fbpx

The Career Foundation

Developing Human Potential

The Career Foundation

The Career Foundation Board Appoints Kristin Morrison as New Chief Executive Officer

By

Kristin Morrison has been appointed as new Chief Executive Officer of The Career Foundation

The Board of Directors of The Career Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Kristin Morrison to the role of Chief Executive Officer effective September 1, 2020.

The Board worked with an independent executive search firm to coordinate a competitive process to identify someone who could lead the organization into the future with continued success. Kristin Morrison was the ideal candidate.

Kristin is familiar to many in the community. She is a multi-talented leader with a master’s degree in counselling psychology and exceptional knowledge and expertise gained through 26 years of direct experience in the employment services industry.

In over two decades with The Career Foundation, Kristin has performed strategic and operational leadership roles and has been instrumental in developing systems and standards that the agency is known for. She has worked with many government and community stakeholders to create new divisions and partnerships – growing the organization and extending its reach to new regions and priority neighbourhoods.

“It is an honour to work with our incredible team at The Career Foundation to support thousands of community members annually to make the transition to employment,” said Kristin Morrison. “I am excited to take on the CEO position and launch our strategic plan. We look forward to continued development and more opportunities to make a difference to individual lives, industries and the economy.”

Colin Morrison Retires from The Career Foundation after 31 Years of Leadership

By

After founding The Career Foundation and serving as its Executive Director since 1988, Colin Morrison announces his retirement as of August 31st, 2020. 

Morrison founded The Career Foundation in response to the soaring rates of youth unemployment at the time. Together with business, education, and government partners, Morrison designed workforce development strategies that equipped job seekers with occupational competencies and life skills that prepared them for success in the workplace.

Today, under Morrison’s leadership, The Career Foundation has grown to seven locations serving youth, newcomers, women, Indigenous people, persons with disabilities, income support recipients, as well as all individuals who are unemployed or underemployed. 

Morrison is a visionary of social change. As an educator and consultant with the York Region School Board, University of Toronto, and York University, as well as years as a corporate trainer, Morrison was uniquely qualified to see the gaps between education and employment. His concept of The Career Foundation was given the largest Innovations Canada grant of its time, and was backed by significant corporate, education and labour sponsorships that together launched the organization. 

With business, education, and government partners, Morrison designed workforce strategies, including Completing the Circle, which provided youth and adults with the career direction, work experiences, and retention support to achieve success in the workplace. His career counselling methodology was considered leading edge and was used by the organization, public and private schools, and corporations for many years. 

Morrison’s corporate experience as a human resource consultant with senior management teams brought a different perspective to The Career Foundation, applying private sector practices to the non-profit organization. He also consulted internationally in various countries. In St. Lucia, this resulted in the creation of a national career and employment centre, utilizing The Career Foundation’s best practices and proven success. This background gave Morrison the ability to see employment and career development through a broader lens. His positive focus and belief in the potential of every single individual regardless of circumstance has been an inspiration.

Morrison has also made significant contributions to the advancement of the employment service sector as a whole by providing trusteeship and leadership support to other community organizations, networks, and collaboratives. His strong commitment and support for the community is reflected in how he consistently contributed to the discourse and practice of local workforce and economic development in order to create positive and sustainable impact on vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. As recognition for his distinctions of service, Morrison was awarded Canada’s 125 Year Commemorative Medal for Outstanding Canadians, as well as the Howard R. Beattie Professional Contribution Award and the Russ Seltzer Counsellor Education Award.

The Career Foundation’s Board has consulted with experts and carefully planned a smooth executive transition for the agency. The new President & CEO will be announced shortly and will lead the organization beginning September 1st, 2020.

The Career Foundation Launches Its Online Workforce Development Centre

By

The Career Foundation's Online Workforce Development Centre: Creating opportunities to build prosperity for all!

With a successful history of operating and delivering sector-focused workforce development projects, The Career Foundation is pleased to share a new innovation to our service model. We are excited to announce the launch of The Career Foundation’s Online Workforce Development Centre!

