What Should I Do With My Life?

In the spirit of the the New Year, many individuals take the time to reflect on the direction of their lives and career. Many may wonder, "what should I do with my life?" In Po Bronson's book of the same title, he explores stories of individuals searching for their "true calling," exploring their identity.

See http://www.pobronson.com/index_what_should_I_do_with_my_life.htm for more information including sample chapters highlighting 10 of the books 50 stories, an excerpt from the audio book, and author commentary/notes.

Holiday Greetings

Warmest holiday greetings to our LearnOnline students. It has been an exciting year for us at Life Strategies. We have a new website, newsletter, and blogs, and have added four new certificate programs and partnerships this year – Job Developer, Job Club Coach, Case Manager, and Educational and Vocational Guidance Practitioner. We’ve also welcomed several new instructors to the team – check out the “Meet the Team” section on our website. We saw a 39% increase in student registrations and the winter 2011 semester looks busy as well.

If you’re looking for free resources check out the Resources tab on our website at http://www.lifestrategies.ca/. Also, did you know that our LearnOnline community has a blog? Follow us at http://learnonline-reconnect.blogspot.com/ to stay informed of new resources, latest news, and tips and strategies for working effectively in our field.

If you’re looking for continuing professional education in 2011, we hope you’ll keep us in mind. Consider our one week e-courses, two to six week certificate programs, or speciality certificates within the Career Management Professional Program comprising 10 or 11 two-week courses. We are also always happy to customize courses for intact groups, in-person, blended, or fully online.

For those of you in our career development related programs you may be interested in an opportunity to contribute to revisions for the Canadian Standards & Guidelines for Career Development Practitioners. Attend an in-person focus group at CANNEXUS (Ottawa, ON) – Tuesday January 25, 2011. This is an invitation only event; register at http://s-and-g.eventbrite.com/. Watch for other consultations throughout the country.

If you’re planning to attend CANNEXUS, the Career Development Conference in BC, or the National Career Development Association conference in San Antonio, Texas, please look us up. It’s always lovely to connect in person!

With our best wishes for a relaxing holiday season and a new year that fulfills all your hopes and dreams.
Roberta, Deirdre, Cassie, Cheryl, and the LearnOnline team of instructors

IAEVG National Correspondents Meet in India

With the 2010 IAEVG - Jiva International Conference being held in Bangalore, India, IAEVG National Correspondents met to discuss the state of careers guidance in their part of the world. Life Strategies' own Roberta Neault was in attendance and wanted to share some highlights.

• In Canada, research/evaluation of career work within other countries is being undertaken
• In India, the Promise Foundation (http://www.thepromisefoundation.org/) is working to introduce guidance/counselling in secondary education through training teachers
• In the UK, an all-age guidance service will be introduced in 2011
• In Australia, in order to provide more professional services across the country, national career standards are being introduced
  

To learn more about IAEVG, international conferences, and the national correspondents see http://www.iaevg.org/iaevg/index.cfm?lang=2

Beyond the Basics: Real World Skills for Career Practitioners

Beyond the Basics: Real World Skills for Career Practitioners (2001) is a book by Life Strategies president, Roberta Neault. It's a helpful read for career practitioners and is also a textbook in some of our courses. One of our newest certificate programs, Job Developer, requires this as well.

It has over 100 pages of tips and techniques for working with diverse clients including individuals, groups, corporations and communities, and is linked to the Canadian National Standards and Guidelines for Career Development.

To order, see our online store - http://www.lifestrategies.ca/store/products.php?cat=14

This book is available in PDF and printed formats.

Career Developments

Career Developments is a newsletter put out by the Canadian Career Development Foundation (CCDF), a non-profit organization which strives to "advance career development and the capacity of the profession to respond with compassion and skill to all clients and stakeholders in an ever-changing work environment." (see http://www.ccdf.ca/ccdf2/cms/displayMain.asp?lang=en§ion=about for more information)

This publication "highlights current developments, innovations, and professional and policy issues in the field of career development in Canada and internationally."

See the CCDF website (http://www.ccdf.ca/ccdf2/cms/displayMain.asp?lang=en§ion=newsletter) for more details and to access copies of the newsletter.

