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About Us
What's New
Changing Job Market Impacts Older Workers
Due to recent changes in the job market, we’ve been seeing more and more people in their 40s, 50s, and even early 60s, looking for career planning and résumé assistance. After spending 20+ years in a profession that may have disappeared overnight, it can be tough to figure out where to go next, especially when today’s jobs require new skills.
One of our recent clients, Tracy Weedman, described the current job market as “Lots of far fetched offerings, a lot of entry level positions.” After experiencing great success in the mortgage industry, but not much success finding something new, Tracy took the advice of his wife and decided to do some serious career planning instead of just another résumé makeover.
A résumé is limited to summarizing the past, while career planning involves looking into the future, for jobs in completely different industries, or occupations that may require additional training. The key is to start by considering careers that match your personality, and then choosing the most promising path, which is why Tracy’s first step involved taking the DISC behavioral career assessment. After taking the DISC assessment, Tracy agreed that everyone considering a career change should use this tool to better understand how their personality styles match different jobs.
As we progressed to the Narrow-Down phase of the planning process, Tracy started to look at industries he hadn’t previously considered. It also became clear that he’d benefit from updating his computer skills. As many older workers are discovering, you need a fairly high level of computer skills just to be able to create and send a résumé these days. We referred Tracy to WorkSource at Clark College, where he was pleasantly surprised to find that he qualified for unemployment benefits, and he may even have his computer classes paid for by WorkSource this fall.
Ironically, anyone over 24 seems to think career planning is a process for teenagers in high school, yet most high school students aren’t willing to take the career planning process seriously. The fact is, whether you’re 18 or 58, it’s always a good idea to figure out what all your options are and try to choose the best possible career path, especially with today’s rapidly changing job market.
Of course, the only way to find the right path is to spend time looking for it, and it helps to have an experienced guide like Career Solutions.
July 2008 Posting
Career Solutions Joins the National Career Development Association
Career Solutions is now a proud member of the National Career Development Association (NCDA), which sets forth a range of industry standards for career planning professionalism throughout the country.
NCDA applicants must be accepted by the group before gaining membership, and are required to keep abreast of the latest career planning methods while maintaining the highest possible standards of ethics and business practices.
For more information on the National Career Development Association, go to: http://ncda.org/
January 2008
New Career Values Assessment – Workplace Motivators
A new career assessment called Workplace Motivators is being added to the Career Solutions planning process, in addition to the Career Insights assessment currently being used.
The Career Insights assessment uses the DISC system to define personality style and then suggests careers which fit well with a person’s behavioral tendencies. Career Solutions founder Steve Fuhr is quick to point out four reasons why the older interest or skills assessments are simply not effective career planning tools. First and foremost, interests change like the wind, especially with young adults. Second, how can someone show interest in a career they don’t even know the name of yet? Most importantly, what if a career that interests someone doesn’t fit who they really are? And the problem with skill assessments is that more often than not, people need to learn new skills for a new career. Asking someone what they are good at today is never a good predictor of what they need to be good at tomorrow, and only serves to limit future possibilities.
The new Workplace Motivators assessment, which also uses the DISC system, focuses on a person’s value structure and priorities, also known as value hierarchies. The report measured six key work values:
| Value | The Drive For |
| Theoretical | Knowledge and information |
| Utilitarian/Economic | Money and wealth |
| Aesthetic | Form and harmony |
| Social/Altruistic | Helping others in need |
| Individualistic/Political | Power and influence |
| Traditional/Regulatory | Order and structure |
After the Career Insights assessment suggests dozens of careers that fit a person’s style, and our Career Narrow-Down Report scores jobs based on factors like growth and income, the Workplace Motivators can help determine which top career options meet a person’s core needs on the job.
If you have ever known something to “feel right” or worked with someone who makes you feel like “you’re on the same page” then you know the power of matching values. Values lie at the heart of what makes us happy inside; however, it is important to note that Workplace Motivators can distill latent vales. These are preferences that may not be apparent or easily articulated by a person until they have been tested.
A sample Workplace Motivators assessment can be downloaded from our Career Planning webpage.
