Career Development Workshop – Handouts

Handouts and exercises used in career and redundancy counselling

  1. What do you want to do?

Clients are often unaware of what they want to do. Unless they take care they can end up making an easy choice that may be wrong for them. The exercise, choosing work,forces people to choose between alternative jobs and be aware of why they made the choices they did. They then become more aware about what is important to them and make more informed career choices.

  1. Life Planning

Redundancy and career change can prompt people into thinking about the shape and direction of their lives. Open systems planning and the goals map are simple but powerful tools that help people decide what they want. When people see clearly what they want they have more enthusiasm and energy to achieve it.

  1. Facing change

This handout helps people affected by change to understand what is happening to them and why they may feel the way they do. It also has some helpful tools and guidance.

  1. Discovering your strengths and achievements

This exercise helps people identify their achievements and the strengths that support them. People usually underestimate their strengths and achievements yet they are what future employers or customers are looking for. The exercise builds confidence markedly. Confidence is helpful at an interview and at work.

  1. How to interview well

CCTV is a very useful aid to building skill and confidence in the interview situation. Many people find this very daunting and they usually undersell themselves. Some overcompensate and become brash. I use CCTV lightly to overcome people’s fear of seeing themselves as others see them. The usual learning from a practice interview on CCTV is that the more natural and relaxed the client is, the more likely they are to be successful.

  1. Job seeking

This handout will bring together all the ways people go about looking for jobs. Responding to adverts is not the only or the best way. Networking and speculative letters can be effective. You may have come across additional methods that I have not seen.

  1. Your CV

This describes the purpose of the CV and some tips on producing a good one. It should help people improve the basic CV by developing readability, presentation and the relevance of the content. Employers are interested in people’s achievements rather than job descriptions. They want to know what people can do for them.

  1. Being your own business

Self employment is an attractive option. There are hidden stresses and much to manage. There is also an exercise to help people think in detail about what they would have to do in the first few months of being in business.

  1. Who am I?

We are happiest in any situation when what we are doing fits our character. This activity helps people examine times in their lives that have been fully satisfying. The client finds a simple phrase that captures what he or she is doing when things are working well. The client can use the phrase to decide what to do in the future. This could be looking for a new situation.

  1. Starting a new job

Starting a new job can be very difficult. You can lose vital credibility by waiting too long to do anything new. If you dive in too soon, you will make mistakes and upset people. 

The Career Development Workshop that used these handouts is here.

If you would like help using this idea, or have any comments or questions please contact me. Thanks, Nick