?

By Tracey Helten, Associate Consultant for Canadian Career Partners

If the owner of your favourite coffee shop told you that you couldn’t set foot in the store unless you provided your date of birth, name, address and email––would you go in? Without knowing why personal information was needed to buy a cup of coffee, or what the owner was intending to do with it, you would likely find another coffee shop. But if the owner explained that the information was only going to be used to randomly select and contact winners of free coffee for a year, you might just consider it.