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Career Planning

Work productivity: making a smooth return From vacation
Nothing dispels that rosy, post-vacation glow faster than returning to a mountain of unfinished paperwork on your desk, a barrage of messages in your voice mail and dozens of missives in your e-mail inbox. [ go]

Business casual dress code: understanding business casual attire
Business casual dress code interpretations vary widely. What fits the business casual dress code at one firm may not pass at another. Relaxed business attire, one of today’s most popular workplace perks, has made [ go]

Adult going back to school: should you go back to school?
For an adult, going back to school involves a delicate balancing act. Going back to school in some form can have a huge effect on your career. Ongoing professional development is vital to your career growth, [ go]

Job skill training: how to ask about job skill training
Job skill training can make or break your career. Prospective employees should ask some pointed questions about job skill training and career development opportunities before accepting an offer. [ go]

Job search database tips - Searching a job database
Job search database tips can help you improve your chances of finding the right job. When you use a job search database, you can view a wide range of opportunities at once. [ go]

International summer jobs | Summer jobs
International summer jobs provide the opportunity to work in a foreign country. Many students pursue international summer jobs as a way to build language skills, learn about new cultures, gain global work experience and fund a trip abroad. [ go]

Focus on Your Abilities and Accommodate Your Challenges

Jobs for people with disabilities
Jobs for people with disabilities do exist. But people with many different types of disabilities often find job search a frustrating process that creates unforeseen barriers. You can sometimes feel that your skills and abilities are being ignored and that people are looking only at your challenges. [ go]

Returning to work | Returning to work when you’re entry level at 40
Returning to work after years away from the workforce poses special challenges. You may fear that employers will see negatives in your lack of work history. [ go]

Personal motivation | Finding personal motivation at work
Personal motivation may be the key to your career success. Personal motivation often overrules other traits. You may think you can excel in business with talent, skills and knowledge alone, but it’s your day-to-day work habits that are the key to maximizing these traits. [ go]

Returning to work after maternity leave
Returning to work after maternity leave becomes complicated when you don’t have a job to which to return. Many mothers take an extended break from the paid workforce while raising their children. [ go]

Professional development tips: take control of your professional career
Professional development tips remain key, regardless of where you are in your career. Continually developing your professional skills is critical to maintaining your marketability and shoring up your job security. [ go]

Tax preparer jobs - tax season is perfect for project work
Tax preparer jobs and other opportunities for accounting and finance professionals to explore temporary and project work exist year round. Still, tax season presents perhaps the best chance to investigate jobs in the tax preparer career path. [ go]

Coping with Burnout
Your boss just asked you to write a presentation for a conference she is attending in three days. You’re flattered, but this is just the latest in a series of last-minute projects you’ve been assigned. [ go]

Rebounding From a career setback
Career setbacks happen to everyone. Whether it’s a poor performance review, a missed promotion or the loss of a job, professional difficulties have challenged even the most accomplished executives. Although these kinds of events may make you doubt yourself, the true test of success is in the rebound. [ go]

Inspired by a Dream, Goal Setting
Every journey begins with knowing where you are, choosing a destination, and planning how to get there. Plan for your future success. [ go]

Skills Inventory
If you’re looking for a new job or trying to think of new career options one key exercise for you to do is a skills inventory. This inventory is a list of the skills you bring with you from all of your past work, volunteer and personal experiences. [ go]

Considering a move to Vancouver, BC , Canada?: Know what you’re getting into - career planning

Considering a move to Vancouver, BC , Canada?: Know what you’re getting into
You’re deep in talks with a company in Vancouver. They desperately want you to join them. You are flattered, very interested, but something in your gut tells you to be cautious. Have you considered all the options? What’s missing from your checklist? [ go]

Career Portfolios
A Career Portfolio is an evolving collection of documents showing your professional development, work history, qualifications, and accomplishments. [ go]

Advice for Older, Job Seekers - career planning

Advice for Older, Bolder Job Seekers
Approaching retirement age doesn’t mean an end to your career. In fact, as a professional with decades of experience under your belt, you may have more employment opportunities today than ever before. [ go]

