3 Tips for Getting Over Your Vacation Hangover

You’re back from vacation and hopefully you unplugged while there. And now you have a vacation hangover. You’ve got way too many things to do for work, not enough time to do them in and your wondering, just like you’ve wondered the morning after you had one too many drinks, was it worth it? Should I really have even gone on vacation? After returning from a work and play trip, the hangover hit me (and my husband) hard.  The around the world re-routing and delays of flights to get us home didn’t help nor did the thee hours of sleep

3 Highlights from the 2014 NCDA Conference

The 2014 National Career Development Association Conference in Long Beach, CA was a tremendous experience.  Here’s what I learned along with some thoughts on leadership actions for us all to consider: 1.  Career Development in an Employee Engagement Strategy. I heard about how Boeing and GM are setting up systems (mainly through online tools) to facilitate employees to take ownership of their careers and for leaders to take ownership of facilitating career development discussions and planning with their employees as a part of performance management. I personally learned how true this lesson is through an experience a friend had before we

The only question you need to ask when choosing a college

The decision making process for choosing a college, should look like this: career a major a college Not the other way around.  Most people look at the other way around. With this being said, college is a means to the end of pursuing a meaningful and lucrative career. And with that being said, the only thing you should ask when choosing a college (after you’ve made sure you’ve thoroughly asked yourself and determined what career direction you want to take) should be: What are the college’s placement rates or graduate outcomes from the program/major you are planning to pursue? This should be

The What and Why of Competencies as Seen through CDF Training and SHRM’s new move

The HR world has been all a buzz with SHRM’s announcement of a switch to a competency-based certification. In an email to members, the SHRM CEO stated,  “We believe a competency-based certification is the new standard for HR professionals around the globe. Our members have told us this; and we have listened.” Regardless of whether or not you agree or disagree with SHRM’s move, competency models are prevalent.  The career development world has been competency-based through its Career Development Facilitator Training for quite some time. What is a competency? Good ole Wikipedia provides us with this definition: “A competency is

Career Development Facilitator Competencies in Action- Tell, Show and DO

One of the reasons I love CDF training is because the competencies that the training emphasizes fit together so nicely.  Not only that, but they also spur action through behaviors as any good competency model should do. An example of 2 CDF competencies in action Take these two competencies:   “Helping Skills – Be proficient in the basic career facilitating process while including productive interpersonal relationships.” And “Program Management/Implementation – Understand career development programs and their implementation, and work as a liaison in collaborative relationships.” In the CDF training, you learn that helping skills includes being competent in helping others