Careers and the housing crisis
Politicians shouldn’t get all the blame There’s a housing crisis here on PEI. No shock there, there’s a housing crisis pretty much everywhere in Canada. Lots of people are looking for places to live, but the costs are exorbitant, demand is much higher than supply and plenty of communities are seeing homelessness rise. While everybody […]
Hollywood is on strike
When actors are striking, what does that mean for meaning at work? Have you ever had someone tell you that to find the perfect career you should think about what you would do for free, and then pursue that? It’s a great idea, isn’t it? If you could spend every day doing something that […]
What does success really look like? Maybe not what you meme.
You’ve seen those internet memes, right? The ones that compare “how people think success looks” to “how success really looks.” Like this one: Or maybe you’re more familiar with this one: And there are other varieties, of course, but the one you choose doesn’t matter. They’re all lacking in one area: they assume you still […]
Does a Master’s degree really boost your career?
What is the real story behind upskilling? If I told you I was about to wrap up a Master’s degree program, what do you think your first question would be? My guess is something like “oh cool. What type of job are you going after?” OK, in all honesty, it’s not a total guess. That […]
Job searching: not for the faint of heart
Job searching is not fun. I mean, I work in career development. It’s my job to help other people find jobs, and I don’t think it’s fun. It’s tough to put yourself out there day after day, to keep trying as you send applications out into the void and hear nothing back. And then to […]
Avoid this terrible career advice.
I have to admit, I used to be a big fan of the idea of of “do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” I said it to hundreds of students, I included it in presentations for job interviews and I sincerely believed it was true. For some people, it […]
Interviewing shoes
Have you been in a job interview? It’s terrifying, isn’t it? I’ve always told the youth I coach on job interviews that it’s OK to be nervous. You are, quite literally, going into a room full of people whose job it is to judge you. But what if you got to be in the other […]
Plot twist: no one is coming
I’ve been working my way through Dr. Nathaniel Branden’s The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem. It’s a well-known tome among therapists and counsellors, but down-to-earth enough for the average person. I highly recommended if you feel your own self-esteem shaking in its boots. One tiny section in particular caught my eye, because I so often find […]
Self-worth and your job
How much do you tie your definition of self to your job? This week, my professional association published a blog post about the implications of being labelled “non-essential.” Of course, millions of people got first-hand experience in recent months, as businesses closed in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. On one hand, the […]
Values and career regret
At the beginning of 2020, CERIC published the results of their survey on the status of career development in Canada. Some of the results specifically pointed to the high degree of career regret felt by people in Canada. The top regret? 72% of people who visited a career professional in Canada said that they wished […]