Will Running a Business Affect Your Child’s Career Choice?

The parents of every child entrepreneur are happy to see them using ideas, working hard and making money. However, there is also a fear that the youngster may prefer to stick to their business even after school and that this will prevent them from making a professional career. Is this fear substantial? Use this guide to find out.
Entrepreneurship at a young age should be viewed as a hobby. It is true that this hobby involves responsibilities, but it is designed for learning purposes above all. It is perfectly natural for a parent to encourage the child entrepreneur to learn about market fluctuations, marketing and management and to encourage them to do well in science or math. The two are not opposing. They are both valuable learning experiences.
Making profits does not mean that the business will remain profitable and grow in the future. It is really important for a parent to make this clear to a child entrepreneur. It is natural for the kid to be happy with the business and to wish to continue running it if the venture is doing well.
Hence, it is the responsibility of the parent to explain that circumstances change and that the business may not always do well. It is also worth explaining the importance of constant learning for the success of every entrepreneur. In this way, you will have the opportunity to encourage your youngster to consider different career options, apart from entrepreneurship.
Taking into account the interests and dreams of your child entrepreneur is essential. You may have always wanted your youngster to become a doctor. However, they are now running a successful venture in the graphic design industry. Your kid is happy with the work and with the way the business is going.
If this is what they want to do, then you should respect their decision. Of course, it is worth discussing all possible career options with your kid and the pros and cons of each one. In this way, the youngster will be able to make the right decision for them.
Overall, there is no danger of your child entrepreneur choosing the wrong career path because of running a business from an early age. It is true that entrepreneurship may affect this choice to an extent, but your kid’s long term interests and dreams will play a major role in the decision making process. With your guidance, support and help, your youngster will make the best choice.

Read more »

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT & SPORTS CAREER MANAGEMENT

More than 45 million people find themselves unemployed each year.  Millions of others try to increase their satisfaction within the workplace as well as advance their careers by looking for alternative jobs and opportunities.  Statistics show that you will make more than 10 job changes and between three and five career changes during your lifetime.
Many people transition into a sports career by accident.  They do little career planning, other than take advantage of opportunities that arise unexpectedly.  While chance and luck do play important roles in finding employment, when you plan for future sports career changes, you will experience even greater degrees of chance and luck!
Finding a job or changing a career in a systematic and well-planned manner is hard, yet rewarding work.  The task should first be based upon a clear understanding of the key ingredients that define jobs and careers.  Starting with this understanding, you should convert key concepts into action steps for implementing your job search.
A career is a series of related jobs which have common skill, interest and motivational bases.  You may change jobs several times without changing careers.  But once you change skills, interests and motivations, you change careers.
This process is not just for job seekers or those “on the outside, trying to get inside”, but also for the millions of professionals currently working in Sports in need of strategic action plans that help individuals to recognize where their career has been, where it is now, and where it is going.

Job Search Process

Networking plays a key role in the overall sports career development and job search process.  If you want to find a job or change careers in sports, you must first know how networking relates to other equally important career development and job search processes.
Finding a job in sports is both an art and a science. It encompasses a variety of basic facts, principles and skills you can learn, but you must also adapt to different situations. “Learning how to find a job in sports” can be as important as “knowing how to perform a job.” Having marketable skills is essential to making job search strategies work effectively for you.

Four Step Career Development Process

1. Conduct a Self-Analysis…(Skill Set Driven)
Assess your skills, abilities, motivations, interest, values, temperament, experience and accomplishments.  Your basic strategy is to develop a firm foundation of information about yourself before proceeding to other stages in the career development process.  This assessment develops the necessary self-awareness upon which you can effectively communicate your qualifications to employers as well as focus and build your career.  Know your strengths, weaknesses, and what you do best.
2. Gather Career Information…(Marketplace Segment Driven)
Here you need to formulate goals, gather information about alternative jobs and sports careers through reading and talking to informed people.  Then narrow your alternatives to specific marketplace segments for which you have the highest degree of passion and interest. When you match your skill set with your passion, you will never work a day in your life.
3.  Develop Job Search Skills
Focus your career around specific job search skills for landing the job you want.  These skills are closely related to one another as a series of job search steps.  They involve conducting research, writing resumes and letters, prospecting and networking, conducting informational interviews, interviewing for a job, and negotiating salary and terms of employment.  Each of these skills involves well-defined strategies and tactics you must learn in order to be effective in the job market.
4. Implement Each Job Search Step
The final step emphasizes the importance of transforming understanding into action.  You do this by implementing each job search step which already incorporates the knowledge, skills and abilities you have acquired.

Read more »

