B7: Bridging Employment and Settlement- Self-Marketing Tools for Professionals (offered again on Thursday morning C13)
Whether we are negotiating a promotion or seeking employment it is the ability to showcase our strengths, skills, accomplishments or attributes that can make a convincing argument or place us ahead of the competition. Self-marketing is a skill that can be learned and when supported by appropriate self-marketing tools can make a different in newcomers efforts to find jobs, advance in their careers or simply make connections to the labour market.
This workshop will examine some of the traditional tools (calling cards, DATA sheets, resumes) and new options (e-portfolios, web-pages); will review appropriate ways of using them and provide opportunities for practicing self-marketing skills. In this workshop participants will:
- Review samples of traditional and new professional self-marketing tools
- Review steps to completing new self-marketing tools
- Complete self-assessment inventories / surveys
- Practice self-marketing scenarios
Dolores Montavez Ruz manages the Life Skills Training, Coaching, Publications and the Career Assessment and Planning program for YWCA Toronto. She has been involved in human development and career advancement programs for over 10 years and has authored a number of original Life Skills and career development training programs. She draws from her background in ESL teaching, career counselling and life coaching to design creative and highly interactive learning experiences.
D2: Preparation for Employment: Presenting Job Search Workshops Which Meet the Real Needs of Immigrants (French)
The purpose of the presentation is to provide information about an improved and effective way to present job search workshops to newcomers:
focusing on overcoming cultural barriers which hinder assimilation to the culture of the Canadian labour market and impede an understanding of job requirements;
taking care to endow the newcomers with the skills necessary to conduct their own independent job search and communicate their skills in a job interview with a potential employer.
The presentation should enable participants (settlement workers in particular):
- to be informed about the real needs of newcomers in search of employment;
- to be aware of cultural and systemic barriers which prevent immigrants from understanding information, in order to adapt employment search services to the real needs of the latter;
- to have at their disposal a new tool of information on job search techniques adapted to the real needs of immigrants.
François Yabit holds a doctoral degree in business and international development. After working in programs funded by the Canadian International Development Agency in the framework of the Federal Government’s Youth Employment Strategy program through initiation to international development, François is presently involved in the settlement of newcomers to Canada, as program manager.
D11: The Common Assessment Process (CAP): Connecting Immigrant Settlement and Employment Needs
The Common Assessment Process (CAP) is a consistent information-gathering and needs assessment format for use between career development practitioners and clients, used and supported by a unique network of more than 40 agencies in the London area. The CAP model ensures clients participate in one, agreed-upon, high quality employment planning process including referral to programs across the community, no matter where they begin the process. This CAP workshop provides front-line workers with a “best practices” model for client assessment, which is highly adaptable to a range of settlement and employment interests. Practitioners using CAP are connected to their colleagues across the region through shared and common process and language, consistency and ease of client referral to network agencies, reduced duplication in paperwork, and facilitated case management. Community benefits include accurate information sharing about community resources and appropriate referrals across the immigrant service sector.
The workshop will introduce case studies and practice of illustrative client assessment and discuss the applicability for CAP for a range of client types and circumstances. This session contributes to individual professional development (introducing additional strategies for career development practice); and, organizational structure (enhancing networking and communicating with other community agencies and staff).
As the Project Manager of the Employment Sector Council of London-Middlesex (ESCLM), Carol Stewart coordinates the labour market and employment policy and planning interests of more than 40 non-profit and public employment and training service delivery agencies, and community, business, and government organizations in the London-Middlesex County Region.
Sergio Chuy has worked for over 15 years in the social services sector assisting youth, newcomers and clients with multiple barriers. He has spent the last 11 years assisting newcomers towards meaningful employment. Sergio has served as a trainer of the Common Assessment Process (CAP) since 2003 in the London Area and is also a senior CAP trainer responsible for the development of new trainers. Sergio is currently the Team Leader of the Skills Development division at Pathways Skill Development and Placement Centre.
E6: Building Bridges Between Employment and Settlement: Short Term and Long Term Goals
This workshop is pertinent to the topic of bridging the gap between settlement and employment. It attributes the lack of a continuum between settlement and employment to the existence of gaps between existing service- models and their correlation to actual settlement and employment trajectories of newcomers.
The workshop will identify these gaps as well as strategies to bridge these gaps to develop a seamless transition model between settlement and employment. This model posits settlement as an immediate/short term goal and employment as a longer-term goal, whose success is dependent on the success of the settlement component.
Examples and case studies supporting this model will be demonstrated; best practices to operationalize smooth transitions between employment and settlement will be identified.
This workshop will be of interest to both frontline workers and program managers. A combination of lecture and case studies will be utilized. This workshop has also been chosen for presentation at the “International Migration Conference” at Ryerson University scheduled for September 2010.
S.Gopikrishna is the Executive Director of the Scarborough Housing Help Centre. He worked in the area of advocacy and development of new programs to empower newcomers at the Social Planning Council of Toronto and South Asian Family Support Services. Gopi is a commited newcomer advocate as well as a columnist for a variety of magazines and newspapers, local and international. He has presented papers and workshops on the topic of combining settlement and employment at various conferences.
