Use Arial Font to Disguise Typos in Résumés

That would appear to be a conclusion that one could draw from the Song and Schwarz paper in the Psychologist. Indeed it might well be that almost anything one does to make a résumé easier to read will also make it more believable.

And now we know why nonsense like, “Do the crime, do the time” has such wide appeal too. It rhymes, just like Mother Goose.

All worth your consideration.

Status of Ontario Career Services Providers

I received this list today from Patti Stirling, in the form of a PDF. Please write if you want the PDF.

Service Providers Selected to Deliver Employment Services (173)

1. Academy Of Learning

2. ACCES (Accessible Community Counselling and Employment Services)

3. ACFO (Milles Iles)

4. Algonquin College

5. Alternative Youth Centre for Employment (AYCE)

6. Anishnabeg Outreach Employment & Training

7. Atikokan Economic Development Corporation

8. Avon Maitland District School Board

9. Business Education Council of Niagara

10. Caledon Community Services

11. Cambrian College

12. Canadian Career Academy

13. Career Foundation

14. Career Solutions

15. Centennial College

16. Centre de Consultation pour l'Embauche des Jeunes

17. Centre de Services a l'Emploi de Prescott-Russell

18. Centre for Education and Training

19. Centre for Skills Development and Training

20. Centre Francophone de Toronto

21. Centre des services communautaire de Vanier

22. Chippewas of Kettle & Stony Point FN

23. City of Ottawa

24. City of Windsor

25. Club 2000 Niagara

26. Cochrane District Social Services Administration Board

27. Collège Boréal

28. Community Microskills Development Centre

29. Community Resource and Employment Service

30. Conestoga College

31. Confederation College

32. Conseil des Organismes Francophones de la Region de Durham

33. Contact - South Simcoe Community Information Centre

34. COSTI

35. Crossroads Employment and Training Resource Centre

36. CSE Consulting

37. District of Parry Sound Employment Services

38. Dixie Bloor Neighbourhood Centre

39. Dixon Hall

40. Durham College

41. Durham Region Unemployed Help Centre

42. Elgin/St. Thomas Youth Employment Counselling Centre

43. Employment and Resource Services of Georgian Bay

44. Employment Networks

45. Employment Planning and Counselling

46. Family Services of Peel

47. Fanshawe College

48. Focus Community Development Corporation

49. Focus for Ethnic Women of Waterloo

50. Fred Victor

51. Georgian College

52. Gezhtoojig Employment and Training

53. Glengarry Liaison

54. Goodwill Industries - The Amity Group

55. Goodwill Industries Essex Kent

56. Goodwill Industries Ontario Great Lakes

57. Goodwill Industries Toronto

58. Grand Erie District School Board

59. Grand River Employment and Training

60. Greater Essex County District School Board

61. Hamilton Help Centre

62. Humber College

63. Intravision/ONTRAC

64. Jamaican Canadian Association

65. Job Skills

66. Job Start

67. Job Zone d'Emploi/Employment and Education Resource Centre of Cornwall and District

68. John Howard Society of Durham

69. John Howard Society of Kingston

70. John Howard Society of Niagara

71. John Howard Society of Ottawa

72. John Howard Society of Peel, Halton & Dufferin

73. John Howard Society of Waterloo-Wellington

74. Jewish Vocational Services (JVS)

75. Kingston Employment and Youth Services (KEYS)

76. Kitchener-Waterloo Working Centre for the Unemployed

77. La Cité Collégiale

78. La Cle de la Baie en Huronie

79. Labour Education Centre

80. Lake of the Woods Employment Action Project

81. Lakehead Employment Services

82. Lambton College

83. Learning Enrichment Foundation

84. London Employment Help Centre

85. London Training Centre

86. Loyalist College

87. Lutherwood

88. Manitoulin-Sudbury District Social Services Administration Board

89. Mennonite Community Services - Aylmer

90. Meta Vocational Services

91. Miziwe Biik Aboriginal Emloyment

92. Mohawk College

93. More Than Words/Paroles et Actions

94. Mushkegowuk

95. Neighbourhood Link

96. New Canadians Centre of Excellence

97. Newcomer Women's Services Toronto

98. Niagara College

99. Niagara Falls Employment Help Centre

100. Nokee Kwe Occupational Skill Development

101. North Algoma Employment Help Centre

102. North Leeds Community Development Corporation (will provide services in partnership with another service provider)

103. Northern College

104. Northern Community Development Services

105. Northern Lights Canada

106. On Track for Women

