CPC Members in Action – The Making of Our Canada Career Month Podcast

By Maureen McCann.

Kamee Gilmore caught my attention and interest with a post she wrote for the CPC website back in the spring of 2017. The article was titled “Pricing Freelance Résumé Services.” Some months later, I reached out to Kamee following a tele-networking session on the topic of private practice pricing and marketing models. Before you knew it, we were collaborating on a national survey of the pricing of Canadian résumé services.

That survey led us to create last year’s Canada Career Month podcast, called the “Résumé Expert Q&A Session.”

This year, Kamee and I were talking about how valuable and beneficial membership in CPC has been for our practices, and an idea dawned on us: “If we’ve found our memberships in CPC to be this valuable, maybe new members find it valuable, too!”

Being two very inquisitive businesswomen, we got to work. We reached out to new members and they came through for us. We wanted to know, what’s the value in being a CPC member? Our own memberships have yielded undeniable returns on investment. Would new CPC members feel the same way?

So, a few weeks ago, in anticipation of Canada Career Month 2018, Kamee and I recorded this podcast with seven new CPC members. We both agreed that we got much more out of the interviews than we had imagined. It was a great reminder of the tremendous community we have found in CPC. No matter what the topic, whether it be business challenges, client struggles, trends in career development, or issues of discrimination, CPC has become our one-stop-shop for sourcing the “best practice” information and advice we use in support of our clients.

Conducting the interviews and recording this podcast reinforced our belief in CPC and the immense value of membership.

If you are not a CPC member and you’re wondering if you should take the plunge, listen to the podcast and you’ll get a sense of what it’s like for new members.

You’ll hear the interviewees share stories of some of the same struggles and joys we experienced practitioners have encountered in our own careers. We discuss:

• Alleviating imposter syndrome
• Apprehension that comes from paying for membership before fully understanding its value
• The value of community and the sense of belonging
• Business development
• Lifelong learning
• Professional credentials
• Giving back
• Landing that very first client
• CPC’s professional network and wealth of shared resources
• Certification, Standards, and Guidelines

Kamee and I have been looking forward to sharing these interviews with you. We hope you enjoy the podcast as much as we enjoyed working on it. A big THANK YOU to each of our volunteer participants: Lena Stewart, Gabrielle Suttis, Sandie Seymour, Michelle Precourt, Ali Breen, Ying Zhang, and Barbara Wilson.

Thank you for reminding us just how amazing a community we have in our CPC members!

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