It has become the practice for high schools in United States to observe Career Days for senior students for many decades now. On this day high school students are introduced to various careers open to them by local business professionals in the school. However, these days are proving insufficient to enable the students of high school to plan their future. That is why most middle-aged adults and youngsters seek the personal guidance of coaches in career development.

Personal coaches in the field of career development offer a very essential service to people who are late planners of their careers. A lot remains to be done to help the youngsters in career development. When the best career options are enumerated for students of high schools, it helps them develop a better understanding of the careers they would prefer, resulting in more efficient planning and more enrollments in colleges leading to a more productive future society.

For many high schools, the practice of a Career Day has taken the form of a whole Career Week to tackle these issues. A couple of days in this week are utilized to introduce the seniors to various career pathways by seasoned community professionals. The assessments resembling those by personal coaches in career development are taken up during the remaining week.

These assessments help the students of high school to become aware of their strengths and weaknesses and also to explore where their values and interests lie. These assessments are then fed to a computer system. The system generates a report outlining the best career options for that particular student. The students then go through further training via Handbook of the Occupational Outlook.

The Handbook of Occupational Outlook is a top rated career development tool for personal career development in the arsenal of high school. The Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States has put this publication in electronic form as well as in the book form. This enables the students to access valuable information about details of career, industry outlooks and job prospects for the future, the education required and average salaries.

When these assessments of career development of high school students are over, they undergo interviews with either the counselor of the high school or the coach of career development. These students are led through the interviews to explore fully the career options, have discussions with the coaches and reach decisions about the field in which they want to make their careers. Then several resources are provided to the student of the high school to give him a start on his career development path.

Another aspect of activities of career development is that the counselors or the coaches of personal career development visit the senior classrooms and take important sessions on goal setting and its importance in career development. These students get resources to set their goals practically and begin to pen down their plan for personal career development.

Although personal career development concept and its importance is not new for students of high schools, plans for personal career development education are being put into place by schools only now. These initiatives will prepare more and more students of high schools to begin careers or education as soon as they finish high school, thereby leading to a more productive future society.

About Author

Abhishek is a Self-Improvement expert and he has got some great Self-Improvement Secrets up his sleeves! Download his FREE 81 Pages Ebook, “Self Improvement Made Easy!” from his website http://www.Positive-You.com/775/index.htm . Only limited Free Copies available.

When was the last time you received a job promotion?  You are doing a great job at work but everyone else seems to get the promotion you want.  You may even start making excuses as to why you are not getting the career promotions you deserve.  Well, I ask you the following question:

Did you ever tell your story?

The following career advice story will show you how to put your career on the fast track:

Recently, I was facilitating an oceanfront retreat for over two hundred employees of a university.  During this session, I had the participants think of something or somebody they appreciate.  I then asked for volunteers to share with the group whom or what they appreciate and why this is important to them.

Lonnie volunteered and stood up in front of the group to share his thoughts of appreciation.  Lonnie explained that in his job he helps children improve their lives.  He mentioned that whatever the lowest pay and title scale was, he was at that level.  However, he said that was all right because of the joy he received from helping the children.  You could hear and sense the passion in his words as he shared his experiences with the audience.

About a month later, Lonnie was in another workshop I was facilitating, and he asked to speak with me before the start of the session.  I could see the excitement in his eyes as he explained what had happened to him since the oceanfront retreat.  One week after sharing his story at the retreat, he received a call from the Office of Academic Affairs.  Someone of influence, who was impressed with Lonnie’s speech and the way he told his story that day, wanted Lonnie to come in for a job interview.  Lonnie went to the interview and received the job of Assistant to the Dean of Academic Affairs, with a substantial increase in pay and title.  That was a career quantum leap from just a couple of weeks earlier.

So what happened?

Lonnie told his story for career success.  Like so many of you, you are toiling away in your careers everyday and making a difference for your organization.  But if no one knows about your successes, your passions, and your ideas, you will not achieve job and career success.