107. Operation Springboard

108. Partners in Employment

109. Pathways to Possibilities

110. Progress Career Planning Institute (PCPI)

111. Peel Career Assessment Services

112. Petawawa Military Family Resource Centre

113. Pinecrest-Queensway Health and Community Services

114. Port CARES (Port Colborne Community Association for Resource Extension)

115. Quad County Support Services

116. Red Lake Career and Employment Services

117. Regional Municipality of Waterloo

118. Regional Municipality of Halton

119. Rehab Network Employment Resource Centre

120. Sault College

121. Sault Community Career Centre

122. Second Chance Employment Counselling

123. Seneca College

124. Settlement and Integration Services

125. Sheridan College

126. Simcoe County District School Board

127. Sioux Hudson Employment Services

128. Sir Sandford Fleming College

129. Skills for Change

130. Southwest Centre for Community Program Development

131. St. Catharines Unemployment Help Centre

132. St. Christopher House

133. St. Clair College

134. St. Lawrence College

135. St. Leonard's Youth Employment Centre

136. St. Stephen's Community House

137. Storefront

138. Sudbury Vocational Resource Centre

139. Toronto Community Employment Services

140. Toronto District School Board

141. Thorncliffe Neighbourhood Office

142. Tillsonburg and District Multi Service Centre

143. Times Change

144. Tyerman and Daughters Inc.

145. Unemployed Help Centre of Windsor

146. Victoria County Career Services

147. Vocational Pathways (VPI)

148. Watton Employment Services

149. Welland Heritage Council

150. Wesley Urban Ministries

151. WIL Counselling and Training for Employment

152. Women's Employment Resource Centre

153. Women's Enterprise Skills Training of Windsor.

154. WoodGreen Community Services

155. Windsor Women Working with Immigrant Women

156. YEAH Youth Employment Assistance Headquarters

157. YES Employment Services North Bay

158. YES Employment Services Thunder Bay

159. YMCA National Capital

160. YMCA Niagara

161. YMCA of Greater Toronto

162. YMCA of Hamilton/Burlington

163. YMCA of Kitchener-Waterloo and Cambridge

164. YMCA of Owen Sound

165. YMCA of Simcoe Muskoka

166. YMCA Sudbury

167. Yonge St. Mission

168. Youth Employment Services (Toronto)

169. Youth Habilitation Quinte

170. Youth Opportunities Unlimited

171. Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa

172. York Region District School Board

173. YWCA of Greater Toronto

Service Providers Not Selected to Deliver Employment Services

1. Abrigo

2. Academy for Technical Education and Vocational Training

3. Action 2000

4. Alderville First Nation

5. Armstrong Hayes Associates

6. Ball Lange & Associates

7. Brant Training Services Ltd.

8. Cambridge Career Counselling

9. Casey and Associates

10. Centre for Lifelong Learning/London and District Catholic School Board

11. City of Dryden

12. Colleen E. Miller Enterprises

13. Cornwall and District Immigrant Services Agency

14. Daya Counselling Centre

15. Edprin Job Training

16. Ethiopian Association

17. Grant Thornton LLP

18. Hearst Community Industrial Training

19. Huron Business Development Corporation

20. Indian Friendship Centre of Sault Ste. Marie

21. Jobs 2000

22. JBJ Employment Services

23. John Howard Society of Hamilton

24. Lambton County Human Resources Administrative Services

25. Lasi World Skills

26. LJS and Associates

27. LJ Planning

28. Lowry Training and Associates

29. Lovesick Lake Opportunity Centre

30. Malton Neighbourhood Social Services

31. Marafon Consulting

32. Massey Centre

33. Naylor-McLeod Group

34. Neighbour to Neighbour Centre

35. Nepean, Rideau and Osgoode Community Resource Centre

36. Net Success

37. New Canadians Centre of Peterborough

38. Niagara West Employment & Learning Resource Centres'

39. Northern Connections Adult Learning Centre

40. Office Workers Career Centre

41. Quinte United Immigrant Services

42. Red Lake Indian Friendship Centre

43. St. Joseph's Immigrant Women's Centre

44. Scarborough Job Finding Club

45. Social Enterprise

46. Southeast Grey Support Services

47. Time Training Services

48. Touchstone Youth Centre

49. Training Visions

50. Upper Canada District School Board

51. Vocational Methodologies

52. YMCA Sarnia Lambton

53. Youth Job Action Centre

54. Youthlink

55. YMCA of Sault Ste. Marie

56. YWCA Niagara

57. YWCA Cambridge

Service Providers Whose Agreements Will be Extended Pending Provincial Strategies - includes practice firms (75 holds + 7 PF's = 82)

