Spinning Straw Into Gold
(Creative Job Search)
Module IV covers the critical elements of career planning, aimed at finding work
what will be personally fulfilling, both for yourself and your clients/citizens. SPIN
straw into gold. (A metaphor for creative job searching):
S – Career success begins with Self-awareness
P – Package yourself, resumes, career brands, portfolios, bioblogs
I - Investigate and obtain Information on trends, opportunities and problems in
the Labour Market.
N – Prove you can respond to the Needs of a prospective employer, interviews
A better job means a better life.
Ten Career Assessment Tools
Career counsellors use assessment tools to help individuals learn more about
themselves, what they like, what they don’t like, and how they tend to react to
certain situations. Knowing these things can help determine which occupations
and work situations would be a better fit for your client.
There are many varieties of assessment tools in career counselling. Generally,
these tools are grouped into the following four categories:
Interests – These tools will help identify work-related interests and matching
occupations.
Skills – These tools will help identify work-related activities that an individual
could accomplish successfully using his or her natural or developed talents.
Values – These tools will help identify those factors in life that are most important
to your client, factors that can help satisfy personal and professional needs.
Personality – These tools will help identify behavioural traits, what type of
individual and how one operates as a human being, especially those traits that
will help your clients to be comfortable and successful with their interactions with
others in a work setting.
In addition to these categories there are informal and formal assessments.
Informal assessments can reveal all kinds of information by asking questions like:
How do you like to spend you leisure time? Or, how do you typically like to spend
your discretionary income?
Formal assessments usually have clients respond to a standard set of questions
that tap into some broader dimensions. The benefit of using formal or structured
assessments is that some comparisons can be made with other people.
There are advantages and disadvantages when it comes to the use of assessment
tools.
Advantages:
1. Assessment results can get your client thinking and prompt discussion on
preferences, strengths, and weaknesses.
2. As with good career counsellors, good career assessments provide some
objectivity to a career plan.
3. Assessments can suggest job possibilities that had not been previously
considered, or help rule out occupations that they would not fit as well.
Disadvantages:
1. Clients often place too much faith in these instruments, hoping that magically
the right career will be handed to them and the way will be clear.
2. Testing encourages clients to be dependent on the counsellor which is contrary
to the very purpose of counselling.
3. A key role of the counsellor is to lead the client to their own inner wisdom,
which requires courage, dedication and self-respect to dig deeper, as opposed to the
short cuts offered by testing.
I have chosen the following ten assessment tools for your consideration:
1. 20 Questions – Informal
2. Values Card Assortment – Informal
3. Significant Others Questionnaire – Informal
4. Success Stories – Informal
5. Holland Codes or Self-Directed Search – Formal
6. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) – Personality
7. The Enneagram – Personality
8. Career Occupational Preference Survey (COPS) – Interests
9. Career Orientation Placement & Evaluation Survey (COPES) – Values
10. The Career Exploration Inventory (CEI) –A guide for exploring work,
leisure, and learning.
As a job coach you are in a unique position to affect change in the lives of those
citizens you serve and on the economic life of your community. Many of you have
years of experience, with incredible depth and breath of understanding when it
comes to the business of finding jobs. My hope is that this session will enhance and
update what you already know as well as provide time for reflection and
reinforcement. For others, your counsellor’s toolkit will get packed with strategies
and techniques to increase your effectiveness as a job coach.
Employment counselling is an art form. No two employment counsellors approach
their work in exactly the same way because we are all unique with different:
experiences, backgrounds, education, cultures, personalities, gifts and situations.
There are a staggering number of books and websites dedicated to understanding
the realities of job hunting. I have tried to distil the best of my own experience as a
job coach and extensive research into this endeavour. So I wish to welcome you to a
process, which I hope will mobilize and strengthen your enthusiasm for what I
consider to be one of most important and most needed occupations of our time.
Never has there been a greater need for professional employment counsellors
and/or job coaches. People are breaking the cycle of dependency on social welfare,
others are getting a second chance to participate and have their gifts recognized as
they contribute to our economy. This is largely due to dedicated people like you,
who believe in the abilities and attributes of those you serve.
