BLOG

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.