1. ABEL Enterprises

2. Accommodation Training and Networking for Persons with Disabilities

3. ACFO (London Sarnia)

4. ACFO (Hamilton)

5. Acclaim Ability

6. Ausable Community Centre

7. BP Doig

8. Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work

9. Canadian Hearing Society

10. Canadore College

11. Centre de l'Alphabétisation Alec de Nipissing

12. Canadian Mental Health Association of Brant

13. Canadian Mental Health Association of Grand River

14. Canadian Mental Health Association of Niagara

15. Canadian Mental Health Association of Hastings/Prince Edward

16. Canadian Mental Health Association of Peterborough

17. Canadian National Institute for the Blind

18. Causeway Work Centre

19. Centre Alpha Mot de Passe

20. Centre d'apprentissage de Cornwall

21. City of Hamilton

22. City of London

23. City of Peterborough

24. Coalition for Persons with Disabilities

25. Community Living Campbellford

26. Community Training and Development Centre

27. Conseil Scolaire Catholique

28. County of Bruce

29. County of Dufferin

30. County of Wellington

31. Sarnia and District Association for Community Living

32. Canadian Paraplegic Association

33. CTS Computer Products

34. District of Nipissing Social Services Administration Board

35. Dixon Community Services

36. Durham Region Local Training Board

37. Epilepsy Toronto

38. Family Counselling Centre of Cambridge

39. Findhelp Information Services

40. Glencairn Community Resource Centre

41. Grey County Social Services

42. Haldimand County Support Centre

43. Hamilton Public Library

44. Halton Industry Education Council

45. Hutton House Association for Adults with Disabilities

46. JLD International

47. John Howard Society of Sault Ste. Marie

48. Krossroads Consulting

49. La Route du Savoir

50. LEADS Employment Services London

51. Limestone District School Board/Frontenac Employment Resource Centre

52. Links2Care

53. London Public Library

54. Mennonite Central Committee

55. Middlesex County Library Board

56. Municipality of Chatham-Kent

57. Niagara Centre for Independent Living

58. Norfolk Community Help Centre

59. Norfolk Community Living

60. Northwest Middlesex Multi Service Centre

61. Oasis Addiction Recovery Society

62. Ontario March of Dimes/Rehabilitation Foundation for the Disabled

63. Path Employment Services

64. People for Equal Partnership

65. Project Work

66. QUEST Centre Community Initiatives

67. Quinte West Public Library

68. Ralph Thornton

69. Region of Peel

70. Rosewood House

71. Scandcorp

72. South Essex Community Council

73. Special Needs Employment Centre

74. Sudbury Action Centre for Youth

75. Thames Valley District School Board

76. Toronto Catholic District School Board

77. Township of Brock

78. Township of Black River Matheson

79. Woolwich Community Services

80. Working Skills Centre

81. YWCA of St. Thomas/Elgin

82. ZAD Consulting

Jobs Listing for Career Developers: Update

The link for the jobs listing is made available in the righthand column of this blog. Software that I built and maintain generates the listing on an almost daily schedule from the following web sources. Here are some more of the details.

At Work
http://www.theconstellation.ca/settlement.org/jobs.shtml

Detail: Gathers all jobs from this source.

Career Professionals
http://www.careerprocanada.ca/index.php?mod=forum&act=viewtopic&topic=37

Detail: Gathers all jobs from this source.

Charity Village
http://www.charityvillage.com/cvnet/job_search.aspx?SearchMode=SEARCH2&sk=1&pt=10000&jc=10000&ot=10000&cl=10000&sie=True&sf=0&st=2147483647&yef=0&yet=2147483647&kito=True&kw=%(keyWord)s&ld=25

Detail: Performs one search on Charity Village on each of the following terms:

job, career, employment, vocational.