Finding Professional and Personal Balance - career planning

Finding Professional and Personal Balance
Striking a balance between job and family demands is a common dilemma for working parents. Dads and moms alike are juggling deadlines and play-dates, presentations and soccer practice, business travel and family trips. [ go]

Career Relocation – Is It a Good Move?
You’ve been offered a job that will require you to relocate across the country to manage a division for a new company. Or maybe you’re considering a transfer to a new location with your current employer. Should you accept the job? [ go]

Finding Your Balance:
Laid off recently because her firm went out of business, Mary is searching for a position with a company where she hopes history won’t repeat itself. Not only is she looking for an employer with a solid financial footing, but she also would prefer a job that doesn’t require her to work both nights and weekends. [ go]

How to Ask for a Raise: Increasing the Odds of Earning the Pay You Seek - career planning

How to Ask for a Raise: Increasing the Odds of Earning the Pay You Seek
Over the past few years, many workers have seen slim raises or none at all. But now with a strong shift to the economy and ongoing optimism, you may be considering asking your boss for a much-deserved bump in pay. [ go]

Be Your Own Agent
Who is looking out for your career - your boss? Probably not. Your accountant? Doubtful. [ go]

Shift Happens
Work lives are constantly changing, just like our personal lives. Sometimes, just when you really love it, shift happens. [ go]

Assessing a Job Offer
No matter what your reason for seeking employment, searching for a job is hard work: scanning help-wanted listings, researching companies, sending out resumes and attending multiple interviews can be a lengthy process. [ go]

Everything is Negotiable
It's all negotiable. Every new job - every performance review, in fact - is an opportunity to negotiate base salary, various kinds of bonuses, benefits, stock options, and other incentives that add to job satisfaction and provide financial security. [ go]

Career planning goals - make some resolutions
Career planning goals contribute to your success. But, when many people think of New Year’s resolutions, they concentrate on personal goals such as losing weight or joining a gym. However, it’s also critical to make setting career planning goals a priority. [ go]

Work productivity killers - career advice for what saps productivity at work

Work productivity killers - a cure for work productivity killers
Work productivity killers – what’s zapping your work productivity? Meetings that run long. A computer bug that takes half a day to resolve. Organizational red tape. We can all recognize snags that sap our work productivity. But do we identify less obvious work productivity suckers that waste time and energy just as easily? [ go]

Vacation request: how to make a vacation request
Vacation request on your mind? With summer upon us, chances are someone in your department is on vacation this week. If you have your own dreams of getting away, your first hurdle is a vacation request. [ go]

Using Emotional Intelligence in Your Job Search
Using emotional intelligence can help you succeed in your job search. But what is emotional intelligence, and why is it that success in life sometimes seems unrelated to intelligence? [ go]

Getting Fired: 10 Ways to Tell It's Time to Find Another Job
Getting fired, sacked, canned or axed hurts. It does nothing for your self-esteem and it doesn’t look great on your resume. You’re always better off leaving your position on your own terms than getting fired. But how can you tell when your job may be on the line? Here are 10 things to look for. [ go]

Quitting Your Job - How to Leave Your Job on a High Note
When you’re quitting your job, timing is crucial. Many people think the best time to change jobs is when they no longer feel challenged, when they have a personality conflict or when the company they work for no longer aligns with their values. [ go]

Using Keywords for Your Job Search
Online job banks and job search databases use keywords to catalogue and sort the wide variety of jobs posted by employers so that they are easily searchable by job seekers like you. [ go]

The Most In-Demand Jobs in Canada
Give your career a boost by targeting the most in-demand jobs in Canada. According to JobFutures, the jobs with the best prospects through 2009 will come from science and engineering, health and caring and law. [ go]

Planning a Career for the New Economy
In the last few decades, the world of work has dramatically changed how people earn their living and plan their work lives. This new labour market is evolving at accelerating speed as old industrial-age jobs are replaced by knowledge-based work and information technology continues to alter how we work, play and learn. [ go]

Want to Work in Canada? Here’s How.
Want to work in Canada? Non-Canadians can become eligible to work in Canada by becoming a Permanent Resident of Canada or obtaining a temporary work permit: [ go]

Mid-life crisis: changing careers mid-stream
You’re 40-something. You’re underemployed, or worse unemployed, you’re tired of the daily grind, you’re bored (or frightened) and you’re wondering where your future went. Join the club. [ go]