The following are three secrets to putting you on the fast track to career and job advancement:

1. It’s Not What You Know… – I’m sure you have heard the old saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” when talking about getting ahead in life.  Well, in this new age of information and self responsibility, I am declaring that this saying is dead.  Instead, I always say the following:

“It’s not what you know.  It’s not who you know.  It’s who knows what you know that creates success for you.”

There are people doing a great job everyday.  There are people everyday that know people of influence.  Yet, unless these people of influence know what you know (your skills, your knowledge, your ideas), you won’t be put in a position for success.  Lonnie, during his two-minute presentation, let people of influence know that he was passionate about helping children at his job and he was willing to do it for little compensation.  That’s a powerful message.  It moved people to help him and make him a part of their team.

2. Prepare Yourself for Powerful Story Telling – When the opportunity comes to tell your story, will you be prepared?  Lonnie was prepared and made the most of his opportunity.  However, I have seen many opportunities vanish for a person to tell his/her story because of the fear of speaking in front of a group or in a meeting.  Whether it’s in a job interview, monthly meeting, or at a conference, have the confidence to tell your story.  You may never get another opportunity to do so.  Have the courage to work on your presentation skills.  There are various resources for improving your presentation skills.  You can take a class, join Toastmasters, or hire a presentation skills coach.

Also, outline what you will tell in your story.  Think of your successes and how you achieved those successes.  Thinks of the challenges you faced and how you overcame them.  Express the joy you felt while achieving your goals.   Relate how your activities helped you develop your skills, your creativity, and your determination.  Let your passion show in your story.

3. Create Opportunities to Tell Your Story – When Lonnie volunteered, he created an opportunity to tell his story.  How can you create opportunities to tell your story?  You can volunteer for job-related assignments and give reports during management briefings.  You can be active in workshops or seminars and tell your story among a variety of people that normally might not be exposed to your story.  Join various associations and groups and tell your story.  This is a great way to network among people who are active in their industries.  Contribute your story to your in-house publication, local newspaper, or magazine.  Create a blog or website and tell your story.  The more you tell your story to a wide variety of people, the greater the opportunity to increase your success.

Apply these powerful career advice secrets and put your career advancement on the fast track.  Tell your story and others will sit up and take notice.

About Author

Ed Sykes

Ed Sykes is a highly sought after expert, author, professional speaker, and success coach in the areas of leadership, motivation, stress management, customer service, and team building. You can e-mail him at mailto:esykes@thesykesgrp.com, or call him at (757) 427-7032. Go to his web site, http://www.thesykesgrp.com , and signup for the newsletter, OnPoint, and receive the free special motivational report, “Jump Start Your Success.”

The usual demands we receive differ on its frequency and acuteness. Some people decide to start with periodic counseling sessions after facing a crisis. So they consider the online counseling as a routine that they keep (once or twice a week) during the time when they are solving their problematic situation (like a divorce or a grief process).

Other people take the online counseling as a regular therapy. So they have an appointment with their online counselor once a week. And they take that regular session as their moment for personal insight, their time for putting in order their thoughts and feelings. People usually avoid getting deeper into what happens to them during the working days, as if in that way they could prevent from getting distracted and being unable to function. When people hide from themselves and ignore self questioning for too long, meanings in their lives may vanish progressively. So even if they consciously avoid getting too pensive when they need to be concentrated on work, it is always positive to give yourself a time for reflecting.

And with that purpose in mind, the online counseling can make a difference.

The third type of demand we receive comes from people who just want to have a professional point of view over an issue that is concerning them. Those people are usually looking for enough encouragement to do something that they are about to do. In those cases, the therapist listens to the variables involved in the issue and acts as an objective witness of the client’s oncoming decision. So the therapist can help to concretize that decision when the person is hesitating. In this kind of demands, the interaction between the two parts lasts until the clients finishes to confront his/her thinking and opinions with the professional’s ones.

