Career Counseling Online

Career counseling online is offered by many people from many different backgrounds. Some are more experienced than others. Since I always urege people to carefully evaluate career counseling online services before they jump in and take their advice, it's only fitting that I provide you with an outline of my own professional background.

I'm a career specialist with over 7 years of career counseling experience and 5 years of teaching experience. My areas of specialization include vocational rehabilitation (working with injured workers), as well as working with experienced workers, internationally trained professionals and clients who have been long term unemployed.

Prior to launching my own business, I worked as a vocational rehabilitation case manager. This role involved:

• Developing, negotiating and managing labor market re-entry plans for injured workers who were unable to return to their previous jobs.
  
• Recommending appropriate career options and training plans for injured workers based on clients' preferences, aptitudes, interests, transferable skills, education and physical tolerances as well as current labor market trends.
  
• Supporting clients in retraining programs, including problem solving in cooperation with funding partners, clients and secondary service providers (primarily schools and occupational therapists) to resolve a wide variety challenges as they arose.
  
• Developing, negotiating and managing training plan budgets of up to a half million dollars.

For five years, I facilitated job search and career management workshops. My responsibilities in this position included:

• Facilitating workshops with course material that included understanding labor market trends, making informed career choices, maintaining self esteem, resume and cover letter preparation, effective interview strategies and traditional and creative job search techniques.
  
• Working with up to 500 clients annually.
  
• Providing ongoing support to clients through telephone and email follow ups, individual counseling and/or referrals to additional professional resources.
  
• Developing workshop content, materials and resources; ensuring workshop content and materials reflected current labor market trends and client needs.

My education includes:

• Career and Work Counselor Courses, Sir Sandford Fleming College, Peterborough, ON
  
• Bachelor of Education Degree, Queen's University, Kingston, ON
  
• Bachelor of Music Degree, Queen's University, Kingston, ON

A selected list of professional development courses and seminars includes:

• Counseling Ethics, Case Manager Home Study
  
• Français 1 et 2, Durham College, Oshawa, ON
  
• Anti-Racist Social Work, Social Development Council, Whitby, ON
  
• Crisis Intervention, Canadian Mental Health Association, Pickering, ON

For those of you with a keen eye for detail who noticed my music degree and wondered how that fit into the mix, I started my career as a music teacher. I taught music and adult education for 5 years, and then the shift from teaching to career counseling was a quite logical and natural development and a good fit with my personal and professional priorities.

Please keep in mind, this is not my resume, I'd structure that quite differently (you'll find resume ideas here). It's a summary of my professional background that I've provided because I firmly believe that if you are trusting me to provide you with career counseling online tips, you deserve to be given the respect of knowing the experience and education of the person who is providing you with those career counseling online resources and tips.