Thoughts on My Learning Experience by Christine Woodland
Changes to my expectations of career coaching and career training since Module One
Some students embark on a field of study to achieve a defined work goal. Back in the days of Module One those waters were fairly muddy as to where the study would lead me. The College information was clear on the qualification I would receive but I couldn’t visualise what that would mean to me at graduation time.
Although I had no particular idea of the worklife development field I was interested in entering I did know I was deeply interested in the subject, and in particular why people, including myself choose the careers they did. So the upshot was I was happy and excited for the study to lead me in whatsoever direction it chose.
Personal benefits
As I progressed the knowledge I gained not only gave me the foundation to develop worklife helper skills but helped me enormously to understand myself in relation to my own work persona. The early modules on career development theory and self assessment made a number of light bulbs pop on about the many challenges I grappled with in my own work roles for most of my adult working life. I was amazed I hadn’t thought about taking myself off to a career counsellor years ago.
Now that I have graduated, other than achieving a qualification as a career coach which can open new work doorways for me, the study is the best thing that has happened to me in my own work life. I have learnt the importance of honouring my values, rather than just my employers, which shift with market demands and organisational needs. The Preferred Skills Card Sort confirmed the skills that I did enjoy using the most and gave me the confidence to know that yes there are work task I don’t like doing AND THAT’S OKAY.
From now on I won’t force myself into a work mould unless I choose to. I have the knowledge and confidence to promote my strengths and acknowledge openly my weaknesses and the reasons why. This is very liberating for someone who has always tried to be good at everything.
It was a joy to learn about occupational interests and the themes that are inherent to me, and would grow organically with me as I grew.
Study materials
From the outset of immersing myself in the course materials I was hooked; the reading, researching and doing the assignments became my biggest discretionary time interest. On a deep level I felt I was discovering a new work purpose that suited my particular stage of life. The course notes were stimulating and research assignments informative and rewarding.
As I progressed in the course a hiatus occurred
For a period of around nine months I did very little structured course learning activity, although I kept on reading career related books. The hiatus was due to a time of personal upheaval, moving house and starting a new job, which required me to travel a lot. Even though I spent very little time studying and completing the assignments my motivation to complete the course never waived. I kept telling myself I’ll complete at the right time and did not give up on that thought. There is no doubt that motivation is the most important turning key to change anything.
The bumps along the road of life do slow us down, or completely stop us achieving our goal at times. But, although it’s not easy, the obstacles are not final. If motivation is strong enough even if the vision of the end result may not be fully formed, life seems to reorganise itself naturally back on track. Well anyway that’s what happened to me.
However having said that I would encourage other students who have to take time out from the study to engage in some form of activity to keep the flame burning, as I did during my time in the wilderness by reading books directly related to the study.
The personal rewards
The career development knowledge I gained from the College helped me to secure a well paid position in an industry I had limited knowledge of, and with a deficiency of a number of skills needed to achieve certain results expected by my new employer. It has worked out well but wasn’t mere luck. The course gave invaluable knowledge to utilise.
Where I am now
Now that I finished the course I have a clear idea of what I intend to do, which is to be self-employed as a worklife development facilitator running group programs. This will be my niche in the worklife development field. The vision for my private practice is to provide quality group programs.
I hope my programs help clients to know their special abilities and values for creating a more enjoyable worklife and to positively contribute to their work environment somewhere in the world of work.
On my part this is exactly what I’ll be doing. Through my practice I’ll be doing work I enjoy and hopefully making a positive contribution to my clients somewhere in my work world.
Christine Woodland, Member, Australian Association of Career Counsellors
Director, CareerFinders Network Pty Ltd
email: christinew@careerfindersnetwork.com.au
web site: http://www.careerfindersnetwork.com.au
Reflections
on the College by David Bacon
My motivation and reasons for embarking on the Career Development Practitioner’s Certificate were multifaceted and can best be described as being a combination of curiosity, the desire to work with and help people, self-development and continuous learning and the desire to understand what has occurred in my own career to enable the development of strategies to ensure greater work security.
After experiencing redundancy for the second time, rather than seeing a career counsellor, I decided to become one.
Curiosity
My first exposure to the concept of career counselling was in the late nineties during my time working for an international company in the UK. The company was a progressive organisation in terms of its people management with leading edge practices in remuneration structure, role descriptions and performance structures and their integration with business objectives and people development. It was in this context that I was provided with basic training as a career counsellor to be able to provide advice and counsel to people inside the company on their career development. This training took the form of instruction and practical exercises where the development of counselling technique was pursued. This program ran for only three days and was sufficient to create an interest.
