Providing Critical Third-Party Resources to Support Our Candidates through the Uncertainty of Career Change

Being in the position of having to start a job search can lead many job seekers to feelings of uncertainty, unsure of what to do first. Job searching as they will find, never follows a simple, straight line. There are copious variables that change from day to day. Helping to manage those ever-changing variables is crucial to the role our program coaches at CMS.  In addition, ensuring their candidates have insight into fundamental, related issues that come along with the loss of a job works to provide a well-rounded outplacement program experience. 

As part of CMS’s proprietary program, the additional resources section of The Canadian Career Management System®, ensures our job search candidates can find details on various government supports available to them after employment termination, where to find legal advice, second career funding options etc. - helping our candidates to maintain a bird’s eye view of their current circumstance.  

In addition, CMS Program Coaches encourage their outplacement program clients to explore the current job market trends, and future outlooks links that are included in the program - helping them to anticipate outcomes, potential challenges and to consider a change in direction if need be. 

When Sheila joined our program, for example, she had just left her office administration role in the healthcare industry after five years of service.  She told her Program Coach that she loved working within healthcare, but she didn't really love the office environment.  She found sitting for long periods of time difficult and felt she needed to move around more! She was ready for a career change. 

The difficulties that the COVID pandemic brought discouraged many from the healthcare field, but for Sheila it just drove home the fact that helping others was her calling.  Through her CMS outplacement program, we utilized our career assessment and goal setting tools to help confirm for Sheila that nursing was a compatible profession for her to pursue - and that it was a realistic pursuit at this time of her life. 

In addition to discussing this potential change with her family, we encouraged Sheila to use the resources and the links provided in our online program to help her to further research nursing as a profession in Canada.  When she looked at the Canadian Career Outlooks for Nurses at the federal government website, Sheila could see in black and white that her career prospects in that field were excellent - further confirming for her that an education in nursing was what she needed to pursue. 

Looking for a new job, and especially contemplating a career change, generally sparks interest into employment trends, current salaries, news and articles about career transition topics.  That is why this section with our program materials invites curiosity into these subjects by providing links to related content. 

Our goal, by providing these resources to all CMS job seekers, is to help round-out their experience with our outplacement program and aid in their education and growth during their temporary career transitions.