Then discards duplicates.

Contact Point
http://www.contactpoint.ca/index.php?option=com_resource&view=list&category_id=38&Itemid=68

Detail: Gathers all jobs from this source.

Indeed.ca
http://www.indeed.ca/jobs?q=%%22%s%%22

Detail: Performs one search on indeed.ca on each of the following terms:

career consultant, career counselor, career counsellor, career coach, career development facilitator, career development facillitator, career group facilitator, career group facillitator,
career resource centre coordinator, case manager, employment consultant, employment counselor, employment counsellor, employment rehabilitation worker, employment services assessment officer, employment specialist, intake coordinator, job coach, job developer,
job finding club coordinator, job skills counselor, job skills counsellor, language training instructor, outplacement consultant, vocational program facilitator, vocational program facillitator, vocational rehabilitation consultant, vocational support worker.

Then discards duplicates.

Job Bank
http://jb-ge.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/res_eng.aspx?ProvId=99&Keyword=4213&Student=No

Detail: Gathers all jobs from this source.

Job Skills

http://www.jobskills.org/hiring/

Detail: Gathers all jobs from this source.

Note that the software makes no attempt to discard duplicates across these sources (only within sources). I know that there are sites and cities that are unrepresented. If you can help us all by providing information about other sites or by suggesting keywords or key phrases that should be included then please do so. If you have any questions please ask.

Keeping Up—Sort Of

As much as we might like to, few of us can afford the time it takes to keep up with research that impinges on the field of career development. Here's a partial answer though.

Have a collection of journals delivered to your browser as RSS feeds and then read just a sprinkling of the abstracts from those feeds as they appear.

Here's a collection that I enjoy sampling from, all from the American Psychological Association:

Journal of Career Development

Journal of Career Assessment

Journal of Counseling Psychology

Journal of Personality & Social Psychology

Two notes:

1. Each of these links is an RSS feed address. Just copy and paste it into your favourite RSS reader.
2. You may notice slightly strange behaviour from some of these APA feeds. They seem to receive information about new journal issues before that information is posted to the journal pages on the APA web site. No matter though, you can still read the abstracts in the feeds.

If you happen upon a topic about which you would like to read free scholarly articles you might also be interested in another of my notes, Getting Enough Stuff to Read. Sometimes academic authors publish free copies of published articles so that many more people are able to read them and this note will show you how to identify those copies using the Firefox browser and a little gizmo that I made. Many people are already using it, as I discovered a week or two ago.

Careers in "Big Data"

I’ve visited this topic before when a big cheese at Google mentioned its emerging importance. Here’s a interview that mentions various ways to play in career terms. Essentially the idea is that vast amounts of data are now being collected every second of the day and night. Not only do we need people who know how to store and manage such large amounts of data, we need people who can analyse it, find trends and patterns in it, present their findings so that others can grasp what they have found and make judgments about actions to take.

This is O’Reilly’s “The Future at Work” series of videos.

PS: The information industry seems to dominate discussions of future trends. What is happening in other industries?

Finding Colleagues on LinkedIn

With a membership of over 50 million LinkedIn is a big source of potential networking candidates and groups for you. How can you identify some of them?

Using Google it's actually amazingly easy, and I'm indebted to other members of the Boolean Strings group on LinkedIn for making me aware of this.

Remember two formulae:

site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub | inurl:in) -intitle:directory {additional search phrases}

site:linkedin.com inurl:groups -intitle:directory {additional search phrases}

The unitilalicised parts are invariant. You just add the words and phrases that indicate what you want in a given instance.

Examples:

1. I'm an engineer and I would like to know if there are any groups of engineers in Ontario or Canada with interests similar to my own with whom I might kill some time. No problem:
   
   site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub | inurl:in) -intitle:directory engineer ( Ontario | Canada )
   
   There seem to be about 40. Incidentally I put in both 'Ontario' and 'Canada' with the or operator (the vertical bar) because it is possible that some Canadian groups welcome Ontario engineers without mentioning that fact.
2. I'm a career developer and I would like to find as many others as possible. The usual agony awaits you here because we are known by a variety of job titles. However, here's the basic search string:
   
   site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub | inurl:in) -intitle:directory "career developer" (Canada|Ontario)
   
   This yields about 30. The phrase "job developer" yields about 450!