(Creative Job Search)
Module IV covers the critical elements of career planning, aimed at finding work
what will be personally fulfilling, both for yourself and your clients/citizens. SPIN
straw into gold. (A metaphor for creative job searching):
S – Career success begins with Self-awareness
P – Package yourself, resumes, career brands, portfolios, bioblogs
I - Investigate and obtain Information on trends, opportunities and problems in
the Labour Market.
N – Prove you can respond to the Needs of a prospective employer, interviews
A better job means a better life.
Ten Career Assessment Tools
Career counsellors use assessment tools to help individuals learn more about
themselves, what they like, what they don’t like, and how they tend to react to
certain situations. Knowing these things can help determine which occupations
and work situations would be a better fit for your client.
There are many varieties of assessment tools in career counselling. Generally,
these tools are grouped into the following four categories:
Interests – These tools will help identify work-related interests and matching
occupations.
Skills – These tools will help identify work-related activities that an individual
could accomplish successfully using his or her natural or developed talents.
Values – These tools will help identify those factors in life that are most important
to your client, factors that can help satisfy personal and professional needs.
Personality – These tools will help identify behavioural traits, what type of
individual and how one operates as a human being, especially those traits that
will help your clients to be comfortable and successful with their interactions with
others in a work setting.
In addition to these categories there are informal and formal assessments.
Informal assessments can reveal all kinds of information by asking questions like:
How do you like to spend you leisure time? Or, how do you typically like to spend
your discretionary income?
Formal assessments usually have clients respond to a standard set of questions
that tap into some broader dimensions. The benefit of using formal or structured
assessments is that some comparisons can be made with other people.
There are advantages and disadvantages when it comes to the use of assessment
tools.
Advantages:
1. Assessment results can get your client thinking and prompt discussion on
preferences, strengths, and weaknesses.
2. As with good career counsellors, good career assessments provide some
objectivity to a career plan.
3. Assessments can suggest job possibilities that had not been previously
considered, or help rule out occupations that they would not fit as well.
Disadvantages:
1. Clients often place too much faith in these instruments, hoping that magically
the right career will be handed to them and the way will be clear.
2. Testing encourages clients to be dependent on the counsellor which is contrary
to the very purpose of counselling.
3. A key role of the counsellor is to lead the client to their own inner wisdom,
which requires courage, dedication and self-respect to dig deeper, as opposed to the
short cuts offered by testing.
I have chosen the following ten assessment tools for your consideration:
1. 20 Questions – Informal
2. Values Card Assortment – Informal
3. Significant Others Questionnaire – Informal
4. Success Stories – Informal
5. Holland Codes or Self-Directed Search – Formal
6. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) – Personality
7. The Enneagram – Personality
8. Career Occupational Preference Survey (COPS) – Interests
9. Career Orientation Placement & Evaluation Survey (COPES) – Values
10. The Career Exploration Inventory (CEI) –A guide for exploring work,
leisure, and learning.
As a job coach you are in a unique position to affect change in the lives of those
citizens you serve and on the economic life of your community. Many of you have
years of experience, with incredible depth and breath of understanding when it
comes to the business of finding jobs. My hope is that this session will enhance and
update what you already know as well as provide time for reflection and
reinforcement. For others, your counsellor’s toolkit will get packed with strategies
and techniques to increase your effectiveness as a job coach.
Employment counselling is an art form. No two employment counsellors approach
their work in exactly the same way because we are all unique with different:
experiences, backgrounds, education, cultures, personalities, gifts and situations.
There are a staggering number of books and websites dedicated to understanding
the realities of job hunting. I have tried to distil the best of my own experience as a
job coach and extensive research into this endeavour. So I wish to welcome you to a
process, which I hope will mobilize and strengthen your enthusiasm for what I
consider to be one of most important and most needed occupations of our time.
Never has there been a greater need for professional employment counsellors
and/or job coaches. People are breaking the cycle of dependency on social welfare,
others are getting a second chance to participate and have their gifts recognized as
they contribute to our economy. This is largely due to dedicated people like you,
who believe in the abilities and attributes of those you serve.
Module IV
| Dragon 9 Training 2200 Angus Street Regina Saskatchewan S4T 2A2 306.525-4460 |
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