Career Professionals of Canada News Feed
A client naturally approaches their résumé from the inside out. They know what they have done, what they are proud of, and what they hope an employer will notice. Something that feels important to them may seem as though it obviously belongs on the résumé. Once they have worked hard to describe an accomplishment, qualification, or experience, it can be difficult to imagine why anyone would read it differently. Résumé strategists have to make that shift. At some point, we need to stop reading as the person who knows…
“I don’t know anyone who works there.” I hear this regularly from job seekers when I encourage them to use their network as part of their search. And I fully understand why. When we think about our network, we tend to think about the people we know directly: former colleagues, friends, family members or people we’ve interacted with professionally over the years. But that’s only part of our network, and our circles are so much bigger than that. One of the most powerful shifts we can help clients make is…
For much of our professional history, access to good information had value. Career professionals knew where to find occupational information, labour market data, job-search strategies, résumé guidance, and resources that clients might struggle to locate on their own. That expertise still matters, but the surrounding environment has changed dramatically. Search engines began the shift, and artificial intelligence has accelerated it. For career professionals, AI is changing not only how people access information, but where professional value lies. People can now generate explanations, advice, ideas, comparisons, and recommendations almost instantly.…
Skill Stacking and Adaptive Career Development Many people still think about careers in terms of finding one primary strength and building around it over time. For years, career development often emphasized specialization, encouraging people to choose a direction, develop expertise, and gradually establish themselves within a particular profession or industry. That approach still has value, but many career professionals are noticing a shift toward transferable skills that address emerging opportunities across evolving labour markets. Increasingly, some of the strongest opportunities are emerging not from a single area of expertise, but…
Supply and demand are usually discussed in economic terms. When something people value is readily available, we tend to take its availability for granted. When it becomes harder to obtain, we may notice and value it differently. What happens if we apply that same lens to human attention? For most of our lives, talking to another person has been an ordinary part of receiving a service. We called an organization, and someone answered; we walked into a business and dealt with an employee; or we had a question…
This is the second post in a two-part series. In part one of this series, I explored three challenges I’m seeing beneath the surface of today’s job search: job seekers searching for answers when gathering more evidence may be more helpful, relying on the safety of online applications, and hesitating to reach out because they don’t want to bother others. But two other job seeker challenges are showing up consistently in my client conversations, ones that have less to do with job-search tactics and much more to do with how…