Category: Mavens

This category discusses careers for someone “in the know”, an adventurous, people person. Mavens communicate, invite and gather groups for activities and travel. Life is all about experiences for this group.

Healthcare Leaders Inspire the Next Generation Workforce

by Edu-Advisor, posted in HR Professionals, Mavens, Naturalists, Solving the Work-Learn Problem, Specialists

Compassionate Assistance is a concierge home care agency started by CEO, Carl G. Santoro with the inspiration of caring for his younger brother who grew up with Down Syndrome. Inspiring the next generation workforce has been the main focus for Carl and his team for over last few years. This is done through philanthropic events and services supporting the local healthcare and senior communities in Scottsdale, Arizona. High employee engagement at Compassionate Assistance has to lead his millennial staff to create a truly winning environment and culture of success. He lives to serve and to give back to his community.  Great leaders, like Carl, always note experiencing personal satisfaction when they have the opportunity to engage with their employees and when they have the ability to help their community flourish.

The following are 6 ways that Compassionate Assistance inspires youth and helps its community succeed:

  1. Purpose- providing care at Compassionate Assistance is focused around purpose. All employees have the main job of being a caregiver. Compassionate Assistance’s mission is to enable individuals to live independently and with dignity in their own home.  They strive to do so by elevating the standard of in-home care to improve the long-term health, safety, and happiness of individuals.
  2. Mentorship- as the CEO, Carl provides 1-on-1 mentorship to every one of his employees. Carl says “To become a strong leader, you cannot do it alone. I focus on successful outcomes that offer a greater impact to the organization both internally and externally.”
  3. Opportunity- At Compassionate Assistance there is no ceiling to the opportunity that is given. They sponsor 3-5 events weekly at senior communities and nursing schools to be able to give back and show others how truly different they are as a company. Events include live arts and crafts, Q&As, ice cream socials, to live music performed by one of their talented employees.
  4. Incentivize- Mr. Santoro uses resources to integrate education into the expansion of his business, he looks for opportunities to reward his team for providing patients with exceptional service. Caregiver spotlights are conducted monthly which showcase their top caregiver who performed best that month. For his internal staff there are daily and weekly competitions when it comes to on-boarding new clients. This creates a sense of competitiveness around the office, however, it is a full team effort.
  5. Technology- By investing in the top technology for healthcare, it is beneficial for Compassionate Assistance employees to stay up to date. Caregivers need to arrive at patient shifts feeling prepared. Knowing critical details about the shift and specific client needs are very important. With Compassionate Assistance’s mobile app, caregivers can log in from anywhere to access driving directions via Google Maps and daily, weekly, or monthly shift details.
  6. Engagement- high engagement rates with caregivers and internal staff is detrimental to Compassionate Assistance’s success. If employees are not engaged in what is going on they will leave and go to another company. Creating high employee engagement is needed to retain their existing millennial staff while at the same time being able to attract and hire new ones. Carl empowers his staff by assisting and mentoring them to become confident. In every weekly meeting, he asks and supports their input on current and important issues going on. This creates a work environment with high engagement.

More businesses are developing programs that help their community thrive. If your business would like to share how you are making a difference locally and how you are providing opportunities for students to learn about your industry, feel free to contact us at D2C Help

 

What Should My Child Do After High School? Go to College, Trade School or Go to Work?

by Edu-Advisor, posted in Businesses Work-Learn Insights, Mavens, Naturalists, Processors, Protectors, Solving the Work-Learn Problem, Specialists, Visionaries, Work-Learn Solutions for Businesses

Society is starved for relevant insights about colleges, trade schools, and other work-learn solutions. Good advice can be found everywhere and that is the problem. Because insights are coming from everywhere it is difficult to make heads or tails of the information. Even for the most well-educated, it is almost impossible to help our children make informed decisions about their future. Many times the best advice comes to us after the decision is already made. For example, you might hear from an old friend who tells you about their career that has an abundance of job openings and then you find out that they were even able to retire at 45. If only you had this information sooner because your child just graduated with a degree in something totally different and is sleeping on your sofa. Should you send them back to school?

It just seems that it would be so much easier if we could find the answers about career preparation and emerging career opportunities when we are looking for them. Having the chance to hear the voices from others in our communities, as well as, industry experts.  It would be excellent to even hear from those individuals with ideas very different from our own. Having access to these perspectives based on varying career-related experiences would give our children the best chance to fulfill our own career aspirations. Just think if you could hear from all of the hiring managers and industry professionals who are seeking employees in a specific region. This type of organic environment would provide amazing value and it could help so many communities thrive. The students graduating from colleges, trade schools and even those going to directly to work would more closely align with the needs of the workforce locally.

As an educator, I always wanted to do more for my students. I consistently brought professionals into my classroom to talk with students, recognizing that students need a village of responses to make better decisions about careers. For this reason, I set out on a course to try and figure out a way that we could help more students find the best career pathways while they were spending the least amount of money on tuition and other career-related expenses. I wanted students to be able to follow their passion, but still, have a realistic focus on how to achieve their goals. The only way through this problem is to provide information that helps students discover who they are while having access to information about all the jobs out there. This is quite a task, given the fact that the Department of Labor has identified at least 1100 job titles. But believe it or not, with the help of other educators we created a system that breaks all of the jobs down into 6 Mega Clusters for easy career matching.

There are certainly places that you can go to find career advice for your child. For example, there is an amazing group called Grown and Flown Parents on Facebook. In this group, parents seek advice from other parents about college for their children. This group is super active in less than 1 hour one career-related question will have will over 50 replies from other parents who have experienced similar situations. This platform is perfect for the person who asked the question and even those who have come across the thread, but wouldn’t it be even better to have a way to organize responses so those with similar questions could quickly and easily find the answers to their questions? These useful insights could help so many more families find the information that they seek. One problem with this group is that is college focused, not every child will attend college so parents of the child going to a trade school might not exactly fit into this group, but they certainly could benefit from hearing the voices of these other parents.

