| Career
Planning
The Sudbury Vocational Resource
Centre has a number of resources to help Sudbury job hunters
determine career objectives and job search direction.
There are books, computers,
a job board, and workshops to help you. In addition, we
post the last 5 business days of the Job Bank listings.
At SVRC, we meet people
of all walks of life and all ages who need to career plan.
Often, the motivation to consider a career direction comes
from an unsatisfying job, a lay off, or the decision to
return to work after an absence due to family demands,illness,
injury, long unemployment or other life events. ONE-TO-ONE
CONTACT A COUNSELLOR sessions are available with flexible
times provided.
There are three steps
to career planning: Self
assessment, Researching
the Labour Market and Finding
a Fit.
 Self
assessment
To determine a career goal,
you need to know yourself. Examining your past paid and
unpaid work, education, skills, interests, values and
personality can help you to better understand what you
need in a job and where you will excel.
SVRC has the True
Colors™ workshop that is helpful for better
understanding your personality and natural strengths.
See the workshops
page for more details. We also have the CHOICES program
on our resource centre computers, which can examine your
interests and transferable skills and search an occupational
data base to suggest possible careers.
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Online
resources for self assessment:
- MBTI™
(Myers Briggs Type Indicators) resources page
- True
Colors™ resources page
- Knowing
Yourself - Inventories to help you identify your
skills, interests, values and abilities.
- Assessments
- The Kiersey site offers an assessment
that may indicate your personality type, Kiersey
Temperament Sorter. If you liked this site,
you would greatly enjoy our True
Colors™ workshop.
- Tests,
Tests, Tests - Do you get your message across?
Are you afraid of success? communication and other
tests.
- Transferable skills
Researching
the Labour Market
When you know about the
jobs that are available, you can determine which ones
interest you and which are feasible. It is also very useful
if you are considering re-training. You want to make sure
any training you invest in has a good chance of leading
to a job!
There are several sources
of labour market information. In addition to the phone
book and yellow pages, there are business directories
available at our resource centre and the public library.
Service Canada has compiled extensive labour market information,
which can be accessed on-line. Check out the Labour
Market Information. You can also research individual
companies by reading their literature and their web sites.
Once you've read all you
can, you will want to talk to people. This kind of research
is called "Informational Interviewing".
Basically, you want to talk to everyone you know and everyone
they know. Find out all you can about their jobs, what
they like and hate, what a typical day is like, etc. Keep
good records of who you talked to, and when, as you might
use these people later as contacts in your job search.
It is important etiquette to follow up every meeting with
a thank you card.
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Finding
a Fit
When you know about
yourself and the jobs out there, you can determine which
ones fit your qualifications, needs, interests, values
and personal life situation. Then it is time to develop
a targeted résumé, and prepare a job search
strategy to get the job! Our workshops
can help you plan your job search.
Online resources for
labour market information, occupations and fit:
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