As you can see, the frequency of online counseling sessions is strongly related to the acuteness and deepness of the issue that will be covered in the therapy. To give some examples, couples counseling is something that always comes up in weekly sessions even when there are not big problems in a couple but partners just want to improve their experience together (they look for sexual advice or parenting guidance, etc). But a divorce or a grief process is something that has to have a beginning and an end and people need to get through it in order to keep on track with their lives. In the last case, the regularity and incidence of the online counseling should be higher.

www.tuva24hs.com

About Author

Mike Dionne
www.tuva24hs.com

One of the great things about life is that we get to make choices about many things, including our professional growth and development.

We can choose to ignore it. Choose to postpone it. Or choose to consciously proactively create a personal professional growth and development plan.

Think how we enter a new year. We sit down and reflect on the past year and ascertain a few minor changes or improvements are in order. We conclude it’s a perfect time to set some new goals. So we do. Our goals usually revolve around diet, finances, relationships, or getting organized. But rarely does our fresh set of goals include anything to do with professional growth and development.

Personal professional growth and development is all about you taking the initiative to improve yourself as a leader. Exactly what that means to you will mean something different to someone else. Only you know the areas you need to improve in to make a better contribution to those that you serve or to those that you work with.

Those that choose to ignore or postpone their professional growth and development are doing themselves, their families, their co-workers and everyone else they touch a tremendous disservice.

It’s a great time to get energized and excited about taking your career and professional growth to a higher level. I recommend the following 5-steps to help you get there.

1. Commitment

Improving yourself always takes a commitment. This simply means that you will need to dedicate time on your calendar to work towards achieving your professional goals. To start, I recommend you allocate a minimum of 4 hours per week for professional development. Yes I know you’re busy. Your day is full now and you don’t know where you’ll find the time. But it’s important to your future, so take a serious look at how you spend your time and get rid of any time wasting activities now and replace it with professional development.

2. Prioritize

Ask yourself, what 3 areas do I need to improve in the most to make the biggest difference in doing my job and advancing my career?

You should know. If you don’t, ask your boss or your co-workers what they would like to see you improve in. Or you could do a self assessment on crucial skills for your position or the position you are targeting for future advancement.

As an example, if you know that the next step up the ladder for you will require a solid understanding of financial statements but this is a weak area for you well you better get to work on it because when that job opens up you’ll want to be ready.

Or perhaps you just want to get better at some of the skills of your current job. Become a better listener, improve your delegation skills, improve your time and stress management abilities.

3. Plan

Once you know your professional development priorities, you now need to establish a professional development training plan. Your plan should be in writing and should contain goals … specific goals.

If a plan and specific goals are critical to the success of a business, then having a professional development plan with specific goals are critical to your success as well.

In your plan you must consider the power of the World Wide Web. You will find articles, blog postings, newsletters, webinars, tele-seminars, advice columns, quizzes, videos, stories and they are all free.

Obviously there are also a ton of books that you can help you. Choosing the right one or a good one is always challenging. Don’t try to do it alone, ask others for their book recommendations on your area of interest.

Your plan can include listening to CD’s or watching DVD’s reading. You can search out local training seminars or workshops. You can also rely on a mentor or a coach to help you.

4. Implementation

Once your plan is in place it’s time for you to be serious and dedicated to implementation. It is easy to let your personal professional development plan slide, just like the diet plan. But don’t let it happen. Be persistent and hold yourself accountable for achieving your goals. Find ways to keep yourself motivated.

Reward your successes and accomplishments.

5. Repeat

Professional growth and development isn’t a onetime event, it’s an ongoing lifetime experience … but only if we choose it.

If we don’t care about our own professional growth and development, who will?

About Author

Randy Goruk

Randall Goruk is the founder and President of Leaders Edge 360 — a Leadership Consulting and Coaching Company with a North American client base. He is a seasoned corporate executive and professionally certified career coach. As an executive coach, Coach Goruk offers over 34 years of “real world” business and leadership experience, including 5 years of professional coaching. Visit his website at http://www.leadersedge360.com or contact him at Randy@LeadersEdge360.com.