Because so many students and families are struggling to figure it all out, I started an organization in 2017 called Dream2Career. We are working with educators and business professionals on a platform called the D2C Directory. We are in the launching/testing phase of this solution, and we would love to hear your thoughts as we seek access to hiring managers and talent acquisition experts who can add training recommendations and relevant entry-level hiring information.  If you are interested in helping, you are an industry subject matter expert or if you just want to stay informed sign-up and follow our blog. We will keep you updated on the progress.  By this summer, we hope to have a fully functioning work-learn ecosystem that will help students find and prepare for dream careers.

Idaho Labor Research Emphasizes Value of Education and Training

by Edu-Advisor, posted in Mavens, Naturalists, Processors, Protectors, Specialists, Visionaries

Idaho Labor Research Emphasizes Value of Education and Training

Check out the Hot Jobs Table too!  https://idahoatwork.com/2019/02/25/idaho-labor-research-emphasizes-value-of-education-and-training/ via @wordpressdotcom

Find and Prepare for your Dream Career

by Edu-Advisor, posted in Mavens, Naturalists, Processors, Protectors, Solving the Work-Learn Problem, Specialists, Visionaries

It’s never too late to find a career that makes you happy. Many professionals decide to change careers because they’re unhappy in their current situation. But how can you find a new career path that’s right for you? Try asking yourself this question: If I woke up tomorrow as a billionaire, what are the things that I would want to do and support? This question can help you understand what drives you. Once you know your passion, then you can use the method discussed below to help you gain an even greater understanding of yourself and identify the types of careers you should consider.

The Six Mega Career Clusters

After more than 10 years educating and advising students and professionals of all ages and from every industry and hearing their job dissatisfaction stories, I designed six mega career clusters to help job seekers find the right path. To create these six mega career clusters, I studied the 1,110 occupational titles included in the Occupational Information Network‘s 2010 standard occupational classification taxonomy and combined them with insights from the National Career Clusters Framework, which identifies 16 career clusters that are used by schools and workforce groups across the nation.

I’ve used these clusters in my various advisement roles over the years. They can help you decide where to begin the search for a dream career. This method brings the psychological understanding of jobs into very real alignment with career aspirations. Once you identify your ideal cluster or clusters, choosing from among the 1,110 occupational titles can become more manageable. You’ll be less likely to waste time looking in the wrong career funnel, and you can quickly determine the career that could make you happiest.

Mavens

Mavens are individuals who seem to be in the know. They are risk takers. They enjoy engaging in adventures and being around other people. These individuals are the ones that can talk someone into doing almost anything. They see beauty in interesting places, and they are super creative. Mavens are conversationalists, and they often leap then look. Career options include jobs involving art, communication, media, marketing, sales, hospitality and tourism. If you’re a maven but want to do something more, check out the visionaries category.

Naturalists

Naturalists are individuals who love nature. They have a love for science as it relates to humans, animals and all living things. Naturalists are perhaps the most balanced of the mega career clusters. They use reason to solve problems but also understand beauty and creation in all of their forms. This group includes environmentalists, farmers and those who work in energy and conservation. It also includes people who work in labs. Naturalists also work in fields like human services where they’re helping people emotionally. If you feel that you’re more interested in the sciences — and in using science to answer questions — than in nature, keep reading because you might be a visionary too.

Protectors

These individuals are likely to make decisions based on the letter of the law, which they will maintain at all times. They may be less likely to question authority, even if they disagree. These are the people you can trust to tell your secrets to because they tend to be private and crave order. They protect people, information and structures. Protectors may find careers in public administration or cybersecurity. They also may become lawyers, police officers and correctional officers.

Organizers

Organizers carry out the plan of the visionaries, and they often ensure that businesses comply with current regulations. Organizers often develop the scope of projects, which can include training people on the plan. These individuals might have titles like director or manager. They may work in accounting, human resources, operations and education. This is a very big category that includes traits and interests that intersect with many of the other categories. If you identify yourself as an organizer, you may want to see how you match up with the other categories to get yourself in the right funnel to begin your career research.

Specialists

If you want something fixed, call a specialist. Specialists are critical thinkers who are often mechanically inclined. They usually have a knack for seeing and understanding how things operate. This group is made up of problem-solvers who take pride in their work and often show great attention to detail. Specialists often hold titles like technician, contractor or operator and work in the construction and manufacturing industries or other trades. Architects, surveyors, beauticians and technical drafters also fall into this category.

Visionaries

Visionaries tend to have the ability to see the big picture. They’re often driven to advance their understanding of a concept or an idea through fact-finding. Many visionaries are entrepreneurs and forward-thinking individuals in fields involving science, technology, engineering and math. Visionaries also are likely to have many of the traits listed in the other five clusters. For example, they often take risks like mavens and solve problems like specialists. They’re those individuals who can be good at almost anything. At first, identifying yourself as a visionary may seem overwhelming because you have so many career options from which to choose. You can overcome this anxiety by identifying what will make you happiest. Referring back to the question you asked yourself earlier, if you woke up tomorrow as a billionaire, what are the things you would spend your time and money on? These answers can help you define your passion. That can tell you which other mega clusters to consider.

Once you’ve identified the career cluster or clusters that best match your personality, you will likely be better equipped to identify the optimal career pathway. Defining yourself first can make your career search more effective.

This article originally appeared in Forbes

There is a cool new resource call the D2C Directory where you can find and prepare for your dream career.