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Do you work in the career services industry? Do you find the work to be increasingly exhausting? If you answered ‘yes’ and ‘yes’, read on to understand what might be happening to you.
I have the privilege of teaching people how to transition from one situation in their life to another. That privilege includes being able to train others who do similar work. I inevitably end up doing some important and often surprising learning myself. One lesson struck a particularly strong chord with me. It was when I recognized that lots of my colleagues didn’t realize how many different hats they wear – how many different jobs they do – under the guise of one job title.
The first time I recognized this, I had asked the question “which role or roles do you fill in your job?” The response across the room was either a blank look or one of complete confusion. I carried on – quickly, as I’m wont to do – by naming the various possible hats (roles): career counselor, employment counselor, career and labor market information specialist, academic counselor, financial counselor and personal counselor. Heads nodded so I naively thought I’d clarified things.
Wrong! There were times during the rest of the training when I would get blank looks again and have to repeat myself, or someone would ask me to re-name the work.
It took a few more times of running the training this way before I realized the roots of their confusion and loss of focus was my assumption that I could simply name the different roles (hats) and my colleagues would recognize them. Further, they would know (because they work in the same industry as me, after all) what each role entailed. Wrong again! They were not clear about the type of work that belonged with each role. They just valiantly went about their work every day, doing many of those roles – and maybe even all of them!
I re-vamped the training and started with the same question, but this time I also provided the table below: “The Many Roles of a Career Practitioner Defined”. Lightbulbs went off all over the room! For the first time these hard working, caring and supportive people could see why their work was slowly wearing them into the ground!
The Many Roles of a Career Practitioner Defined
| Role | Definition |
| Career Counselor | Helps clients figure out what they want to do next in their career |
| Employment Counselor | Builds clients’ capacity to find and secure a job |
| Career and Labor Market Information Specialist | Helps clients effectively locate and use information about work and learning options without becoming overwhelmed by the volume and complexity of it all |
| Academic Counselor | Helps clients understand the intricacies of academic offerings and secure a position in the program and institution of their choice |
| Financial Counselor | Helps clients locate and secure funding needed to make their next career move |
| Personal Counselor | Guides clients through the process of getting the assistance needed to overcome/deal with negative realities that would interfere with or stop them from making their next career move |
Each of these roles requires specific and extensive training. All of them are complex and expansive in their nature. Any one of them can completely fill an employees’ work week to the point of overflow. If you are wearing even two of these hats, you are doing the work of two specialists.
This told me a few things. First of all, these career practitioners were doing the work of multiple people every day, thinking that they were doing one job! No wonder they were exhausted when they went home! Second, they were probably moving from one role to another – and back again – multiple times, leaving their clients struggling to keep up with their train(s) of thought. Some of them told me that having this information was beginning to ring bells about why some clients might not come back for their next appointments.
Needless to say, this list is included in every training for colleagues now. I hope it also helps you become clearer about your work. What are we doing to ourselves? What are our employers unknowingly expecting of us? Perhaps having this list in hand will also give you the information you need to open your employer’s eyes to the overwhelming nature of your job!
If you’ve ever been at the receiving end of this question, there’s a good chance you responded in one of two ways. You either said something along the lines of “Well, I’m thinking about…” whatever the ‘about’ of the month is for you. Or – and this is the most common response – “I know exactly what I want to be”, even as your mind scrambled for one thing, just one thing that you could tell them you want to be when you grow up.
Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead, someone said
“Want to me to show you how to figure it out?”
Here’s a quick explanation. You start by changing the question to “What do I want to do next?” That’s the most you can ever figure out because things change all the time. To find the answer to that question, you DO have to know how to look ahead and have a good sense of where you are going – which is always to work that is a good fit for you. This means you have to be able to recognize what that looks like, which is the trickiest part of career decision-making. Once you know that, you map backwards to figure out what you want to do next.
So, “What do YOU want to do next?” Kathy Harris can help you figure it out. It’s what she does every day. In about six hours, you will have a plan and you will be ready for any decisions you need to make in your future too. Not much time when you consider how long most people struggle to find their answer to the question “What do I want to be when I grow up?”
Now available – get help at a distance. Your time is precious. Get the help you need at your convenience.
We are excited to announce that our online training for teachers is launched!
Teachers can now get trained online in Career Focusing™ for Early High School.
Schools across Canada have been using our program for over 10 years to teach their students how to make personally meaningful career decisions.
Contact Kathy Harris to get started.
A big thank you to members of our recent focus groups. They were a tremendous help in highlighting the need to help students decide what to do next.
If you are stressed about what to do after high school and are feeling like it’s time to decide, this course is for you.
In 7.5 hours, you will have a plan that makes complete sense for you. You will do this by:
- identifying different kinds of work that you will really enjoy and
- deciding on the best education programs to get you there.
The Career Focusing™ Mini Course is 100% customized to you. Sessions start January 5, 2016. Click here for more information.
We are running three focus groups in Kingston, Ontario beginning November 16, 2015. Students will experience Career Focusing™, our proven and straightforward process. It will be 100% customized to every student.
Students will:
- Analyze and evaluate all the different kinds of work and identify the best ones for them
- With that list in hand, they will identify the best education programs to get to those work options
- Be able to relax about deciding what to do after high school because they will have a plan that they will really like and trust
Click here for more information. Please note: the Wednesday group is full. Register soon to secure your spot in the Monday or Tuesday group.
A Three-Pronged Partnership for Change: Positive Outcomes for Aboriginal, Rural and Remote Students
2013
Published in Contact Point October 2012
For the past three years, a new kind of business/education/career service partnership has been helping build Canada’s future—one person at a time. This is their partnership story.
Recognizing a Gap
Kathy Harris, now President of Jobmatics (whose mandate is to equip individuals and organizations with the tools and skills to set compelling and aligned career journeys), recognized an urgent need created by the shift in Canada’s work paradigm. The world is moving from an industrial, top-down way of operating to an information-dense, shared responsibility way of doing business. This shift requires all workers, including young people entering the workforce, to know how to recognize work that is a good fit.
Moreover, rapidly advancing technologies and expanding markets/competition mean constant change. Constant change means constant learning—only compelling if people are drawn to what they are learning about.
Good fits for work and learning have become critical success factors for Canada’s economy. However, current and emerging workers do not know how to identify work and learning that is a good fit for them. This was the gap Kathy filled by creating her career decision-making process—Career Focusing™.
follow this link to read more