The defeat of Proposition 5, in California, was a major blow to the entire area of Drug Addiction Rehabilitation. Whether they know it or not it was also a disastrous outcome for the people of California. It was nothing more than a rude awakening to the destructive power of a Union gone astray from the Society it serves. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (Union) in California is the largest, wealthiest, most powerful lobby group in the State. Corrections is a cottage industry in the California economy. The CCPOA includes prison Corrections Officers and Parole Agents, and it numbers 30,000 or more members. These are well paid, highly compensated in benefits, and like minded people. They lobby against the professional drug treatment field, constantly. California has implemented Substance Abuse Programs or SAP’s into literally every prison in the State. Some sources say there are 33 prisons, some say 36, but regardless the number changes regularly because they build prisons, not colleges in California. There are in fact, more State Prisons than State Colleges, and these are not small endeavors. Several California prisons have more than 6,000 inmates. For example, San Quentin is one with over 6,000 inmates and it employs over 900 correctional officers and over 600 other staff. This is really big business. And by establishing these so-called “treatment programs” in every prison, they are now integral in the number of employees needed. This at the same time makes the CCPOA bigger and stronger. They have exceptional legal counsel and feed lots of dollars into HMO’s, local economies, and lobbying in Sacramento, the State Capitol. This is POWER! The frightening problem is their power to keep the SAP’s in business. Well, you might ask, why is that a problem? It’s simple! The SAP programs don’t work.

A report released Feb. 21, 2007, by the State of California, Office of the Inspector General, states emphatically, in bold print in the header, “The state’s substance abuse treatment programs for inmates do not reduce recidivism, yet cost the state $143 million per year.” In other words, as I previously stated, they don’t work. The following is a quote from that same study:

“Effective treatment for substance abuse offers one of the state’s best hopes of reducing the number of inmates who repeatedly cycle in and out of prisons,” said Inspector General Matthew

Cate. “Successful treatment programs could reduce the cost to society of criminal activity related

to drug abuse, change lives, and help relieve the state’s prison overcrowding crisis. But so far the

Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has squandered that opportunity,” Cate said.

The report goes even further in announcing that “One five-year University of California, Los Angeles, study of the state’s two largest in-prison programs found, in fact, that the 12-month recidivism rates for inmates who received in-prison treatment was slightly higher than that of a control group.”

Another recent study by the University of California estimated that 42 percent of California inmates have a “high need” for alcohol treatment and 56 percent have a high need for drug treatment, and recidivism rates for California inmates in general continue to be among the highest in the country.

Yet another recent study showed that inmates who received in-prison treatment followed by at least “90 days of community-based aftercare” did have significantly lower recidivism rates than non-participants. This begs us to question why are we not sending these addicts and alcoholics straight to the Community Based Providers? This is what Proposition 5 of 2008 was designed to do. The facts I have just given did not make it into the public arena, in support of Prop 5. The supporters did not have the funds or I’m guessing the resources to get detailed info to the Voters! (You can find this document by doing an online search for the Office of the Inspector General, California, Government and looking for the Study released Feb. 21, 2007.)

But, the CCPOA accompanied by MADD (who I had supported prior to this year) did have the money to bombard the people with a systematic ration of disinformation. They convincingly made it sound like this proposition was going to “en mass” just release the Meth and Crack onto the streets and into the communities of California. Proposition 5 was in fact a proper, economically wise, safe solution to finding a way to fund the more effective community based “Treatment Providers” in the Substance Abuse Treatment field. As with the “deemed success”, Prop 36, violent offenders would have been excluded from participation, as well as people with felony “Sales” convictions. But the propaganda machine of the corrections union, CCPOA, made it sound like the prison gates were being opened, and whoever chose to would leave. The wording of their TV spots was actually ridiculous, but founded in the “fear” works philosophy so well implemented by the Bush Administration for over 7 years. Guess what, it worked. The people fell for it. I must say that having MADD on board probably legitimized the whole campaign of terror. Too bad!