The College for Career Practitioners, therefore, provided the opportunity to embark on a structured program, which would not only provide me with counselling skills, but an in-depth knowledge of the theories which form the foundation for the practice of career counselling, greater knowledge of the world of work, a structure on which to base the process of helping people with their careers and the discipline of repeating things I thought I knew about establishing a business.
Module One: The New World of Work put into context what I had been observing in business both in Australia and overseas and made me realise that rather than a negative, taking responsibility for your own career and work portfolio was an exciting opportunity.
The Adult Career Development Theory Module Two demonstrated the substance behind career counselling in general and the College’s preferred counselling methods in particular. It is worth noting, however, that a range of counselling models are taught and the student can adopt whichever one they feel suits them best.
Module Four: Career Assessment Instruments struck a chord with me as a person who likes structure but not constraints, so the card sort method was an excellent approach, enabling clients to discover themselves and provide the surprises.
Helping Others
I had some limited counselling training and experience as a result of an in-house program to introduce greater self-responsibility for career management with my former employer. I derived a degree of satisfaction from observing that I had assisted those being counselled with clarifying issues regarding their careers. This led me to think that being able to do this, perhaps even on a professional basis, was a very satisfying and personally rewarding activity and should be pursued further in the future, should the opportunity arise.
The modules on The Helping Process, Counselling Skills, Transition Coaching and Job Hunt Essentials got to the heart of what I wanted to do – help people. These modules alert the student to the range of possibilities they may have to deal with when seeing real life clients.
One of the first things I realised on embarking on the program was the significant gap in my knowledge and experience to be able to operate as a career counsellor, even though I had had some limited experience. The College addressed this to a certain degree, however, what is more evident than ever as a result of completing the program is the need for continuous learning. Staying current and up-to-date is going to be one of the greatest challenges to being a professional career counsellor.
Practicality was the keyword in the Private Practice Study Stream to ensure that the foundations are right for the establishment of a business.
The College’s focus is to educate students to teach clients how to assess their own careers. The program assignments concentrated on the student’s own self-assessment throughout and depending on the level of commitment and the willingness to trawl the emotional depths, the course can be quite therapeutic as well.
The Practicum brought the whole program together and should the student decide to use the opportunity to research future opportunities, it could prove invaluable. In my own case, it prevented me from making a huge mistake in business direction.
The College for Career Practitioners helped me to develop my own new career and life plans, which now see me taking the big step to self-employment after more than three decades as a salary man.
I am now doing what I believe many ‘third-agers’ would like to do. I am making a transition to a new career, career counselling. I am also changing my life, moving to a new location, moving my career in a direction which gives me more time for family and enables me to pass on some of what I have accumulated during more than three decades of experience in the world of work.
Completing the Career Development Practitioner’s Certificate has equipped me to make these changes and then, with some credibility, to counsel those wanting to do something similar. I know it works, I’ve done it!
David Bacon, Member, Australian Association of Career Counsellors
Principal, Professional Careers Management
email: david.bacon@professionalcareers.com.au
web site: http://www.professionalcareers.com.au
A
Personal Journey by Kerstin Wadehn
Two years ago, I was very confused about my work life situation and plans. I had completed the self-assessment exercises suggested in Richard Bolles’ What Color is Your Parachute? My favourite subjects were psychology, coaching/counselling, and ‘human resources’ (i.e. focused on leadership and motivation). I wasn’t quite sure what to do with this, and I was scared of a career change having invested so much time and energy into my human resources career. However, – most important – I was not happy at all.
When I played with the idea of enrolling in the College for Career Practitioners my first reaction was: “Great. This is exactly what people say about psychology students – they just want to be able to heal themselves.” However, the status quo of being stuck couldn’t last forever, so with a pretty vague idea of what to do in the future in mind I enrolled in order to give it a go. If this was meant to be the beginning of a career transition, I would be supposed to find answers along the way. (And a bit of professional development and self-healing can’t do any harm, right?)
Hence my study expectations had a lot to do with my very personal quest of where to go in the future. I wanted to find out more about career development, why things happen the way they do, why we make career decisions the way we do, and how we can learn and then teach how to take ownership of one’s career development. The self-assessment exercises especially in the first part of the College course – Career Development Foundations – helped me answer many of my questions and gain a deeper insight into my interests, preferences, values, and motivation. I rediscovered my creative side and my love for learning and writing. However, these exercises also helped me better accept decisions I have made in the past and see the value in my experiences rather then continuously and regretfully ask why I have ‘wasted’ so much time in jobs and with tasks I did not enjoy. The more I learnt about career development, the more I felt I was on the ‘right’ track.
