Career Trends

In "The Shift", Gratton mentions 'the traditional deal at work: to be paid, to consume stuff and bring happiness'. In the future, we need to make choices to live a more balanced life. Our experiences will bring us more satisfaction and happiness than buying things with money. This guide may help us see the benefits of owning and wanting less.

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 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 provides a few helpful questions for those who are having difficulty differentiating between their own personal self and their organization. Employees often come to embody their organizational values and goals, especially if they are congruent with their own personal views. However, employees who are unaware of their self-disposition are likely to find they are unable to identify themselves outside of their organizational/working self. This article provides a few questions that clients, or any employee, can ask themselves to see whether or not they have lost sight of their personal values and traits that are unique to their person. These questions also have guiding descriptions, and provide advice on how to become self-aware.

As we talk about mastery and transitional learning in order to make one competitive, I present an article on how long one should stay in their jobs and the risks one takes of staying too long. It makes the definition between job hoppers, steady employment and those who cling to their jobs. An interesting read

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 explains the difference between emerging new social class "plutocrats" - which refers to the trend of wealthy individuals to become involved with social and political policies. This article helps to highlight the potential consequences of this new class, as well as the possible opportunities it may bring. This article helps to explain this phenomenon, as well as provide insight into the impacts and challenges of an ever-globalizing world.

This article provides preventative strategies for negative outcomes within virtual working environments. As the trend is currently increasing the ability of individuals to collaborate via the internet, the "killers" must also be made public, to ensure virtual organizations and employee teams can become aware and prevent the potential implications of working over the internet rather than in traditional work spaces. This enables work to continue to be innovative, rewarding, and meaningful to each employee.

This article helps to reveal the unfilled positions in the US labour market, which has serious implications on the future of American manufacturing. Traditional skills and occupations have decreased significantly in modern society, and there are fewer people interested in obtaining the experience or knowledge to do such jobs.

Redefining 'made in China': How one firm is forging a new path for manufacturers

For this weeks last posting I decided to put up something on how how technology is changing people's work lives. This article talks about changing work rules, such as working from home or virtually. It also talks about how in the future computer science and information technology will rapidly grow.

I am particularly interested in working with at risk youth. It has been identified that youth unemployment and underemployment is in fact rising and is, amazingly, higher than during the recession! This article talks about medium and large companies getting on board to help young people gain skills during high school and/or post-secondary in order to add practical experience to their resume, along with their debt-inducing education. It will be interesting to see what happens over the coming years.

I found going through the Shift Workbook very insightful and it inspired me to look around for some additional quizzes that assess your areas of interest. For me, in the past, I have always been very analytical, interested in lab testing, anything in the sciences really, and have shifted toward a more person-focused career journey. It's so interesting to me to do these little quizzes and see that my results have completely switched to the "helping" profession! It's just 15 questions and I feel it's a nice and easy quiz for the younger population. It gives results for the following categories: helping, people, administrative, creative, technical, practical.

This article provides an overview of and link to the Cumulative Earrings of Post Secondary Graduates Over 20 Years report by Statistics Canada. It looks at gender and education level as main factors.

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.

The forces of the Shift that surrounded the changing face of poverty really interested me. I saw these as being important to my future because of my keen interest in social justice. I can see my future work having to do with helping underprivileged people. This article provides an interest perspective on why the face of the poor is changing, even though between 2005 and 2010 nearly half a billion people escaped $1.25-a-day poverty.

The link brings you to the job board, but the site seems to be a really good resource in general. It provides a newsletter, links to great articles on CERIC, information about courses/workshops/webinars/etc.