Career Planning and Development (CPDC1-CE)

What skills and areas of expertise are required to be an effective career management practitioner? This course equips professionals with a repertoire of skills and techniques for guiding adults through a variety of career-related events. Learn basic counseling skills and advisement techniques that help clients to sharpen their focus and to explore possibilities. Understand the critical factors of time and pacing in this work. Develop a confident approach to helping clients sort through confusing career issues and shape practical plans for attaining their goals.

Experienced career counselors always are seeking to enhance their skills and to expand their repertoire of techniques and resources. This course reviews contemporary approaches to career exploration, planning, and management. Learn and practice approaches to assisting clients in assessing their career interests, skills, values, and personality traits. Newer techniques and traditional approaches are examined and evaluated for effectiveness. Guest speakers demonstrate techniques and resources that work best and explain why. All participants are encouraged to engage in an interactive presentation.

Cultural diversity poses powerful challenges for professionals who help others with career planning. This course focuses on workplace issues related to racial and ethnic diversity. Four groups in the New York City area are discussed: African, Asian, European, and Latin American. Topics include concepts of culture, race, and ethnicity; the criteria for a “culturally skilled” professional; an overview of multicultural awareness; and the implications of demographic changes for the future career development professional.

Learn the nuts and bolts of starting and maintaining a private practice. Topics include setting up your business infrastructure, clarifying your ideal client and branding, establishing your processes and pricing, reaching potential clients, and pursuing continuing education and additional certifications.

Sharpen and broaden your skills with this foundational course that examines career theory and its application to the contemporary workplace. Distinguish between early and later career issues, and learn how to advise adults through each. Topics include career selection, development, and change; navigation of unforeseen career events; the impact of age, gender, and culture; and planning for career alternatives. Class sessions emphasize experiential exercises, role-playing, and skill enhancement. Receive hands-on training, which is essential to the learning experience and builds confidence and expertise in the fields of counseling and coaching.

Learn to effectively use formal and informal assessment instruments to promote client self-understanding—an essential skill for career development professionals. Work with a range of assessment tools, and develop an understanding of which are appropriate in career planning and development situations. In this course, areas of focus include strengths and shortcomings of the instruments, the rationale for instrument selections, and strategies for using results with clients. Discuss informal assessment exercises and techniques along with the Self-Directed Search, the Strong Interest Inventory, and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

Today’s cost-conscious organizations increasingly offer career-related services to employees and/or clients in group formats; as a result, practitioners must design and deliver workshops and seminars that focus on specific areas of career planning, development, and management. In addition, outplacement services that include individual guidance often are supplemented by group approaches to job search topics. This course focuses on career management programs, with an emphasis on creating and leading workshops and seminars that provide career guidance to groups of adults. Guest speakers are invited to discuss career management programs.

This course addresses the unique career issues and needs confronting baby boomers, with an emphasis on planning for alternative career options in midlife and beyond. Other topics include reinventing the working self, creating and pursuing new career and life goals, anticipating retirement, letting go of past career accomplishments and entitlements, counseling resources, and training opportunities.

Explores current developments and practices in the field of transition counseling and career management. Topics include recruitment consulting for organizations, professional development, ethics, marketing of services, assessment, group service models, and future trends. Special emphasis is placed on counseling issues and techniques for overcoming the barriers that candidates encounter in planning their careers and implementing effective job-search campaigns.

Presentations are a daily part of almost every career, when meeting with potential, new, or current clients; networking; or leading a team into new territory. Learn the key elements of effective presentations: self-confidence, organizing, audience assessment, establishing outcomes, and creating persuasive handouts and visuals. Practice these skills and learn how to teach them to your clients through videotaped exercises. Develop the craft of creating a "Humway," a storytelling methodology, in the minds of your listeners by leaving a lasting impression that generates deeper human connections for maximum effectiveness.

Learn to address the unique needs and issues confronting college students prior to entering the workforce, and understand how they differ from those currently employed. Discuss how career development offices at colleges function in comparison to career development in private industry and how career advising for higher education can become an alternate career path.