September 2007 Posting
University of Portland -Young Entrepreneur Event
Career Solutions founder Steve Fuhr conducted a series of workshops at the University of Portland on July 19-21 during the Young Entrepreneurs Business Week Leadership conference.
This annual event is designed to introduce young adults from various Oregon high schools to the challenges and rewards of running their own businesses. Participants engaged in a variety of activities that helped them better understand the internal workings of businesses, and how to start one of their own.
The first workshop, entitled Making Smart Career Choices, pointed out how technology and global economics impact business today, as well as how students can research industry trends. Students were asked to first identify their own personality and value systems so that they choose businesses within industries that fit their unique style, using tools like DISC Behavioral Assessments. While all students were encouraged to continue their education, Mr. Fuhr noted that not all businesses will require a formal degree, but they will most certainly require training beyond high school to be successful.
On the closing day of the event, Steve conducted a workshop for parents entitled How to Choose a College & Pay for It, which focused on strategies for sorting through more than 10,000 U.S. colleges to find which schools best suit a student’s needs. Mr. Fuhr also discussed ways to maximize financial aid awards, where to search for scholarships, and how to take advantage of various employer-based tuition reimbursement programs.
Career Solutions would like to extend thanks to Maurissa Fisher for coordinating the event and gathering such an incredibly motivated group of young adults.
August 2007 Posting
Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) – 2007 Oregon Conference
Steve Fuhr of Career Solutions was asked by the Oregon FBLA chapter to participate in the state conference in Portland again this year. This annual event draws over a thousand students and dozens of staff from high schools throughout the state to compete in a variety of events, ranging from job interviewing and public speech to business plans and electronic portfolio development.
Hundreds of students attended our workshops on career planning, employment preparation, college funding, and goal setting. Dozens of teachers and counselors were also in attendance, as these workshops are designed to “train the trainers” as well as help students gain skills they need to succeed. One teacher from a Portland area school noted that the résumé and job interview workshop was particularly helpful because she never needed to create a résumé to get her job 20 years ago, but is now being asked to teach students how to create them.
Career Solutions was also proud to sponsor and judge a new competition for FBLA, entitled Electronic Portfolios, because of our extensive experience with helping Oregon schools achieve the new Career Related Learning (CRL) graduation requirements. These portfolios are collections of evidence that prove students have made well-researched career and postsecondary plans. Starting in 2007, all high school seniors must create one of these portfolios of evidence in order graduate.
Steve Fuhr, the owner of Career Solutions, noted that most schools have students put together paper portfolios in binders, with results that are little more than a collection of handwritten notes and photocopies that can be easily lost or damaged. Electronic portfolios not only simplify the collection of CRL evidence, but also improve the quality of the information presented by introducing color and sound, while taking up minimal physical space. Best of all, they can be backed up by the school on a DVD, and in the likely event that a student’s portfolio is lost or damaged, it can be easily reconstructed.
As a result of this experience, Career Solutions will be offering a new workshop for the 07-08 academic year entitled Creating Electronic Portfolios which will help students and school staff learn how to take advantage of this new process.
June 2007 Posting
About the Founder
Career Solutions is the passion of Steve Fuhr, who has over 20 years of experience in professional development, and has worked as a financial aid counselor, placement coordinator, and college recruiter. Ironically, Steve dropped out of high school as a teenager but went on to earn his degree in Marketing as an adult student, which is probably one reason why he brings such a down-to-earth perspective to the process of career planning.
Since 1998, Steve has delivered his popular high-energy workshops to well over 100,000 students at high schools, colleges, and employment centers throughout the Northwest. He recently authored two reports for Portland Public Schools that studied career and educational issues affecting recent high school graduates, and works with dozens of career centers in the Portland area to help them achieve new state-mandated career-related learning standards.
If you have a question or comment for Steve you can e-mail him at: steve@career-solutions.info
| ←Go to the graphic version of this page | ↑ Go to the Graphic-Version Homepage |
| ↑ Go the the Text-Only Homepage |
| Career Planning | College Selection | Scholarship Searches | Employment Prep | Group Workshops | Prices | Terms |