Career Professionals of Canada News Feed
My friend Kelly spent more than 20 years working in banking. When she was young, banking seemed like a cool place to work, where she could dress nicely every day. Once she was actually doing it, though, she discovered it wasn’t really her. It included a sales component, like encouraging clients to sign up for products such as credit cards, and the environment could be competitive. Kelly isn’t a competitive person. Still, the job served an important purpose. It was steady, provided a decent second income for her family, and…
Career resilience is often described as the ability to adapt, persevere, and move forward despite challenges. We tend to view it as a personal characteristic, something that can be strengthened through confidence, mindset, skills, and support. Yet resilience does not exist in isolation. Resilience is often influenced by the realities people face outside of work, including their financial situation. When layoffs occur, contracts end, industries change, or people contemplate a new career adventure, financial stress can quickly become part of the equation. Concerns about paying bills, supporting family members, managing…
“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…
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…
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…
Human Judgment in an AI-Supported World Clients are arriving at career conversations with AI-generated advice already in hand. Some bring detailed career plans generated through AI platforms. Others arrive with résumé revisions, interview strategies, labour market information, or lists of recommended occupations produced within seconds through increasingly sophisticated systems. In many cases, the information appears polished, thoughtful, personalized, and highly convincing. This moment is especially important to understand because it is changing the role you play within career development conversations. AI systems may organize information quickly and generate highly confident…