This centre is currently an online platform that highlights sector-specific initiatives that we are continuously developing. We invite employers to partner with us in a new way: to design sector-based workforce innovations that will continuously respond to changing industry needs and create new opportunities for employers and job seekers, while rebuilding the Canadian economy.

Faced with unprecedented disruption, we are dealing with great uncertainty. While some employers were experiencing losses before COVID-19, they now need to hire extensively. On the other hand, employers who were poised to scale-up their businesses have unfortunately had to lay off many employees. This Workforce Development Centre is needed now, more than ever, to help make sense of our disrupted labour market. It will help to explore, design, and test agile workforce strategies to meet the quickly evolving needs of employers. Finally, the centre will create opportunities for all job seekers.

As we begin, our Workforce Development Centre will focus on three priorities:

Online Workforce Development Centre: The Career Foundation will focus on three primary strategies as we continuously build our platform: Inform, Collaborate, and Co-Create.

The Workforce Development Centre will monitor trends emerging in various industries. We will work closely with employers to co-create solutions that will help them meet the evolving needs of their sector. These solutions will also help employers access diverse, traditionally untapped talent pools.

We invite you to view the additions to our website here, and to check out our new Future@Work podcast.

More on the Workforce Development Centre

The Career Foundation identified the top six industries that are currently experiencing high growth, skills mismatches and/or talent shortages. Those include technology, finance, healthcare, advanced manufacturing, sales & service, and the skilled trades. Our in-house Sector Experts (Employer Services Consultants) have worked closely with hundreds of employers in these six sectors.

The long-term goal of the Workforce Development Centre is to become a trusted source of industry intelligence, sector-based partnerships, and workforce innovations that support labour market and economic resiliency.

We look forward to working with you to advance the priorities of the Workforce Development Centre — creating opportunities and prosperity for all Canadians.

Online Workforce Development Centre URL:
https://careerfoundation.com/workforce-development-centre

Accessing the Hidden Job Market: Step 1 (Building a Personalized Employer Database)

By

Hidden Job Market: A person using their laptop to search for jobs online.

There is no definitive statistic, but the vast majority (more than 70%!) of available positions in the job market are not advertised. This means that if your heart is set on a particular industry or employer, you’re probably going to have to start searching beyond wanted ads, job boards, and employment search engines like Monster, Indeed, and Job Bank. Fear not—it isn’t as difficult to connect with employers as it seems. To start, you should understand how to access the hidden job market, why employers don’t post their jobs, and what ‘hidden’ jobs really are.

Begin by Finding Relevant Employers Using Canada 411

This site is nothing more than an online telephone book; it’s an employment lead goldmine! You can use it to find businesses in your field to contact about a job. Under the business section on the right of the page, you’ll see two sections to fill out: ‘What?’ and ‘Where?’

What? will require you to choose the industry you’re looking for work in. The key is to be broad. For example, if you want to search for Sushi Chef positions, type “sushi” not “sushi chef” or “sushi restaurants.” This way, you’ll get as many employer results as possible, some of which you may never have considered before (and if you haven’t thought of it already, other job seekers likely haven’t as well). If you’re searching for a more general job such as administrative assistant, you should begin searching for industries in which you already have either a professional or social connection. If you’re an administrative assistant with insurance experience, start with the insurance industry.

Where? will only require you to choose the city you want to work in. Just remember to vary your city names. A business in Toronto may use North York or Etobicoke as its listed address and vice-versa. Also keep in mind that a commute is a part of living in the Greater Toronto Area. If you aren’t willing to travel, you’ll have to accept that you’ve just limited your employment options. Tunnel vision is a detriment to job searching!

Create an Orderly & Categorized List of Each Employer Contact

Using Canada 411 will help you find hundreds, and sometimes thousands of employers, so it’s natural to feel overwhelmed. Start by bookmarking the pages of each employer you want to contact (or at least research) in folders on your computer. Or you can input the links in a spreadsheet. Group them by (a) industry and (b) personal importance. If any of them actually have job openings posted, you can also group or list them based on how much time you have to apply before the deadline. This helps you sort out which businesses you absolutely must apply to and which ones you may be less sure of. Don’t limit yourself, and make sure to spend more time tailoring an application to a business you might consider to be a ‘dream job.’

