By Elliot Salo Schoenberg
This year’s National Career Development Association (NCDA) 2012 conference took place in Atlanta GA. Career professionals attended from all over the world. I spent a day studying social media and sharpened my skills with LinkedIn, Twitter, SurveyMonkey and Hootsuite. Another session of particular interest was entitled “The Secret of Effective Negotiation.” The session was packed and I learned that even career counselors are uncomfortable about negotiations. I learned how to deploy leverage to help employees negotiate for more money and I am ready to share this information with colleagues as necessary. Richard Knowdell, a well known career coach, presented models on career coaching: the coach as an assessor, information provider, referral agent, guide, and tutor. The key point he made was that the role of the career coach is to ask the right questions, but it is the client who does the work.
10 Tactics for a Terrific Transition
All of the presenters at NCDA 2012 were fellow career coaches except for the two keynote speakers. I tested the water and made a presentation on transition. I was interested to see if our work on transition, specifically the creation of transition committees would translate to the business world. With the use of a PowerPoint presentation I reduced the 7 hour Eit Ratzon conference to a 70 minute slide show. The presentation was well received and many people asked for copies of the presentation. I was invited to Maine to teach at their state conference on transition next year.