Conversation Series on Career and Workforce Development Policies and Practice

Check out this amazing "Afternoon Tea" series sponsored by the Center on Education and Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Each of the "conversations" takes the approach of an afternoon tea with a leader in the career development field. There are plenty to choose from...have fun :-)

http://afternoontea.wceruw.org/Home.aspx/Conversations

Sunny Hansen: ILP

Finally...the correct link to Sunny Hansen's website with info about Integrative Life Planning (ILP) as well as her international research related to diversity and gender equality. http://www.sunnyhansenbornfree.com/

CanadaInfoNet

The Canadian Information and Networking Services, an online forum for immigrants offering mentoring services and helpful resources for skilled business and trade professionals, is currently in the process of enhancing their website. The new site will host an improved mentoring tool for their e-mentoring program connecting immigrants to mentees with similar interests, backgrounds, and carer goals.

For more information or to become a mentor see http://www.canadainfonet.org/

Labour Force Figures

Stephen Hill, Employment Counsellor, noted in a recent email blast that "when economists or government spokespeople or business analysts say that we have recovered almost all the jobs we lost since the start of the recession they are right; we are within 4,300 jobs of where we were in July 2008." To determine this, he compared the labour force figures from July 2008 (available at http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/080808/t080808a-eng.htm) to those from September 2010 (available at http://www.statcan.gc.ca/subjects-sujets/labour-travail/lfs-epa/t101008a4-eng.htm).

Stephen highlights the importance of these figures, all available through the official StatsCan tables, to career practitioners to inform not only the status of the economy, but also to know the number of persons who may be in need.

Combating Myths About Distance Education

In his article Combating Myths About Distance Education, Todd Gilman explores the challenges that online and distance education programs, and instructors, face to show the merit of their programs. He contends that many "problems" noted in online programs can also exist within face-to-face or mixed mode delivery. In "any classroom, whether it's the face-to-face, online-only, or hybrid variety, is only as good as the people in it. If both teachers and students are prepared, responsive, and engaged, things run remarkably well."

For the full article see: http://chronicle.com/article/Combating-Myths-About-Distance/64299/

Culture-Infused Counselling

As our Understanding Diverse Clients course starts today, we'd like to share resource we've found quite helpful: Culture-Infused Counselling: Celebrating the Canadian Mosaic by Nancy Arthur and Sandra Collins (2005).

This book "attempt[s] to provide students and practitioners alike with a comprehensive resource that adds a Canadian perspective to a predominantly American body of literature." (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7482/is_200701/ai_n32220836/)

Bulletin Summer 2010 Issue Dedicated to Assessment

This edition of the Contact Point Bulletin focuses specially on assessment with articles focusing on selecting and interpreting assessments, as well as specific assessment models. For a full listing of articles see http://www.contactpoint.ca/index.php?view=category&id=99%3Asummer-2010&option=com_content&Itemid=37

PD Online

We're currently running our Personality Dimensions level I facilitator training and bridging workshop through our LearnOnline site. Although our participants work with the paper assessment, CLSR, the assessment publisher, offers an online version of the assessment (click here for more information). With this format, you can have participants take the assessment in advance and focus on the more experiential learning activities during the workshop.

From September 28th - October 4th, CLSR will be making upgrades the PD online software to improve functionality.

Theory and Practice of Group Counseling

As our Group Facilitation Strategies for Career Programs course begins today, we like to share an interesting resource on the topic:

Theory and Practice of Group Counseling by Dr. Gerald Corey.

Keep your eyes peeled for the new revision scheduled to come out January 31st 2011.

Blink

When gathering and analyzing information, it's important to consider the impact of your perceptions and judgements can have. In Gladwell's book Blink, readers learn how snap judgements impact conclusions.

Read more about Gladwell and Blink at http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/02/22/malcolm.gladwell/

Active Engagement: Enhancing the Career Counselling Process

With our Helping Skills course starting up again on September 8th, we'd like to share a recommended reading by Norm Amundson - Active Engagement: Enhancing the Career Counselling Process. This is an award-winning career interventions textbook has been translated into several different languages.