Canada 411 will give you the contact information (telephone, mailing address, fax, and website) for each business. If they’re hiring but haven’t posted a position on a major job search website, you’ll have an advantage. Go directly to their website—if they’re hiring, apply, and if they’re aren’t, you can still study their business and apply with a tailored application either online, in person, or via cold call! This cuts out the middle-persons and limits the competition. If none of the above works out, you can create a schedule for follow-ups to check if businesses are hiring at a later date.

Informally Network & Learn from the Labour Markets You’re Pursuing

At this point, you’ve created a Personalized Employer Database from which to prospect employment opportunities. If you’re really intent on landing that dream job, keep an eye out for any key terms, professional associations or groups, and overall industry trends in the labour markets you are pursuing. Consider this your sixth sense: your understanding of the key terms used in the industry, and more importantly, the terms that are most relevant to mention in a cover letter, résumé, or interview. Whether you’re a recent grad or a veteran of your field, knowing what employers currently expect is key. Professional associations often hold events where you can network and possibly learn about available, unlisted jobs.

When an employer withholds from posting an available position, it’s likely because they don’t want the burden of being hassled in the extreme. I’ve experienced firsthand what it means to facilitate a hiring event, and it’s not pretty. For weeks before and sometimes even months after an event, employers can continue to receive correspondence, a good portion of which is irrelevant to the position that was advertised.

Hidden Job Market - A diagram explaining how people search for jobs versus how employers prefer to hire.

The old pre-digital system was comforting for employers because it was much more time-consuming to physically type out a cover letter and résumé and mail it than it was to attach a Word document and hit ‘send.’ It acted as a moderate barrier, keeping out those who were not really serious about the position. The ease of emailing a résumé has multiplied the ‘waste’ that businesses receive. As such, employers are more likely to post positions on their websites or job boards specific to their industry networks and target market.

In the end…

This is NOT to say you’re hassling an employer if you prospect them correctly. If you’re scared of annoying an employer, don’t be—you might just be doing them a huge favour. You’ve saved them the time, cost and effort of posting their position. Just be sure to prospect with a simple straight-forward email and/or phone call with a tailored résumé to boot! It’s a numbers game, and if you do it correctly, you’re ultimately the one you’re doing the favour for.

Written by Jason D. Smith, Employment Consultant and Circumlocution Guru

Jason Douglas Smith is an Employment Consultant who works with ODSP recipients in the GTA and a former Employment Specialist with The Career Foundation. When not working to ensure (among many other things) that each one of his clients are in-the-know, this self-professed Futurist can often be found reading, writing, cycling, and cheering on his beloved Hamilton Tiger-Cats in his native Burlington.

Mental Wellness Week: The Effects of Mental Stress & How to Master It

By

Mental Wellness Week Banner

You may have heard the term mental wellness a lot lately, but why? Why does it seem to be newsworthy? What has changed? Is it a change in society’s values, maybe? Or perhaps it’s a change in society’s perception of the mind-body-connection. 

With new scientific studies there is now a much clearer link between brain development and music, or artistic practices and the ability to process pain, or meditation in the regulation of moods. It’s no wonder our viewpoint on mental wellness is beginning to shift, with an increase in acceptance of a more holistic view of health.

In the overwhelming, social media-driven world we currently reside in, it’s difficult to maintain good mental health. Combine this with the frustrations of job searching and job loss, which, next to losing a loved one, is within the top 10 events in a person’s life that contributes to a loss of mental wellness. On top of this, one in three Canadians will struggle with mental health issues in their lifetime, which can make job searching even more daunting.

Mental Health Week: The silhouette of a woman as she rests her head on her knees while sitting on a dock.

The Career Foundation is excited to designate this week as Mental Wellness Week, with the launch of our new Wellness Room to complement the services offered through our Empowering Abilities Program at our Hamilton location. In this relaxing space, we will be teaching stress management techniques, methods for reducing anxiety and many other activities in preparation for staying healthy while juggling work and other life commitments.

Each day this week, we will be sharing activities from our Wellness Room as well as tips and tricks to maintain your mental wellness. Stay tuned!