10 Tips for Career Development

By Roberta Neault, PhD and Deirdre Pickerell, MEd 

Whether your organization is struggling with recruiting the right employees at the right time, sustaining employee engagement, or facilitating gracious exits, a systematic career development process may be helpful. Employee career development is a responsibility shared between individuals and the organizations they work for; intentional career development interventions can result in optimal career engagement (i.e., an appropriate match between challenges and individual/organizational capacity). Disengaged employees may feel underutilized (i.e., they have more to offer the organization than they’re invited to contribute) or completely overwhelmed (i.e., challenges are far beyond their individual capacity, or the resources available, to get their job done).
The following 10 tips will help you get started in building an in-house career development process to keep employees at all levels of your organization engaged.
1. Clarify the concept.
Ensure all stakeholders (i.e., board members, leadership team, supervisors, and employees) have a shared understanding of “career development” and what your proposed process will entail.
2. Metrics matter.
Whether to build a business case to launch a new career development initiative or to sustain funding so that it doesn’t become simply the “flavour of the month,” it’s important to collect relevant data, measure return on investment, and document relevant change.
3. Convince key players.
Research supports that employees are attracted to organizations that support career development and are more likely to stay if they continue to grow and develop. Adjust your message according to who you need to convince, focussing on “What’s in it for them?”
4. Culture shifts slowly.
A process is not simply a program. To make a significant difference, career management needs to become embedded into organizational culture. This is a responsibility shared by everyone in the organization, not just the human resource management (HR) team.
5. Choose a champion.
An effective organization-wide career development process needs dedicated time, resources, and accountability for measurable outcomes. By identifying a champion, you will ensure that employee career development stays on the radar screen as a core business priority – not a “pet project” managed off the side of someone’s desk.
6. Communicate constantly.
To ensure that career development stays top of mind for all stakeholders, constant communication is crucial. Embed your message within all available internal and external media (i.e., newsletters, intranet, website, corporate TV, screensavers, recruiting brochures, employee orientation handouts, social media), as well as offering topical workshops, seminars, webinars, or courses.
7. Dream big . . . start small.
Begin with a comprehensive vision of what you’d like your career development process to become, but don’t hesitate to start small. As you’re making a case and convincing key stakeholders, consider setting up a section on your corporate intranet, bookmarking relevant websites, displaying posters about career services within your community, or partnering with a community-based career resource centre to support recruitment of new employees and help them continue to manage their careers while employed.
8. Bridge the silos.
Typically, career counsellors and coaches study and work within very different worlds than HR professionals or organizational development consultants. However, especially in regards to employee career development, both groups have much to learn from each other.
9. Career coaches are made . . . not born.
Although HR professionals, managers, and supervisors may have extensive training in their own fields of expertise, they may have no training specific to career development. To support your career development process, consider hiring a career development specialist, supporting your champion to access relevant professional development, and training your managers and supervisors to have effective career conversations.
10. Clarify responsibilities.
As previously discussed, employee career development is a process, with contributions required from the organization, managers, and employees themselves.
Being intentional about building and sustaining your process has the potential to reap great rewards – at all stages of employment from recruitment through to gracious exits.

Read more »

Career Counseling Services

Article by Karan Naidoo

Most schools have career counseling services, a resource that’s often severely underused. Many students struggle to find what their passion is and agonize over deciding the path they want to take in life, but they still don’t ask for directions. Now, a career counselor won’t necessarily tell you all the things you need to do or provide you with a surefire life trajectory. Rather, career counseling services are intended to guide individuals so that they have an idea of the options out there and they can better prepare for the great unknown.
You can find some career counselors in high school, where their role is mainly helping students to get into college. College is an important vehicle into the job market, so career counselors provide advice regarding things like what universities the student might be interested in and the requirements for admission into those institutions. The counselor will dispense information like when to sign up for standardized tests like the SAT and which schools focus on specific fields of education and where they are located.
Career counseling services in college are more directly career oriented, because at that point graduating students are either looking for a job or pursuing further education to receive a higher degree that will help them procure a job more easily in the future. To help college students, a career counselor might help them look for graduate schools and prepare for tests like the GRE, kind of like the SAT all over again.
Career counseling services can also provide the notorious career test, an examination intended to determine which careers would be best for you based on your strengths and interests. Career tests have often been spoofed in mainstream media, portrayed as providing ridiculous results that send test takers down the wrong path. In contrast, real life career tests can be fairly useful, but of course they’re not to be sworn by. Only you can really figure out and decide what’s best for you.
The same skills and interests can apply to many different fields-for example, majoring in psychology can lead to working as a counselor, a business person or even a lawyer. Or you might decide to pursue a career that has nothing to do with what your studies emphasized-things aren’t set in stone and you can still change your mind. Remember that it’s your life, and the path you take ultimately depends on the choices that you make.

Read more »

Career Development Process – Tips To Realize Your Career Goals

Career development is an avenue that a person must adhere to in order to prepare for, sustain and to advance in the careers they have chosen.
Before now, many big name companies had conferences that centered on the topic of career development for their employees. It was good for 2 reasons; it helped its employees gain the needed skills important to enhancing their future goals in their career.
Many companies will still educate their employees, however nowadays it is important for the individual to assume this responsibility by taking control of their own education and progress through career development. The more the person prepares himself the more chances he will have at advancement.
One of the most important things that a person can do is to examine the career development goals and the skills they possess. They should know what they are going to be, if they are good at organizing others, and can they work in one to one situations with their clients. Companies are interested in the skills their new employees will bring to the table.
The next aspect of career development is the decisions you will make about what career is best for you presently. An example would be, Joe wants to be a graphic artist, he knows he will need schooling and talent in the graphic arts, and maybe even some mathematics in his bag of tricks.
Once he knows what skills he can market in his career choice, then he can fully realize what areas will need tweaking if he is to move up in his career. In career development education is a key factor.
While deciding on classes to take to enhance your career it is a good idea to choose a few career development classes as well. You can do this at anytime during your career development process. These classes teach important skills such as writing the perfect resume, and may also recommend seminars or conferences that will further your career objectives.
Continuing Education is an important part of change; it makes you more prepared for the new avenues your company may want to explore.
There are many career development studies and surveys which watch for the stress levels of the employee. Companies want to have an idea of how well you will cope with stressful situations, whether or not you can get others to do their job effectively, are you a social or solitary person, Is he the type of person to explain problems to his employer, or hold it bottled inside, or to take it out on others.
There are many other things to consider, but here is a few to get you on the right track to your perfect career.

Read more »