On the average it costs over $40,000 to keep an inmate incarcerated for a year. FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!!! They can participate in a community based treatment program for fees ranging from $20k to $30k for a year. What you really have to understand here is that it only take 90 days in these programs to reduce the rate of return to prison. If you put the inmates into treatment for a full year, these numbers are going to incrementally improve. It is actually accepted among drug treatment professionals that a full year in treatment, over briefer lengths of time, can improver their own effectiveness between 50 and 90 percent.

The “science of addiction” and its implementation into treatment programs over the past ten years has been a revolution in knowledge of the “disease concept” of addiction and alcoholism. This disease is recognized as a disease by the American Medical Association , the American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organization, and has been for decades. The drug counseling certification agencies have moved into State Universities and are turning out highly capable professionals in the field of drug abuse counseling. But they are constantly challenged by the medical and psychiatry fields because they are effective and paid much less than a doctor or psychiatrist. It’s money again. As with the prison employees, the purse strings are pulled so the defense mode kicks in. CAADAC, the California Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors has very high standards for certification that can only be obtained by a combination of courses in State University Drug and Alcohol Certification, Extension Programs, and by passing both written and oral examinations through a testing board. These kind of agencies exist over the entire country. Many private, or community based treatment programs in California require CAADAC certification over a 4 year degree, and others require a combination CAADAC credentialing and job experience in place of the degree. But the most effective treatment, that of community based providers, who the overwhelming majority of these counselors work for has no significant government funding in place. Nearly all of it goes to the failed prison SAP’s.

The opponents of Proposition 5, in California, would have a big pat on the back coming for their highly effective campaigning, if wasn’t for the fact that all that they actually did was just out spend the dedicated, under paid professionals in the drug treatment field! This is a true shame for the misinformed and the old “crime and punishment” advocates of California… the taxpayers. California Corrections has squandered over a Billion Dollars, since 1989, on prison programs that don’t work, and the public remains in the dark about the truth. But the real losers here, are the countless Addicts and Alcoholics, and their families, who are imprisoned rather than treated for a Disease that can effectively be arrested, allowing them to become “productive, taxpaying members of Society. The effect of not rehabilitating human beings afflicted with this dread disease is so far reaching that it is truly heartbreaking. Families remain broken and dysfunctional when it need not be so. The problem then extends into welfare costs and overcrowded publicly financed mental clinics, too. Financially failing county hospitals have their emergency wards overflowing with children and spouses from these families who inevitably wind up being medically indigent, using the emergency room as their clinic. As it is they remain a “burden on society” rather than an asset, because incarceration does not change the Addict. They re-offend and go back to prison where the career criminals teach them how to become more of a criminal than they ever would have been if not subjected to the prison environment and population. “Genetically prone to Addiction” children witness all of the behaviors and follow right in the footsteps of their addicted parent because the combination of genetics and environment almost assuredly doom them to do so.

Proposition 5 could have been the beginning of a turn-around for California, and may have helped the rest of the country follow suit, eventually. But, an organization desiring overtime and government perks for it’s members, that is also the largest, most powerful, union in the State, lobbied, bought and sold out the citizens of California, in the dark spirit of greed overwhelming true justice and hope, by running a campaign of propaganda that misinformed and misled the people into a very serious mistake. On top of all the human suffering and loss, we’ll waste over $140,000,000 every year until we stop doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result!!!

About Author

CounselorDave

I am a certified substance abuse counselor, and recovering addict, in California. I have 12 years clean time and have been a counselor most of that. I have served as a treatment program Director. I have worked going into prisons recruiting inmates for aftercare drug treatment programs. He is also the webmaster of, Addiction: Why Me? @ www.mydavecarroll.com