The Effects of Mental Stress

Mental Wellness Week: Staff making use of the Mental Wellness room by meditating on yoga mats.
Mindfulness exercises taking place in the wellness room at our Hamilton office.

As Mental Wellness Week is upon us, it’s important to talk about the effects that stress can have on our body and mind. We may experience stress daily in a multitude of scenarios: job searching, writing the perfect résumé, preparing for an interview with a future employer, and so on. Although stress is a common feeling, it can affect all of us in different ways. As you read this, take a moment to notice your posture. Do you feel like your shoulders are raised up towards your ears?

In addition to tense muscles, stress can also cause:

  • feelings of exhaustion;
  • increased appetite for greasy and sweet foods;
  • mood swings;
  • poor sleep;
  • lapses in memory.

Although there are many moments throughout the day that may lead to feelings of stress, there are also ways in which we can help control our responses to them. Over the next few days we will touch on each one of these methods!

Stress Relief Technique # 1: Deep Breathing

Mental Wellness Week: The team practising some deep breathing and relaxation exercises to calm the nerves.
The team practising some deep breathing and relaxation exercises to calm the nerves.

Deep, controlled breathing may seem like an easy task, but when we are feeling stressed our body automatically starts to breathe shallower. Taking control of your breathing. Here’s how:

  1. Breathe in slowly through your nose, allowing your chest and lower belly to rise as you fill your lungs.
  2. Let your abdomen expand fully.
  3. Now breathe out slowly through your mouth (or your nose, if that feels more natural).
  4. You can also try sitting comfortably with your eyes loosely focused, blending deep breathing with helpful imagery and perhaps a focus word or phrase that helps you relax.

Stress Relief Technique # 2: Practising Gratitude

Creating a "vision board" is also a good way to set positive, forward-thinking goals for yourself.
Creating a “vision board” is also a good way to set positive, forward-thinking goals for yourself.

Taking time to appreciate what’s good in your life can help to alleviate stress. 

Feelings of gratitude flood our brains with a chemical called dopamine. When we are truly grateful for something (or someone) our brains reward us by giving us a natural boost of happiness, which can help buffer the effects of stress.

Try practising gratitude through the following ways:

  1. Keep a gratitude journal (e.g., each day adding to a list of things you are thankful for)
  2. Tell people that you are thankful for them, and give them reasons why. They may return the favour!
  3. Notice the beauty in nature and the little moments around you, and say “thank you” to the universe for providing them to you each day.

Taking Care of What You Can

A young woman is shown colouring in a wall mural, meant as a therapeutic tool for stress.
We’ve started a wall mural at our Hamilton office, which clients will slowly colour in over time as they navigate each cycle of our Completing the Circle program.

Many things happen in life that we can’t control, and this causes stress. We can help to decrease our emotional vulnerability by keeping on top of a few things:

  1. Eat: Try to eat whole foods as much as possible, as they provide the most nutrients and help keep our emotions balanced. 
  2. Sleep: Getting regular sleep decreases stress, improves concentration and can increase problem-solving abilities. Try to aim for 7-8 hours of sleep per night if possible. 
  3. Exercise:  Exercise has been shown to decrease overall levels of tension, elevate and stabilize mood, improve sleep, and improve self-esteem. Even five minutes of aerobic exercise can stimulate anti-stress effects in the body. 

These are just a few strategies among many that can help us keep our stress under control. There are many helpful online resources that offer a wide variety of ways to buffer the effects of stress, such as Skills You Need: Stress Tips and Very Well Mind: Tips to Reduce Stress.

There are many things that happen in life that are out of our control; what we can help control are the ways in which we respond to them. Taking the time to care for your mental wellness can really go a long way the next time you encounter a tough situation!

Volunteering: How a Few Bold Phone Calls Got My Foot in the Door at 3 Top Companies

By

Volunteering: Several people sit along a desk facing the window in a tall office tower, taking to one another. They're silhouettes against the window.

Before graduating university with a marketing and communication degree, I was trying to find a job in my field. I wanted a head start before graduation. There was something in me that told me to venture into the workforce before hundreds of others graduated with the same degree. Despite my eagerness, I found that no employer would hire me without work experience. The top five companies I wanted to work for didn’t even acknowledge my applications. I was frustrated and disappointed at the same time.