Since I started the course, several events in my work life contributed to sharpening the saw for my new career. Six months of unemployment – the first time in my life – taught me to be more sensitive for the negative impact on one’s self-esteem. Intensive job hunting with a poor strategy was in retrospect life’s lesson of how not to do it. Several applications for entry level positions in career coaching were rejected, and I do not wonder why. Another extremely dissatisfying and boring job made me realise once again how detrimental a poor match can be for one’s personality and overall well-being. However, this very work environment was the ‘playground’ for my practicum in organisational career management – the concluding assignment for the College for Career Practitioners now completed with a High Distinction grade average. It dawns on me that things simply fell into place and had a ‘higher meaning’.
However, now that I have completed the theoretical foundation and can’t wait to make the move into the industry, I become nervous again. The more you learn, the more you realise how little you know about the complexity of people development and work life management. This is why I would like to acquire some more knowledge and skills in psychology and counselling in order to complete my qualification.
All this entails questions like: Am I really ready? Am I good enough to get started (knowing that my own work life management is anything but perfect)? How can I get the necessary experience? What happens if I decide to move back to my home country Germany and realise that I have limited possibilities to work as a career coach? Shouldn’t I rather look for an interim solution and combine ‘the best of both worlds’ or would that just mean ‘postponing the rest of my life’? Career counselling has such a significant impact on a person’s entire life that I would be scared of making mistakes when helping a client. In the beginning, I sometimes thought, career coaching couldn’t be too difficult as long as you have a good framework, process model, and set of tools and instruments. Now I realise that I will particularly need to further develop skills in coaching, group training, change management, decision making, conflict resolution, and world of work information management.
So the most important questions for me to answer during the next few months are: What niche and clientele within the career management industry do I feel most attracted to at this stage (e.g. students)? What especially would I like to do for a start (e.g. a role focused on information, training, and advice rather than counselling)? I would love to work in a ‘safe’ environment where I can acquire the necessary practical skills and explore what works and what doesn’t in career coaching. In the end, all I will need to do is take a deep breath, jump and JUST DO IT.
Kerstin Wadehn,
Member, Australian Association of Career Counsellors
email: kerstin_wadehn@hotmail.com
Testimonial
by Mita Das, Graduate of the College for Career Practitioners
The college course content has the necessary combination of strong theoretical foundation and practical application. Each module led me through a logical and sequential progression of all the necessary components to achieve competency as a career practitioner including career development theory, client management models and counselling skills.
One of the most important things I have learnt is about the new world of work and its implications for me as a career practitioner about to embark on my independent practice. I have learnt about the reality of private practice by passing thorough a step by step process of how to create a successful small business. However this was not done in a didactic manner but by a process of self-analysis and reflection allowing me to tailor what I learn to my individual values and requirements.
The assignments consolidate this knowledge and provide an opportunity for feedback and reality testing with the benefit of Paul’s experience.
The benefits I have gained from this course is the nuts and bolts of everything that is essential to consider when setting up a career practice. It helped me to define my scope and focus, plan the business, deal with marketing considerations and provided me with a wealth of resources.
I now feel confident that everything has been thought of and steps implemented to help me on my way to a successful private practice located in Sydney called Sense of Direction.
Mita Das, Member,
Australian Association of Career Counsellors
Director, Sense of Direction
email: matt.mita@senseofdirection.com.au
web site: http://www.senseofdirection.com.au
Study Reflections by Eddie Lim
Reflections on how my expectations of career counselling and career training have changed since I enrolled in Part One Module One. What may have altered and why?
Introduction
In Module One, I was asked to write about my motivations of wanting to study the field of career development and helping clients and/or employees in their world life transitions. Back then, I stated that “I believe that one of my life purposes, the next phase in my career life, is to help people in their careers and how to cope with the change that affects their careers.” That centrality of purpose has not change. But my expectations have changed in some ways from the way I perceived career development to be.
