Peak Careers

Professional Development for Career Practitioners

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Interview: Professional Development through Action

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Another Peak-Careers Interview. Join me here where I interview three past-presidents of the National Career Development Association. Dr. Lisa Severy, Dr. Seth Hayden, and Dr. Lakeisha Mathews.

Today I ask:

  • What do you see as the benefits for being involved with a professional association?
  • What advice can you give to people new to the career development profession?

Interview with 3 past presidents of National Career Development Association.

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BIO’s

Dr. Lisa Severy has been a leader in career development, counseling, and higher education since 1996.  Lisa is an NCDA Certified career counselor and has worked with students and alumni at the University of Florida, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Phoenix and in private practice. Lisa earned her bachelor’s degree from Indiana University and has three graduate degrees, including a PhD in Counselor Education, from the University of Florida.  She was President of NCDA in 2013-2014 and served as the NCDA Rep to the ACA Governing Council from 2017-2023.

Dr. Seth Hayden is an associate professor of counseling, coordinator of the clinical mental health
program, and associate director of the online counseling program at Wake Forest University. Prior to
his role at Wake Forest University, he was the program director of career advising and counseling at
the Florida State University Career Center. He currently serves as a senior research associate in the
Florida State University Career Center Tech Center.

His research focuses on the connection between career development and mental health. In addition,
he examines the career and personal development needs of military service members, veterans, and
their families.

Dr. Hayden is a licensed clinical mental health counselor in North Carolina, a national certified counselor,
a certified clinical mental health counselor, and an approved clinical supervisor. He is also a co-editor
of the Journal of Military and Government Counseling and associate editor of The Career
Development Quarterly. He’s a co-author of two NCDA monographs, Group Career Counseling: Practice
and Principles, and Career Development for Transitioning Veterans. In addition, Dr. Hayden is a past
president of the Military and Government Counseling Association and the National Career
Development Association, both divisions of the American Counseling Association.

Lakeisha Mathews, Ed.D, is Director of the Career and Internship Center at the University of Baltimore and is also the owner of Right Resumes & Career Coaching, career development business focused on providing professional documents, career coaching and training for mid-level and mid-management professionals in a variety of industries.

Dr. Mathews holds several industry certifications including Certified Career Coach, Certified Resume Writer, Global and Career Development Facilitator, and Executive Career Coach among other designations. She holds an Ed.D. in Higher Education Leadership & Innovation from Wilmington University, a  M.S. in Human Resource Development from Towson University and a B.A. in Communication from the University of Maryland College Park.

Lakeisha is committed to the field of career development and in 2011, she was elected as president of the Maryland Career Development Association. In 2017 she was elected Trustee-at-Large for the National Career Development Association (NCDA) and formally served as the Trustee for Higher Education Career Counselors & Educators. She served as President of NCDA from 2022-2023 and traveled to Canada, Italy, Egypt, and Taiwan during her tenure to inspire career professionals around the world.

Of most importance is Lakeisha’s client-centered approach to career coaching. Hearing success stories continues to be the favorite part of her job as a Higher Education Administrator, Educator and Career Coach!

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Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a weekly email for career practitioners. Peak-Careers offers discussion-based online seminars for career practitioners focused on meeting continuing education needs for CCSP, GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching.

He is the author of A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move and the recipient of the 2020 Kenneth C. Hoyt Award from National Career Development Association.

Sign up to receive my TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON. You will also receive the career practitioner’s weekly email on a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more. (Sign up)

 

Why Relationship Building is so Important

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Relationship Building requires time, energy, and consistent interaction.

–Relationship building while interviewing Dr. Niles–

Relationship building is where you can move your career forward. It is more than “networking” or communicating with your “connections”. Both these words, “networking” and ”connections” feel hollow to me. A “network”  has an old school feel to it like something business people do to sell something. A “connection” almost feels like a number to me.

A “relationship” is something that feels stronger and has more give and take. When you are building your relationships you get to tell your story about the real you. Your strengths, traits, values, interests, and passions are your story, so start telling it to everyone, everywhere you go. The real value in building and maintaining professional relationships is keeping yourself known so when opportunities DO come up, your professional relationships will think of you.

career pathway for high school
————————Relationship building over zoom————————

Because so many professional relationships either start online or are maintained online, it is critical that you utilize the largest career database in the world, LinkedIn. Start with a strong profile (Start at the Beginning) and then engage online with “likes” “shares” and “comments” or creation of your own content. Each time you do one of these, it sends a message to your network about what is important to you. 

You can also be involved in any of the other social media platforms out there, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc and when you are involved, always keep the filter of “relationship building” on in your background.

People will hire you when they know, like, and trust you. This happens when you share your story with others and offer help throughout the year and throughout your entire career. Building the relationship and maintaining that relationship is the key to your career development.

How do you do relationship building?

Relationship building over coffee.    🙂
This is a “flat Kate” that my niece’s daughter sent me to for a school project

Tip 1). Obviously online you can reach out to people who are writing on topics of interest to you and let them know you are reading their posts by “liking” “sharing” and “commenting”. I once read a National Career Development Association article in Career Convergence and was so interested in the topic that I reached out to the author and asked if we could Skype. She was more than happy to and I was thrilled to further explore the topic. That was about 4 or 5 years ago and occasionally I still reach out to Adry.