Six months before graduating, I was sitting in an advertising seminar class. My professor asked everyone, “What are you going to do after you graduate? What preparations have you guys made? Are you guys marketing yourselves?” No one had an answer. I thought about my rejected applications, and in that moment, it dawned on me: I could volunteer for the companies I wanted to work for.

A bold move pays off

The next day I called all five companies and asked to speak with their human resource department. I told them about my degree and that I was looking for an internship or opportunity to volunteer my time in their PR and marketing department. I also stressed how I, as a millennial, could add value to their brand. Surprisingly, three out of the five companies scheduled a meeting for me to discuss strategies with them.

I didn’t know what I was going to do, what I was going to say, or even how I would add the value I promised them. All I knew was that I wanted a foot in, and volunteering was the only way. When I asked my professor, she said, “Use what you’ve learned.”

Before going to the meetings, I did a lot of homework on each company. I analyzed the current market they were operating in, looked at the threats and strengths within the industry, and examined the areas they weren’t operating in. I went as far as analyzing their competitors and identifying areas in which they were successful. It was all worth it, since after the meetings I was guaranteed a volunteer position with all three companies. Two of them even offered me a stipend to assist with travel.

The benefits of volunteering

While others may look at volunteering or community service as precarious work, in the long run it pays off. Volunteering helped me use what I was learning in a real-life context, and without it I wouldn’t have gained the necessary experience to hone my skills and add value to my résumé.

While volunteering can also help a company save money, your efforts won’t go unnoticed and your value will certainly be recognized. Volunteering raises your visibility within the company (and sometimes within the public eye, if you’re working with a high-profile organization), and there’s a good chance you could move into a full-time, permanent position if you play your cards right. Even if this isn’t the case, it can help you start building a reputation within the industry where you volunteered.

Finally, the networking opportunities are endless! While you may not get media coverage or global recognition for the work you do as a volunteer, a volunteer opportunity allows you to build your personal portfolio to take with you anywhere you go. Employers like to see initiative and effort in people they hire or plan to hire. So, as a job seeker or volunteer, don’t be afraid to go the extra mile and think outside the box.

Gavin Jones is the Project Assistant/Administrator with The Career Foundation’s Youth Job Link & Employing Young Talent Incentive program.

The Honest, Panicked Thought Process of a Post-Secondary Student in 2019

By

Post-Secondary Student Fears: Three black icons are set against a light blue background: in the centre is a paper with a large red sad face on it, on the left is a dollar bill, and on the right is a briefcase.
Not making enough money to be independent, having a lacklustre résumé, a sparse job market, and getting stuck in a bad career are all regular concerns for most post-secondary students — and I’m no exception.

Being a post-secondary student is terrible in many ways, but I think the worst part is stressing about life after graduation — isn’t that what all the painful study sessions and papers have been for? These are the three terrifying, career-related thoughts that run through my mind almost daily. To fight these fears, I’ve also laid out three student career ‘reality checks’ I typically use to calm myself down. Prepare for the darkness, but also a bit of hope? Maybe?

Do I have enough on my résumé?! I need more on my résumé!

Finding relevant work experience that’s flexible with full-time studies is hard, depending on the field you want to go into (if you even know what that is). Students who need a job to keep up with bills might be forced to sacrifice relevant extracurriculars for paying work that’s totally unrelated to their field. Even if they do manage to accumulate some experience through this minefield, it never feels like enough. So, maybe I should take on more to get that extra edge — but will I end up burning out? It kind of feels like I have to risk it, if only to increase my chances of getting a job in my field after graduating.

Sure, I have extracurriculars and volunteering, but I don’t have actual work experience. Sure, I have some relevant work experience, but it’s only one job. And sure, I’ve worked multiple jobs; however, they were all with the same employer. Nothing will ever be enough, and it all feels like an uphill, unwinnable battle.

Reality check:

Chances are, I (and you) have more experience than at least one or two friends or younger family members. At least I’m thinking about work experience, which is honestly more than I can say for some people around my age. If you’re thinking about your future, you’re a step in the right direction. However, there will always be someone who’s done more than me. But I also have some skills and characteristics that may give me the edge over someone else out there — which I should definitely play up.