Getting fired: strategies for dealing with getting terminated
Getting fired used to be something that many people figured would ruin their career. Obviously, getting terminated isn’t an ideal situation but it’s certainly something that can be dealt with. [ go]

Could you become a consultant?
Want to run your own business? Consider a career as an independent consultant. Be your own boss, call your own shots, work when and how you want – sound good? [ go]

Second thoughts after changing jobs
Having second thoughts is not uncommon when you have recently changed jobs. The 4-6 weeks after switching jobs are when you will most likely think that you made a mistake. Shortly after starting a new job, it isn’t out of the ordinary to have second thoughts and wonder if you made a mistake by leaving your previous employer and/or joining your new employer. [ go]

Recruitment Cycles – The Best Time to Apply for a Job
Many employers schedule their recruiting efforts according to a specific recruitment cycle. The recruitment cycle may be determined by factors such as seasonal needs, graduation cycles of local schools, annual holidays or other pre-determined growth periods. [ go]

Labour market information can change your life
Labour market information is information about the world of work, including about different types of work and learning opportunities. It also includes labour market trends and forecasts about future employment growth [ go]

The services of a career coach
A career coach guides you through a four part process to identify a suitable career direction. This process includes assessing yourself, imagining your ideal future, researching career ideas and plans, and launching your career plan. [ go]

Can’t find a job despite the boom? Here’s what to do
Can’t find a job and wondering how that could be possible in an economic boom? No matter how great the economy is, there’s always going to be a certain rate of unemployment. People will graduate from school, leave the military, move to new cities, quit jobs, finish seasonal work, wrap up temporary work, transition from full-time parenting and so on. [ go]

Manpower Employment Outlook Survey Reveals Employers Expect a Positive Hiring Climate for the Fourth Quarter of 2008
Canadian employers expect a positive hiring climate for the October to December period of 2008 according to the latestresults of the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, the most extensive, forward-looking employment survey in the world. [ go]

Generations in the workplace
Generations in the workplace – the workworld is abuzz with discussions of generational workstyles in the New Economy. Today, you can find Millennials, Gen C, Baby Boomers and Veterans in the same organization, sometimes even on the same team. [ go]

Employer complaint letters - think twice
It’s the last resort for the frustrated employee who is burned out and fed up with his boss — the final step before walking out the door and finding a job elsewhere. It’s the employer complaint letter, directed to higher authorities within the organization. [ go]

Employers are searching your online profiles
Employers are looking up job seekers online – make no mistake. And, while many employers seek out job candidates through searches of online databases, an increasing number turn to the Internet to screen out potential hires. [ go]

Clues to your Strengths & Passions
One of the first steps you should take when beginning your career exploration and planning process is undergoing a thorough self-awareness process that looks at your preferences, what motivates you, and your past successes. [ go]

Online audit of Internet persona
Did another job slip away from you? Did you feel like you got fired before you got hired? Ever wonder why? There are so many dos and don’ts when it comes to jobsearch etiquette, yet many fail to mention painfully obvious and everyday things that could actually cost you a job. [ go]

Right Time, Right Type Training
Have you heard the term life-long learning a lot lately? It’s the catch phrase used in the career and education sectors to emphasize the need to stay up to date with the relevant knowledge and skills required in our fast paced knowledge based economy. Although I must agree with the underlying concept of staying ‘up-to-date’, it can all sound so overwhelming and disheartening. Life Loooooooong Learning – schooling for life, night courses forever – ugh! [ go]

Play to your Strengths
Let’s face it –there are high expectations in our society regarding our performance, professionalism, output and activities. It seems I’m supposed to be a high-output, multi-tasking entrepreneurial networker, who’s up-to-date on the latest advances in technology and trends in my sector, while also managing my many relationships and arriving at meetings on time. Whew! [ go]

Career Power: Get Ahead at Work
Here’s a practical list of my top 10 career strategies to employ if you want to advance your career this year. [ go]

Selling Air: Marketing Your Entry-Level Career
If you could go back in time thirty years and tell someone people would actually be buying water in 2005 for prices higher than gasoline, you would probably be severely ridiculed. Go back fifteen years and tell someone that you would actually be able to purchase air in an oxygen bar and they would think you had been hitting the sauce. Water and oxygen are interesting products because they are readily available, free, and vital to life. There has been a demand created for them out of, well, thin air. [ go]

