Career Service Support and Skills-Based Volunteerism

By Cami Boettcher

This article is a call-to-action for career service professionals to consider how they can leverage their unique skills, abilities, and strengths to identify and serve the vulnerable populations in their community through skills-based volunteerism.

The Intersection of Mental Health and Career Support: The Roles of Counselor Educators

By Cassandra Hirdes and Lia D. Falco

Counselor educators are in a unique position to support their students as they encounter ongoing challenges related to COVID-19. Connecting students to proper campus resources and continuing to support their career trajectories are important as students face mental, emotional, and financial worries.

Beyond the Boom: Practical Tips for Helping Baby Boomers Thrive in Their Third Act

By Libby Scanlan

Many baby boomers have both a financial need and personal desire to work long past traditional retirement age. Career practitioners are being called upon to help boomers shape satisfying working identities for their ‘Third Act,’ enhance their employability, and embrace age and experience as a strength.

Adopting a Whole School Approach to Career Development in High School

By Holly Whittinghill

Why are schools not taking a whole school approach to career exploration in high school? Career counselors can take the lead, working with other school staff to implement career exploration curricula from first-year students to seniors in every content area. Utilizing a whole school approach can minimize the gap between what students learn in school and the skills they need to succeed in the workforce.

Helping Students of Color Develop their Authentic Professional Selves

By Amber Samuels

Post-secondary career practitioners are charged with setting students of color up for success as well as attending to and affirming the multiplicity of their identities. Professionalism standards, however, require students of color to suppress key markers of identity and adhere to White standards in order to be deemed acceptable. The purpose of this article is to provide career practitioners with tools to help students of color develop their authentic professional selves.

What is Your Greatest Weakness? A TWIG May Help Clients SOAR into the Job!

By Sean Lybeck-Smoak

SOAR and STAR are effective interview techniques. The use of acronyms to explain the techniques contribute to their effectiveness because they remind clients exactly what they need to do in the interview while also describing how to create compelling stories. When answering the weakness interview question, the more effective acronym is TWIG.

Congressmen and NCDA Discuss Need to Invest in Career Development

By Deneen Pennington, NCDA Executive Director

Representatives Langevin and Thompson joined the NCDA Virtual Press Briefing and shared their legislative actions based on the belief that “investing in our career development profession has tremendous return on investment.” Read the summary here.

Tik Tok for Job Searching

TikTok is a free social application for creating, editing, and sharing videos up to one minute in length. It operates on a mobile device and/or desktop. Although many of the videos might be considered somewhat irrelevant to the job search, many people are now using TikTok for career advice, resume review, and interviewing tips, as discussed in this recent Washington Post article. Search on #careeradvice to find information, coaches and other examples. If your clientele is in the 18-24 range, TikToK is an effective way to communicate with them.

Submitted by Janet Wall, careerfacilitator@janetwall.net