What if my experience doesn’t matter and I’m a failure who lives on the couch forever?

Assuming I do have enough work experience that’s relevant, there will be no jobs for me. This kind of thinking is especially common among university graduates in non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields, who are consistently told the job market is set against them. Why should I be any different? I don’t have any crazy connections in the industry. There will be, like, five jobs that I’d be good for, and they’ll all be taken by people with connections or more experience or better experience. I’ll be stuck without a job, and I won’t be able to afford rent or food or bills. I’ll have to move back in with my mother — I hear it’s really common now — and I’ll live on her couch until the end of time.

Reality check:

There. Are. Jobs. Maybe not as many as in most STEM fields, and maybe they don’t pay as much, but they exist. The idea of non-STEM grads having pitiful employment opportunities is true to an extent, but it’s also been blown out of proportion by high school science teachers and anxious parents. Make no mistake, a lot of new graduates will struggle to find field-related work, but there aren’t enough coffee shops in the world for all of them to be baristas forever.

Post-Secondary Student Fears: A large pile of papers sit on a desk.
Look at all these résumés! Look at them all!! How can I possibly compete with all of these? Are they all better than me? Will I be a complete failure?!

I’m going to get stuck in an industry I hate right out of school and die miserable…

If I do find a job out of school, it’s going to suck. For those who need a full-time job immediately out of school, the future looks bleak because they don’t have the option to wait for a field-related opportunity. I can see it: I’ll get a degree in a field with few jobs and find a more attainable position in an industry where it’s easier to find work. The pay will be decent, it’ll be full-time, and maybe I’ll even get benefits. I’ll tell myself it’ll only last a few years while I pay down debt and get on my feet financially. I’ll be pretty good at the job and get promoted. Years will pass, and next thing I know everything on my résumé will be in this boring field that was supposed to be a starter job and somehow became my entire career.

My degree will have gone to waste, and I’ll have forgotten what my passions ever were in return for a steady job and financial security. I’ll end up trapped in this sad industry, never able to escape because all my experience will be in that one basket, and then I’ll retire and not have accomplished anything meaningful at all.

Reality check:

I’m still young! (And it’s shocking how many students forget that). Is it possible that I’ll trap myself in a career I don’t like just to pay bills? Yes. Has this happened to people before me? Yes. But that doesn’t mean I have to resign myself to that fate without ever trying. I could also get hit by a bus tomorrow, and people have been hit by buses in the past, but I can’t assume that this is my inevitable future. It’s also possible I’ll stumble into a career I never imagined but love doing. I just have to give myself a chance.

Blythe Hunter is a volunteer with The Career Foundation. 

The Career Foundation 2018 Raffle Lottery Results

By

The Career Foundation sold 1,007 raffle tickets between Oct. 15 and November 23, 2018 to raise funds for our Toronto-based programs and to support our clients in need! In raffle sales alone, we raised $5,035! Please see below for the list of winners. Thanks to everyone for supporting our cause!

Prize Winners

Prize Value Winning Ticket # Winner Name
WestJet Flight Voucher — Roundtrip flight for 2 guests to any regularly scheduled WestJet destination (accommodations not included) $3,350 856 Olivia Hetherman
Shoppers Drug Mart (beautyBOUTIQUE) Mixed Luxury Gift Set $650 87 Kris Ufholz
SiriusXM Satellite Radio Boombox Bundle with 1-Year Subscription $537.73 465 Vanessa Lall
Toronto Maple Leafs Autographed Hockey Stick (#35 - Curtis McElhinney) $300 979 Shawn Gay
Staples Carry-on Luggage $225 1291 Mike Pereira
Lush Gift Basket $150 750 Mariko Mackenzie
$100 CARA Restaurant Gift Card $100 1136 Leah Ormsby
$100 CARA Restaurant Gift Card $100 49 Ewa Adamczyk
$100 CARA Restaurant Gift Card $100 1046 Keisha T.
Free In-Store Landscape Design Consultation from Sheridan Nurseries $99 1382 Maria Barbieto
Google Home Assistant / Smart Speaker $80 968 Muna Omar
Casino Woodbine Poker Set $80 1390 Noman Noor
Mansfield Hotel & Spa Robe $80 557 Kathy Garratt
LifeTrak Follow Your Heart Rate Watch $70 973 Saeeda God
Kaia 'Juicy Bamboo' Tapioca Beads $38 63 Keld Hougesen
Dirt Devil Versa Clean 2-in-1 Corded Stick Vacuum $35 1291 Mike Pereira

