Career Professionals of Canada News Feed
By Lori Jazvac. Organizational culture is an important, but often overlooked aspect of career-related exploration and decision-making. This component should be addressed with clients in order to help them secure a rewarding role aligned with their particular career goals and values. Workplace culture: the glue that holds an organization together Clients often share that they dislike the way things are done in their organization, or they don’t agree with company policies. Some have been advised by recruiters during interviews that they may not be the best fit. These scenarios demonstrate…
By Cathy Milton. November 2017 is Canada Career Month, an annual initiative of the Canadian Council for Career Development. This year, the flagship event is Canada’s Most Informed School Competition, hosted online by ChatterHigh. If you’re wondering who or what ChatterHigh is, read on! ChatterHigh’s Beginnings Since the 1950s, higher education and career organizations participate in annual “Career Day” events, setting up their tables in high school gymnasiums or conference centers and sending boxes of print materials to school counselling offices. In 2009, ChatterHigh’s founder, Lee Taal, set out to…
By Lori Jazvac. Dr. Viktor Frankl, a neurologist and psychiatrist, believed that the search for meaning of human existence, coined as “Logotherapy,” represented one of humanity’s most powerful driving forces. Translated into our world of career management, when clients lack meaning, they may experience career stress and anxiety. For employers, a deficit in meaning might produce higher employee absenteeism, high turnover, and low employee engagement rates. Dr. Frankl would explain that we have an “inner pull” to search for better opportunities. We can see examples that support the pursuit of meaning in today’s world.…
By Lori Jazvac. The performance review is a useful evaluation and planning tool. A good appraisal can direct an employee to negotiate a raise or work towards a promotion. A poor evaluation prompts an employee to either improve his or her performance or to search for another position. As a Career Practitioner, you can help your client see the performance review as a personal career planning tool. Together, you can co-identify your client’s competencies, skills-gaps, and training needed for future career success. Performance reviews provide our clients with rare insight to an…
Contributed by Richard Hamilton. In career counselling, our clients come to us needing to make a big life change -to become employed or improve their employment situation. There can be obvious substantive benefits to succeeding in this challenge, including improved work life, home life, sense of personal accomplishment and/or improved financial well being. Given such rewards, our clients should be coming to us highly motivated to succeed. Wouldn’t your job be so much easier if that was the case? Making change is difficult. Think, for example, about how we as…
By Lori Jazvac. The labour market is increasingly competitive. Employer and recruiter expectations, changing technology, and shifts within certain industries are forcing job seekers to stay relevant or reinvent themselves. None of us wish to go through challenging career transitions. But, the reality is that we do not have a crystal ball to forecast career changes, and career transformations can arrive quickly – at a moment’s notice – and often without warning. Ironically, the one thing that we can count on is change. Whether change involves our role, company, team, industry, field, or even…