The second and third edition are both available in our Life Strategies Online Store

Best Practices in Employee Layoffs

See About.com for an informative article on Best Practices in Employee Layoffs at http://humanresources.about.com/b/2008/11/15/best-practices-in-employee-layoffs.htm. Highlighting legal/ethical standards and completing layoffs with dignity, this article builds on a reader question about standards for business facing slowdowns.

Mentors for New Immigrants

Here's a brief interview in HRVoice (the BC e-newsletter for HR professionals) co-authored by a new immigrant and her mentor.

Whether or not you specialize in working with immigrants, as a career management professional it's important to understand the immigrant experience. Articles like this can help to surface some of the typical issues that they face. Resources like the SEED toolkit help employers to prepare for welcoming and integrating new immigrants.

The CMP program has a course dedicated to this topic: The Immigrant Experience. This is generally a Directed Studies course, but it's much more interesting to discuss with a group. We currently have the course scheduled for September 1 - 14...will you join us online?

NEO™ Personality Inventory-3 Now Available

PAR is now distributing the newly revised NEO™ Personality Inventory-3 (NEO™-PI-3), the standard five factor model of personality assessment. Learn more at http://www4.parinc.com/Products/Product.aspx?ProductID=NEO-PI-3

In the current economic climate, we are seeing indivdiuals staying in the workforce longer or even seniors returning to the workforce. In a Globe and Mail article, Hewitt describes how Retirement is so Old Fashioned. See http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20100615.LFOLDERWORKERSATL/TPStory for the full story.

Multicultural Career Counselling Competence

With our increasingly diverse society and global workforce, the need for strong multicultural competency in career counselling is elevated. See the article Multicultural Career Counselling Competence: 5 Key Tips for Improving Practice by Richard Orbe-Austin for recommendations on improving your multicultural competence.

available at:
http://associationdatabase.com/aws/NCDA/pt/sd/news_article/28865/_PARENT/layout_details_cc/true

JIST Assessments Now Online

Did you know that JIST assessments, such as the Career Exploration Inventory (CEI) and Job Search Attitude Inventory (JSAI), which were previously only available in paper/pencil format are now available online – see http://www.jist.com/shop/web/online-assessments/ tests-available for more details.

Recommended Career Books

We want to use this blog to share timely information, relevant for students and alumni of our e-learning programs. Here's a list that came from some research recently done by Dr. Dave Redekopp of the Life-Role Development Group in Alberta:

Career Resource Recommendations

Selected career development experts were asked the following question:

What is the best print resource you've seen for helping the average literate adult, whether employed or unemployed, take charge of, plan for, and get strategic about their career development?

Their responses are provided below. Numbers in parentheses represent how many times the publication was cited. No number indicates that is was cited once. Other than the books mentioned more than once, all other are listed in the order in which respondents named them. Some respondents named more than one resource, and some either did not single out a resource or referred to only non-print resources (not included below).

Radical Change in the World of Work: The Workbook, Alberta Employment & Immigration (5)
What Color is Your Parachute?, Richard Bolles (2)
Guiding Circles, Amundson & Poehnell
The Job of Your Life, Karen Schaffer
What Next?, Barbara Moses
Take Your Soul to Work, Tanis Helliwell
Work This Way, Bruce Tulgen
Not Everyone Gets A Trophy: How to Manage Generation Y, Bruce Tulgen
The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success, Nicholas Lore
I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was : How to Discover What You Really Want and How to Get It, Barbara Sher
The Artist's Way (and The Artist's Way Workbook), Julia Cameron
Career Pathways, Amundson & Poehnell
Career Strategies for a Lifetime of Success, Roberta Neault
Nova Scotia Careeroptions Handbook
Sixth Messenger, Ben Wicks
Let Your Life Speak, Peter Palmer

Respondents:

Note that this is a biased sample – many of the following are philosophically aligned with the work of LRDG:

Barrie Day, Clarence deSchiffart, Odette Dupuy, Laurie Edwards, Wendy Fox, Rob Frost, Gordon Heidel, Helen Handcock, Phil Jarvis, Kelly Lee-Pelletier, Roberta Neault, Dave Redekopp, Colleen Reichrath-Smith

The three bolded selections are available through the Life Strategies online store