The Paradigm of Helping in Career Management
I have often seen career management function as a problem solving process with me solving the other person’s problems, that is, I would tell the person what kind of career the person should have. Whenever I encounter a person who might be interested in a career change, in addition to encouraging him to go into a field that he would be interested in pursuing, I would also add statements such as “perhaps you may like to try this or that career.” After going through the 11 modules of the College of Career Practitioners course, my paradigm has to change. Now I understand that the success of enabling a person to undertake a career change is to allow him to have the full ownership and responsibility over his career. I have to refrain from telling him the career that he should be taking, much as I would like to. My job is to set the framework and guide him through the framework to help him discover the career he would want to commit himself to. This is going to be tough. There’s a natural tendency for people to look towards me as the ‘career expert’ and being the ‘expert’ means knowing what’s the best action they should take, the type of career they should pursue. Coupled with my need (can be a pretty strong need) to tell the person what he should do but to refrain from doing that, this will take some practising in getting use to. I recall in Module Three, while doing the Preferred Skills Card Sort with my colleague, I was already advising and telling her to consider areas to go into such as “perhaps you should try this … maybe you should do that …” It puzzled me why she merely nodded her head and agreed with me but didn’t do anything. Then I realised later that I was telling her what to do and not letting her discover and response to her discovery. I need to be careful and watch out for this tendency.
The Paradigm of Knowledge in Career Development
I used to think that career development is finding out what a person is interested in doing and then seeking the job which the person wants to do. Module 2 opens me to the field of career development theories. Module 10 and 11, even this Module, give me even more theories in career decision making. Not that I am afraid of theories for I believe that the formulation of career theories help me better understand how people arrive at their career decisions. What amazes me is that the various factors considered in some of these theories encompass every facet of life, not just work. Career is not strictly looking for and getting the job but also how other non job-related factors such as development, family, community, society etc have influence over career choices of the individuals. Many a times work problems may be contributed in part by these factors. This means that the scope of knowledge in career development is multidisciplinary.
On one hand, it’s a joy to learn and seep in this knowledge and yet, on the other hand, it can be pretty daunting because there’s so much to grasp and know. It is therefore important to focus and know what to go in depth and what to put aside. Understanding how the trait and factor theory is used (and it’s the most popularly used) is a start. But it is also essential to deepen my knowledge of the application of other career theories so that I will have a greater repertoire of knowledge to be more effective in helping my clients.
The Paradigm of Self-assessment Instruments
My knowledge of self-assessment instruments and what they assess have grown. Previously my knowledge of self-assessment instruments was limited to MBTI and Learning Style Preference. These instruments may be used in career development but I didn’t know how to use them, especially the MBTI, because I wasn’t trained in it. The MBTI is a psychological assessment instrument which means I need to understand how to interpret the scores to be able to help a person understand how his personality is related to his job search.
Now that I have been learning more about career development, I begin to understand the wide range of self-assessment instruments that are available. More fascinating is the use of card sorts in career development self-assessment which require only little knowledge to administer. There’s also no need to interpret the assessment scores because there are no scores to interpret. Administering the card sort is a simple activity. Yet it reveals a lot of information about the client. Having the client do the card sort also means having the client take control over his career search. He’s telling himself what his strengths are and this would move him further towards wanting to do something about what he has discovered. This, to me, is a paradigm shift from doing a pen and paper self-assessment instrument and then wait for the answers to reveal themselves (this will be carried out by the career coach and there’s often anxiety over what the assessment instrument would reveal) to laying down the cards and then having the client telling himself, “Yes, these cards really show who I am.” There’s a lot of self-affirmation for the client in this case and this would encourage him to proceed with the coaching sessions!
The Paradigm of Marketing and Setting Up a Career Service Business
Modules 4 to 9 on retail practice were a remarkable package. These modules opened my eyes to the possibilities of setting up my own career service business. But I also learned that there are so many things that I didn’t consider about business set-up as well. In fact I had little idea of what to do prior to taking the course.
I guess I know a little about business set up and I believe in learning as I go along. But it is this course that challenges my mind to the finer details of career service provision that I lack perception and experience in. I find that I have to know why I was going into career coaching in Module 5 and the reasons for doing that. I know marketing and about targeting at customers but Module 6 asked me to really define whom my customers would be and how I would reach out to them. Module 7 causes me to think about my counselling style and the need to develop an ‘informed consent’ contract with my customers. I certainly will not be doing this had I not learnt it in this Module. Module 8 reminded me that I have to continuously learn to keep up-to-date with development in the career management field. The last retail module asked me to consider how I would sustain my business and how I would re-create myself.
These are relevant issues which every career coach faces. I could have gone into the business and then face them head on and tackling the issues as I go along. But I am most fortunate to have this course and the retail modules are great in helping me foresee the issues that are to come. I will definitely reread these modules again prior to launching into full-time practice.
Conclusion
I now have perceptions about how career development is done, how a business is managed and how career coaching should be approached. Some of these perceptions changed as I undertook the modules in the College of Career Practitioners course. And I have loved every moment of my time with the course.
Eddie Lim
email: eddielim@spring.gov.sg