Recession-Proofing Your Career
Within the current economic climate, reports of job losses and personal bankruptcies affecting Canadians across the country remind us of the volatile and uncertain nature of work. Rapid increases in the unemployment rate can create a sense of worry, panic, dread, and anxiety – even among people whose industries feel fairly “recession proof” (e.g., healthcare, K-12 education, career management practitioners). [ go]

Do what you do best!
When I was a kid, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I knew the things I enjoyed and I knew what I was good at. But somewhere along the way I lost that dream. Looking back, I realize that it was conditioned out of me. Well-meaning people who loved me and cared about me nudged me in more sensible directions and I conformed to their wishes. [ go]

Volunteering 101
Many people think of volunteering as ‘the thing you just do’ when you are passionate about something. And while this is true, volunteering can unlock some incredible opportunities for your career. [ go]

Looking for Work? Check Your Work Ethic!
Don't let poor work habits keep you from finding work. It's said that finding a job is a full time job, and your job search needs to be approached with the same good behavior. Exhibiting good work habits when seeking employment is just as important as it is when you have a job. [ go]

Topsy-Turvy Job Market - Temp it out for a change!
With an unmistakably topsy-turvy economy you may find yourself stumped in your job search. For many of you in this situation, this is a most frustrating dilemma. Temporary staffing is an excellent resource to utilize during times like this. While many companies might not be hiring for as many permanent positions at this time, taking on a temporary assignment might actually win you a job in a great company! [ go]

Be Strategic About Your Job Hunt
Wonder why you didn’t hear back from the hiring manager after submitting your resume? After discussing job search mistakes with some of my Recruitment team, we readily agreed that this is a ‘must know’ topic and worth reviewing again and again. [ go]

Job-Searching, Social-Networking Canadians
When online social networking became hugely popular in Canada a few years ago, people were looking to connect socially. Today, an ever-growing number of social networkers are looking for career connections. [ go]

Redundancy - what now? Part 1
The blow has been dealt. Ok. One day, you feel sorry for yourself, the next you're ready to take action. Who knows where this road will take you? A new challenge? Let's face it – it's been a while since you've felt this invigorated! So have faith in yourself and project confidence... [ go]

Blacklisting Liars, Losers, and Misfits
According to the Globe & Mail, employers and recruiters are assembling a “blacklist” of people considered unfit for hiring. Apparently, if you are a liar, a loser, or a misfit then the chances are good that your name will end up on such a list. [ go]

Redundancy - what now? Part 2
Voluntary redundancy can be viewed as a financially rewarding opportunity, but if you are considering it, take care. Voluntary redundancy may be offered when a company is looking to reduce its number of staff and instead of enforcing redundancies offer employees the chance to resign in exchange for a healthy redundancy settlement. [ go]

Should You Consider Mentoring?
Having a mentor is a fantastic way to enrich your career. Mentors can teach you skills, share knowledge, help you see opportunities and challenges that you might not have seen on your own, and provide advice and guidance through many situations. While mentoring can occur in many different forms, it traditionally refers to a one-on-one relationship between a more experienced person (a mentor) and a less experienced person (a protégé), which is intended to advance the personal and professional growth of the less experienced individual. [ go]

Tips on Handling Counter-Offers
So you've been through the palaver of job hunting, you've nailed a great role and you've successfully handed in your letter of resignation. Your boss definitely wasn't happy about it (mind you, how would you feel if he was?) but he seemed to accept it ok. Since then, you've been rubbing your colleagues' noses in it and planning the biggest leaving bash the company has ever seen. Then what? [ go]

Can you sue an employer?
Can you sue an employer if they give you a good LinkedIn reference after they dismiss you? Recently, someone asked me whether they could sue their employer after they were dismissed and the employer provided them with a good reference on LinkedIn. The short answer is: not really. But, like all things legal, it depends. Here are two common scenarios: [ go]

Layoff Checklist
The following is a ‘quick reference list’ of steps and actions you will want to consider if you have recently lost your job or have been notified of an upcoming layoff. [ go]