 

Funds raised will help clients at The Career Foundation in the following ways:

  1. Subway tokens/tickets will be purchased for clients to travel to/from interviews
  2. New computers/software will be purchased to enhance client job search services
  3. Guest instructors and speakers will be hired to conduct client workshops
  4. Tutors/mentors will be hired to assist clients with updating their skills (e.g. in Math, English, etc.)
  5. Special events, workshops and training days will be coordinated for the benefit of client participants (e.g. hiring events, skills development days, etc.)

From Another Perspective: The Case Against Five-Year Plans

By

Five-year plans can quickly lead to stress for young people. Pictured is a young male closely examining his dream board, featuring various timelines, circled images, to-do items, and so on.

Five-year plans are the trendy things that blogs tell young professionals to make while plotting out their futures. Yet, they can also land a crushing blow to your soul before you even get a chance to enter the labour market. That deflated feeling you get when you look at your schedule and realize almost every hour of every day is mapped out for the next week? Five-year plans are the life-sized version of that.  

The whole point of a five-year plan is to help you define and achieve your goals—be they personal or professional—but there’s still something sinister about them. It has to do with seeing everything you’re supposed to accomplish in the foreseeable future (the ideal path your life would follow in a perfect world) laid out in front of you. It also has to do with sealing and accepting your fate from the get-go, without ever giving spontaneity a chance. 

Confusion, confusion, confusion 

In theory, five-year plans should be most useful to young people; they’re the ones who are supposed to be the most ambitious with the most ground to gain. However, it could be argued that they do more harm than good. Few young people coming out of high school or even post-secondary education have a concrete idea of what they truly want their future to look like. And the ideas they do have are subject to change, whether they want to admit it or not. Creating a plan in such a precarious stage of life is a surefire way to end up confused and stuck to a path that may not be right for you. 

For context, let’s give a real-life example. Ellie is approaching her mid-twenties and is currently in university part-time. She had previously been full-time but switched three years ago because, in her words, life got in the way. “While planning is important, you can never plan for life to happen,” says Ellie.   

Ellie had a five-year plan when she graduated high school. According to that plan, she should have earned her degree, entered teacher’s college, and started supply teaching in a high school by now. Instead, she’s still in school and is working five part-time jobs. 

While some may contest that your five-year plan can change and grow with you, simply having that plan in mind can keep you in a specific mindset for too long. Ellie slowly realized that the goals outlined in her plan were not what she actually wanted to do, but not before wasting a lot of time pursuing them. “No one had this plan other than me,” she laments. “I was putting this stress on myself to achieve things I should have known I didn’t want anymore.” 

No idea what’s happening? No problem. 

Young people should be allowed to be young. They shouldn’t feel the need to funnel themselves into a specific field with specific goals right off the bat. They shouldn’t be living the formative years of their adult lives on a set, self-imposed schedule that spells out the remainder of their youth. Make a handful of five-year plans and you’ll have your life planned out until retirement, and that’s really the last thing you want when your whole life is ahead of you. 

People stumble into their careers all the time, simply by exploring what they like or by pursuing the various opportunities that come their way. That’s what Ellie did in the end. “Five-year plans are pretty limiting,” she says. “They close you off to opportunities that you are unaware of, and in my opinion, you should never close yourself off. Just be ready for whatever comes at you.”  

When planning for the future, Ellie believes having a flexible, less exclusive goal is better because it “allows room for you to change and grow rather than locking you into a fake thing in your mind.” 

