Career Kick Start for Recent Graduates:
The Story of Your Success
Program Description
Career Kick Start for Recent Grads: the Story of Your Success is a five-week one-to-one program for recent or soon-to-be graduates of a university, college or a career training program. Facilitator Shelley Hourston uses an Appreciative Inquiry model of coaching combined with personal narrative (story) to guide participants in re-discovering, reviewing, and integrating strengths, skills, and experience developed to date, including recently acquired professional expertise.
One of the challenges for new graduates is lack of confidence regarding the level of practical experience they bring to potential employers. In Career Kick Start, you will examine your recently acquired skills from various perspectives and explore common threads of knowledge running through your life and work. During discussion and exercises in the weekly sessions, you will develop a new appreciation of your strengths and capabilities, and begin to integrate new skills with your life story—your identity.
Career Kick Start is a practical preparation for the often daunting job search. Previous participants have reported feeling significantly more confident about their over-all competence and value as a potential employee as early as week two. By the end of week four, you will have developed a portfolio of stories or examples to draw on during job interviews that exemplify your personal and professional strengths and knowledge. The stories cultivated during the program prepare you to convey your personality, values and passion. Once able to draw on a repertoire of stories about your life and work, you will feel less anxious about providing unique, reflective, and memorable answers to interview questions.
The focus of the final week is determined by you and your needs. You may opt to continue developing your story portfolio, prepare for a specific interview, or if completing the program with others, you may choose to share selected stories with co-participants via teleconference.
Additional tools/exercises used during the program include:
- Positive feedback exercise: in which participants solicit positive feedback and stories from friends, family and previous co-workers and colleagues. This is an extraordinarily powerful and moving experience.
- Gratitude journal: used to record positive events and occurrences each day. The power of this activity often surprises workshop participants.
- Professional Job Hunter's Toolkit: an analysis of current job ads in your new field. This activity includes background research on one organization of interest and preparation of a background brief in preparation for an application for employment and interview. Participants evaluate compatibility of the organization with their own values, interests, and goals. Coaching in research skills is available for individuals who need it or want a review.
- Skills/experience inventory: a comprehensive compilation of all experience and learning from high school to present day.
- Professional resources inventory: research and compilation of a list of relevant professional associations, listservs, communities of practice, potential mentors and other sources of professional support.
- Personal support inventory: compilation of a list of individuals and acquaintances who can offer support if/when needed.
Email Shelley Hourston: shelley [at] shourstonandassociates.com or call 778-868-8562.
Cost: $750.00 (Cdn.) (plus GST/HST for Canadian residents). Payment is accepted by cheque or Visa, Mastercard, American Express or Discover (via PayPal).
Comments from participants
Today's interview was such a testament to our sessions! I used story examples to answer a lot of the questions and did not have any problems with the "big" questions as I usually do—i.e. "How did you get to where you are?" "How does this job fit in with your career plans?" I was very happy with my interview. I think a new goal in interviews for me will be to be as concise as possible.... I've never had so much to say and now I think I might need to tone it down!—Claire Walsh, Vancouver, BC
I really enjoyed your program and found it very helpful and appropriate for this time in my life. Thank you again for your help, patience, optimism and compassion.—E.S., Vancouver, BC