At any rate you get the idea.

Career Fairs: Read What Seth Godin Says

Please.

Career fairs ...

Especially in My Occupational Role ...

... I need to be seen to be concentrating on women’s faces. (Of course I think I need to be conscious of their body language too.) Here’s why this might be so: “How objectification silences women - the male glance as a psychological muzzle.”

And, as usual, what do you think?

Microphone for Working With Clients on the 'Net

That's it there, on top of the laptop. It’s the Samson Go-Mic which comes with its own clamp and USB cable.

Here's an endorsement from an audio engineer.

Here's the manufacturer's page.

Something Else Against Immigrants

We are all aware that newcomers to Canada face higher levels of underemployment, if not unemployment. A recent edition of the BPS Research Digest offers what seems a relatively new kind of explanation for the attitudes that worsen these problems. The discussion depends on a concept called cognitive fluency.

Cognitive fluency measures the ability to perform simple and complex [mental] tasks quickly and fluently. The fluency aspect refers to automaticity, or the ability to develop or use skills so quickly that they become routine and do not require much effort^1,2.

So cognitive fluency is something that a person can display at varying levels depending on what tasks are being attempted. Not surprisingly it would appear that we feel greater levels of comfort performing tasks which give rise to heightened cognitive fluency. Who wants to do things that don’t seem to flow smoothly and automatically?

The article entitled, “Prejudice towards migrants stems partly from the fact that they’re awkward to think about,” discusses the possibility that dealing with migrants obliges people to work at suboptimal levels of cognitive fluency and that this works against their interests.

Given that this has some truth to it what should we as career developers do?

¹Fredrick A. Schrank and Dawn P. Flanagan, WJ III Clinical Use and Interpretation: Scientist-Practitioner Perspectives, Academic Press, 2003

²From Daniel C Miller, Essentials of school neuropsychological assessment, John Wiley, 2007

Some Uses of Personality Tests: Expanding Your Self-Schema

What prompted me to write this item today was the following remark in psyblog entitled “Self-Schemas: Finding The Surprising Gaps in Your Self-Knowledge”: “... the only way for us to find out [about our blind spots in our own characters] is to ask other people ... .”

Surely this is not true.

I first encountered Keirsey's temperament theory about twenty-five years ago. Although I have never swallowed his ideas whole-hog I can say that considerable reading in that general area have helped me to a better understanding of how I compare with other people. I know that I still have blind spots though.

One came up the other day when I finally did the DiSC assessment. As you probably know the DiSC is sold to employers as a way of weeding out unsuitable recruits. Job seekers who anticipate having to submit to DiSC testing by an employer may decide to take the test beforehand so that they will be in a better position to defend themselves against any nasty assertions that the test makes.

I am not going to tell you and the entire world what awful flaw the DiSC discovered in my character. (I hope and pray it never comes out.) What I will say is that when I read about it I was truly surprised. (What, me?) I decided to tuck the idea into the back of my mind to see if I could remember anything that would support or refute what the DiSC claims. At this point in time, I would say that, yes, I can remember a few times when I have definitely displayed the characteristic claimed. I have no idea what I might do about it but there it is.

But, in any case, there are alternatives to asking others for their opinions. Not that you can't do that too.

Outed By Your Boss Online--Good and Bad

We’ve all read dark but amusing stories about people being fired for speaking the down and dirty about their jobs and bosses on social networking sites like Facebook. And, if the perils of making a slip there were not enough, under Canadian law employers are entitled to monitor all of one’s work correspondence, including that involving the Internet, and they can use up-to-date software to make that easier for themselves. You might think this could only be a bad thing but actually it could work in your favour.

Listen to the first part of this CBC Search Engine podcast entitled “Spybots Can Fire You” to learn why. (Hint: It's like being the author of an oft-quoted book or article.)

Learning Styles (Myths of) & Multiple Intelligences (Facts about)

As CDP students at Conestoga College many of us (all of us?) were introduced to Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences as part of one of Rob Straby’s courses. (I was reminded that I am definitely unmusical.)

Here is access to an authoritative recent podcast that discusses some of the misunderstandings about Gardner’s theory, the absence of evidence for learning styles (and the likelihood that none will be uncovered) and Levine’s neurodevelopmental theory.

Very well presented, and good value to career developers, in my opinion