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A short article on how to think in terms of a career carillon instead of a single career curve.

The September 2014 edition of The Canadian Journal of Career Development has excellent articles on trends applicable to our class in general and specifically "The Shift" text. I recommend reading the article "Beyond Green Jobs: Assessing Sustainability Enhancing Career Options".

We can help you with your Second Career funding application! Second Career is an Ontario government program that enables laid- off Ontarians to train for a new job in high-demand careers.

If you go to work every week with the mantra "I hate my job!," this week's blog post is for you! This is the story of Amanda, one of 8 million people who have taken the MAPP career test. Amanda was working in a job she hated -- a retail job in an electronics store.

This website relates to this weeks readings about figuring out what you really want out of your career. Therefore, this career test will help people figure out what kind of trade-offs they can live with. For example, working with people as opposed to working with things.

This week is National Career Week and I wanted to post this interesting tool for the class to use - it asks you a series of questions related to your own career development and then provides you with a point on a chart to show your own career management skill and will.

What to learn how to establish a career in this new economy? Look no further than the current generation of young people - that is, those age 20 and younger. To uncover some interesting revelations about the newest generation, Gen Z, I partnered with the third-largest staffing organization in the United States, Randstad US, on a global study analyzing how Gen Z's views of the workplace compared to Gen Y's.

I found this to be a really informative site. On this page, we can find helpful guides to using popular social media tools like Linkedin, Pininterest, facebook, twitter and blogging all from a career counsellor perspective.

With my keen interest in social justice, I thought this was a great article to end the year on. This article summarizes much of what I feel about poverty and social justice. Career counselling is very client focused, and poverty is a socially constructed issue, and often the barriers our clients face are external to themselves. At the end the author sites how we must work with the community to make meaningful change for our clients. This is of utmost importance to me.

This article talks about people needing to change their view from secure employment to gaining employability skills, as one is likely to change careers a number of times throughout life. It mentions some ideas for a future worker to consider.

A quick article that offers insight into how someone who is not of Generation Y feels those in the generation should be acting in order to be successful in their careers. Interesting from both a generational and a career perspective.

As the globalization trend continues to impact our workforce, there have been many studies and explorations into the preventative strategies for employees to utilize as they continue along their career path. Due to the mass shift towards integration, many individuals have become unemployed because they lack more than one set of skills and knowledge, and do not have a repository of relevant information to rely on. This article provides a few preventative measures for those within the IT industry, but these practices can also be applied to related fields and professions, as it advocates the idea that employees must become competitive and obtain more than 1 specific talent in order to remain ahead of the crowd and stay employed.

This article discusses the challenges and impacts to the labour and career markets, and provides some techniques and strategies for Human Resource departments within organizations to use to combat and diffuse the impact of global competition. These techniques are crafted for each actor involved within the global issue, and provides advice for the HR departments, as well as managers and individual employees to attempt in order to diminish the outcomes. The article not only emphasizes the importance of managing the organizational structures and its employees, but also highlights the significance of career development to the future of work. The idea that HR departments not only need to manage their current employees, but also must take developmental steps towards implementing a recruiting system that seeks the most talented workers from a global labour pool. The future of work relies on the combined efforts of individuals seeking to become self-aware and pursue their aspirations, with the supportive and developmental efforts of the HR department, to ensure that the future of the workforce is positive and continues to innovate and create new opportunities for employment and employee satisfaction/fulfillment.

This article reiterates what The Shift argues throughout the section on becoming an innovative connector. It also provides a few helpful tools and ideas for starting, and building your own network, and emphasizes the importance in doing so. Although the article is brief, it provides significant information about how the process of networking works, as well as diminishes the negative views towards the career development tool. The article not only relays different means of establishing networks - suggesting conferences, or contacting former employers, or classmates - but it also includes strategies specific to both the outgoing and shy personality types. It offers sequential goals, in which people branch out and meet 3 new people at an event, but also offers less-threatening options such as meeting only 1 new person at a time. Because the article is on a school website, there are also opportunities to explore the website further, for information unrelated to networking altogether. This article is also a helpful resource for future career research and exploration.

This page lists links and information on different "green" jobs/careers. The centre is located in Kitchener but the green jobs are Canada-wide with some international ones.

In "The Shift", Lynda Gratton mentions on page 168 that, "... billions of people are choosing to take control of their working lives and to craft them in a way that resonates with their own values and aspirations." I especially liked the metaphor of weaving different threads into your career fabric.

One of the best ways to learn more about a specific industry, job, or organization is by connecting with professionals who are actually in the field. The technical term for this type of interaction is called 'Informational Interviewing'. Often the most current information about a career field, especially in a specific geographic location, may not be available in print or online resources. This resource gives great information on informational interviewing. It gives benefits of informational interviews as well as steps in conducting an informational interview along with samples of what one can say or questions one can ask.

I chose this article as it suits the idea of trends that can shape the type of field you major in at school and or the type of business you choose to start. The trends help you get an idea if your business will potentially be a success and also if your major will be able to land you a career down the road.

This page of the Statistics Canada website provides a detailed account of the Youth in Transition Survey - an 8 year study conducted of youth aged 18-20 and the major educational, career and personal transitions which occur during young adulthood.

One of the things we will need to be helping our clients to consider as Career Counsellors is whether attending University and paying tuition will yield a good Return on Investment given the projected earnings of potential careers. This article emphasizes the harsh reality that tuition fees are often too heavy for both low and middle income families and therefore may not always be the best investment, given the time it takes to pay back loans. But, one point that is very interesting: "For an annual average of $170 a family, undergraduate university tuition fees could be eliminated altogether."