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"The passage by NCDA of the Minimum Competencies for Multicultural Career Counseling and Development confirms the long known reality that the work of career counselors is impacted by the complexity of culture as much as psychotherapy and other forms of counseling. As career services professionals, the Competencies provide us with a useful framework for engaging our increasingly diverse client population. The Competencies challenge us to shift our counseling paradigms, improve our techniques, modify our theoretical approaches, and to be aware of our own cultural blind spots as we attempt to meet the unique needs of our clients and to better understand how culture impacts career development. While the Competencies provide basic guidance about the skills and knowledge needed to be a culturally competent career practitioner, it is still a challenge for career experts to understand how they can integrate multicultural competence into their everyday practice. This article seeks to examine some factors to consider when developing one's multicultural competence as it pertains to career counseling."

Promoting Career Counseling: Ideas from NCDA

Whether to inform a case management process, to assist with career life decision-making, or to measure outcomes of counseling interventions, effective assessment is an essential counseling competency. The following ten questions will help you keep your assessments on track.

College career development centers are regularly faced with the challenges of increasing their visibility to students, establishing more collaborative relationships with faculty members, and developing more employer contacts. Recently, the Starr Career Development Center (SCDC) at Baruch College (City University of New York), under the guidance of its Director Dr. Patricia Imbimbo, has developed a critical tool to assist in meeting all these challenges, the Starr Sub Program.

Our careers and our lives are constantly changing. With so many twists and turns it is almost guaranteed that our career plans will not be stagnant. There are many different types of individuals who are moving in/out of a traditional career. Recently the term "comeback parent" has been coined for the parent who has left a paid position outside the home to raise a family, and is now returning to paid external employment. Another example is the graduate student who alternates full time employment with full or part time education. Some leave to take care of an aging relative, start a private practice or a business, attend to personal health issues, or even work part-time from home. While juggling various roles in life, it is important to manage our careers even if it is not currently the highest priority. Networking is an important way to effectively and efficiently tend to your career at all times.

While understanding the Internet's role in the job search and career development has always been important for professionals, the emergence of new Web technologies, such as social media, blogging and social networking have permanently changed the playing field.

Facebook is, according to its own Terms of Use, an online directory that connects people through networks of academic and geographic centers, which is becoming increasingly popular among high school and college students. They use it as a means of staying in contact with their old and new friends across the globe. It seems innocent, but do they know that employers, parents and even the Secret Service have access to their Facebook? This article will address what Facebook is, how students use it, how others can use it, and most importantly, how Career Centers can educate students to use Facebook as a positive means of networking.

"he Career Counselor's Handbook (2nd Ed.) by Howard Figler & Richard N. Bolles. Ten Speed Press, 2007, 301 pp. ISBN 9781580088701. $19.99 Both Figler and Bolles have over six decades of experience in the field of career development, and both have written best sellers about the subject, including The Complete Job-Search Handbook (Figler, 1999) and What Color is Your Parachute? (Bolles, 2009). Figler and Bolles have combined their experience to produce a practical guide with The Career Counselor's Handbook. The book includes a discussion of the history and definition of career counseling, a sample of tools, tips for dealing with difficult clients, an overview of the values that shape career work, and guidelines for establishing and maintaining a career in this field."

"I was privileged to hear His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama speak as he accepted the International Freedom Conductor Award in Cincinnati, Ohio in October 2010. As a career coach, I reflected on his words to see how these might apply to life and work, especially for those in a life or career transition. These ideas are applicable to both career coaches and clients alike."

"Developing employment opportunities for individuals with difficult backgrounds can be extremely challenging, especially in today's economy. Even when these candidates have strong vocational skills, many have difficulty finding or keeping good jobs. They just can't get along with their coworkers, won't listen to their supervisors, seem unwilling to follow common sense expectations. Why is this, and what can we do to help?"

"I'm passionate about "career management," a phrase I use to talk about taking personal responsibility for our individual careers. Long gone are the days when a company had loyalty towards employees, specifically keeping them on-board for decades and providing a healthy pension after retirement. How many companies are offering a lifetime job with nice benefits after retirement? Not many. "

Hope is related to optimism. Snyder (1998) described hope as "the perceived capacity to derive pathways to desired goals, and motivate oneself via agency thinking to use those pathways" (p. 249). In Career Flow (Niles, Amundson, & Neault, 2011), hope is at the centre of a career development model and essential to each of the stages (i.e., self-reflection, self-clarity, visioning, goal-setting, action-planning, implementing, and evaluating). Without hope, clients are unlikely to be motivated to engage in career planning activities or ongoing career management.

"Maybe you feel that your employer does not care about your career growth due to the lackluster economy and perceived high unemployment rate. Maybe you feel that there are no good job opportunities out there, so why bother looking? Maybe you feel that you need to stay where you are and just deal with it. "

"Social justice and advocacy has been a current professional issue in the field of career development for over a decade. Although various professional organizations have attempted to focus on providing career development services to diverse individuals, some sociocultural groups remain underserved. For the purpose of this paper, an underserved population is defined as a particular sociocultural group that is historically marginalized and faces disadvantages based on their sociocultural identities. In an effort to offer our services to underserved populations, career practitioners and researchers may need supportive resources to expand career development knowledge and practice. "

"Have you ever received a call from a reporter looking for a career development professional? Such calls could be triggered by a number of different events. If you advertise your services or events such as career or job fairs, reporters may follow up. If the economy is in a downturn, with major employers eliminating jobs and millions of people re-thinking their career futures, reporters may come to you as an expert source of comment and analysis. If the economy is expanding and people are exploring new work options, reporters may seek observations about the resulting trends. If your organization issues a press release, you should be prepared to field any inquiries that result."

"Book Review: A Job Search Manual for Counselors and Counselor Educators"

"In 2003, Career Development Alliance (CDA) was challenged to provide quality career services to the diverse, geographically dispersed workforce of the Transportation Security Agency (TSA)-and to do so on-demand and at a reasonable cost. We met this challenge by designing a dynamic system of telephone and Internet services provided by over 30 career counselors across the U.S., supported by a state-of-the-art website, streaming video, podcasts-tech tools. At the seven-year mark, we have provided career counseling, training, and executive and management coaching to thousands of clients and have worked within budget while garnering consistently strong feedback."

"As the recession continues, unemployed people over the age of 50 continue to face steeper job hunting challenges than their younger counterparts. People over 50 search for new jobs for an average of 36 weeks or longer, compared to 27 weeks for younger workers. And while the overall unemployment rate has held steady, the rate for those over 55 actually rose from 6.8% to 7.1% accounting for more than 2 million people in that age group out of work."

"In the U.S. higher education system, students are challenged to declare a major or choose an occupation in their sophomore year in college, sometimes even before starting college. That's an onerous task, especially if done without sufficient self-knowledge or guidance. Perhaps that is why at least 60% of college students change their major at least once before graduating and, on average, students change their major three times during their college career. Many graduate, even begin work, and find that they have made a poor vocational choice. That's discouraging and costly for both students and their parents. Such a situation is less likely to occur at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where career counseling, using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Step II combined with the Strong Interest Inventory, provides students with effective, empowering guidance."

"Working collaboratively with other teachers, school counselors can contribute to the development of an optimum learning environment while collecting information to assist with career counseling. Having been a former school counselor competing for classroom time, I found that working together with teachers on previously established assignments can create a new opportunity in the classroom for career counselors who are looking for strategy to help students without impinging on teachers' classroom time. Getting into the classrooms for counseling sessions need not be so challenging when using activities already in place that can serve dual purposes."