Tip 2). Identify someone in your network you have not talked to in a while. Reach out to them. A simple phone call is a great way to start but with the ability to video-conference so readily at our fingertips, this offers another great way to communicate with people in your network. For those people who are geographically closer, there is nothing like a coffee/tea, a meal, or beverage of choice, to keep moving forward on relationship building.

Tip 3). Another simple way to continue to build that relationship is to check in with your contacts and ask if they have any upcoming projects they are working on. You may then offer some advice, a helping hand, or refer them to someone you know who might be helpful to them. You can also bring up any big projects you have coming up and ask them if they have any advice.

By reaching out to people and working on relationship building, your network will be strong and continue to be strong. Yes, it takes effort to build and maintain relationships but the effort pays off in the long run as you never know who might help you sometime in the future. 

I call my brother weekly, video-conference monthly with my backpacking buddies Rees & Howard, call my dad weekly, and take my wife out to eat for date night once a week. Yes, there is time and energy spent but the payoffs are great. 

Richard Feller talks about the fact that you are the average of the six people you hang out with. As I look at my closest friends I realize that I get kindness from my brother, thoughtfulness from Rees, humor from Howard, and groundedness from my wife. I choose my friends wisely now that I know that.

I also believe you are the average of the six professionals you hang out with as well. That is why I grabbed a beer with James last week, am having lunch with Tammy next week, video-conferenced with Bob, and agreed to meet with Andrea last week. I learn from each of them and hopefully, they learn something from me. 

So get out of that comfort zone and move into your “stretch zone” where you actively build your relationships and don’t take them for granted.

Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a monthly newsletter for career practitioners. Peak-Careers offers discussion-based online seminars for career practitioners focused on meeting continuing education needs for CCSP, GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching.

Sign up here to receive my  TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON.  You can also receive the career practitioners newsletter which includes a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more. 

Peak Careers - Professional Development for Careers

Networking – Ewwww…

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EWW

Why does the word “networking” conjure up such negative thoughts for people? Many of my clients and the students I have worked with seem to believe it is only for “professionals” dressed in suits, playing golf, and smoking cigars. That image is not MY image of networking. So I asked myself, “What do I need to do to help explain networking to my clients?”

I searched LinkedIn for articles on networking and I found 214,500+ articles and the majority are focused on “What NOT to do”. Whew! Where to start? So I decided to post a discussion in the NCDA LinkedIn group and to email some key people in my network. I picked up many great ideas as well as confirmation on a number of my thoughts on this topic.

[Read more…] about Networking – Ewwww…

Developing Your Network One Drip – One Drop at a Time.

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Career development is all personal. People do not hire resumes. People do not connect with texts or emails. It’s always been, and probably always will be, human contact that matters. Paper and electronic communication should be tools to create human contact or to maintain relationships.

Notice I did not say that evil word, networking. Not sure why but the word networking causes anxiety with some people. Maybe it is too stuffy or old school. Regardless of why it doesn’t resonate with many people, I have begun calling it “relationship building”.

Think of relationship building as the drip on your faucet. You can fill a sink with a dripping faucet but it will take awhile. Relationship building does not happen by “turning on the faucet”.  The friends you have today did not happen because you walked up to a perfect stranger and HUGGED them 🙂 Oh my…that is a visual, isn’t it? I can only imagine my hockey buddy Pete running away from me the first time we meet and I hug him. [Read more…] about Developing Your Network One Drip – One Drop at a Time.

You, my friend, are a victim of disorganized thinking.

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We, as career practitioners, all have the ability to be “…the great and all powerful wizard”  every day.   We must never underestimate the power of our words.   Here are 10 quotes from the classic movie The Wizard of Oz and how they translate for career practitioners.

1. Wizard of Oz to Cowardly Lion: You, my friend, are a victim of disorganized thinking. You are under the unfortunate impression that just because you run away you have no courage; you’re confusing courage with wisdom. 

When we meet with students or clients they often bring to us a preconceived picture of their career path and one of the greatest conversations we can have is helping them reframe their thinking from seeing barriers to visualizing opportunities.

[Read more…] about You, my friend, are a victim of disorganized thinking.

“It’s Not What You Know….” cuts both ways.

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Sometimes knowing a person can be a problem.  My mother-in-law has always stated “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”  And I argued with her once (only once 🙂 that you also have to KNOW something AND be a good person as well. I KNOW some people and I can guarantee I would NEVER hire them!

As career counselors / advisors, we all know the power of networking and how important it is to find someone on the “inside” of a company, but that is only the first step.  I know a college student who reached out to Alumni with a clumsily written, grammatically incorrect email, that did not bode well for him. (or the college).  Or the typos on a resume / cover letter, or the lousy handshake, or even worse, bad breath.  Knowing someone is great and important, but you have less than 15 seconds in most cases to make that an advantage.

[Read more…] about “It’s Not What You Know….” cuts both ways.