For some, five-year plans will certainly provide a welcome sense of direction and purpose. Maybe they’re supposed to be a way of reigning in the chaos or finding some order where there usually isn’t any. If you’re one of those people, that’s great! But if you don’t know exactly what you want to do, don’t feel like you need to set out a five-year plan right now. Direction isn’t a bad thing, but a long-term plan meticulously explaining how you should be living your life isn’t always the way to find it. 

Sure, you can have an idea of what you want to do, but you don’t have to write it out in painful detail. That can just end up looming over you, stressing you out, and keeping you on a set path with blinders on. Allow opportunities to present themselves. Look for them, even. You’ll get to where you’re supposed to be going.

Blythe Hunter is a volunteer with The Career Foundation. 

4 Changes You Can Make When Feeling Down in Your Job Search

By

How to combat your unsuccessful job search: A man is shown looking frustrated while he uses his laptop at a coffee shop.

Job searching is one of the most stressful parts of life, especially when you’re not having any luck. Below are four key recommendations from The Career Foundation’s career counsellors on how you can take your unsuccessful job search by the horns and start making progress.

1.) Be Self-Aware

You need to be realistic about your skillset, as well as what your actual potential in the current job market is. According to our counsellors, one of the most common problems they encounter is tunnel vision. Job seekers struggling to find work might be picky and only apply to jobs in a specific field. It might be painful at first, but examining your own qualifications and the job market, itself, is vital to your success!

If you don’t have much experience in a given field, the chances of getting a job in said field are extremely slim at best. If you do have a lot of experience but most or all of it took place outside of the country where you’re applying, it’s unlikely that you’ll get the job you want off the bat. And even if you do have enough domestic experience, the number of available jobs in many specialized fields fluctuates.

It comes down to: if you really need a job, don’t set your sights on just one! Every opportunity should be treated as a positive opportunity. Your ambitions are important, and you’ll get there with time. Broaden your horizons and be open-minded.

2.) Be Willing to Change

It will almost always be necessary to adapt somehow to an employer’s needs. That isn’t to say that you need to overhaul your entire personality — if that’s the case, then the job isn’t right for you — but be willing to change your personal or work habits in order to better serve them. In job interviews, employers will be reassured knowing you’re not set in your ways. Emphasize that you’re always grateful for constructive criticism and always eager to improve.

It’s not enough to ‘talk the talk,’ either. Once you get a job, a huge part of being retained is taking constructive criticism well and making subsequent changes to yourself and your work. Don’t let criticism deter you or throw you off, and don’t take it personally. Accept that you’re not perfect and listen thoroughly to what employers say and suggest: they’ll appreciate knowing you’re someone who can maturely take and respond to criticism.

3.) Put in the Effort — A Lot of It

It seems obvious, but a job won’t just fall into your lap. Clicking ‘Apply’ on as many postings as you can and hoping for the best is not effective if you actually want results. Creating a persuasive, viable application takes both effort and time. The age-old tips for applying to jobs are true: research the company, read the job posting thoroughly, and tailor your résumé and cover letter with key words from the posting and experiences or skills that are specifically related to the job. It may seem like a labourious process when you’re applying to multiple jobs in a row, but employers will value your effort.

Counsellors also recommend branching out from broad, general job boards like Indeed. While they may be simpler to use and appear to have more postings, industry-specific jobs boards will have postings that are much more related to your search if you want a specialized job. Looking for work in a non-profit? Try Charity Village. Maybe media is more your thing? Try Mediabistro. You can keep looking on Indeed, but make sure you’re actively searching on industry-specific boards and company sites as well.

4.) Learn to Accept Failure

Counsellors often see job seekers who “shut down” as soon as anything negative happens during their search — it could be a bad interview, a typo in a cover letter, or anything in between. If someone has a bad experience interviewing for a finance position, they may lose confidence or become angry and not look as hard or even give up their search for finance jobs out of fear, frustration or even embarrassment. Don’t let that be you.

Failure is just par for the course during the job hunt. You may not want to fail; however, you should become more comfortable with the idea of failure. It might feel difficult, but all failures lead to learning experiences. Stay positive and keep motivated. The best is yet to come!

Blythe Hunter is the Participant Services Representative with The Career Foundation’s Completing the Circle-Mississauga Program.