Highlights From the Spring 2000 NECA Newsletter

Bell Bottoms, Flip Flops, and Employment Counseling

Katherine Buckovetz, President 1999-2000

The more things change, the more they stay the same. As my year concludes, I am finding NECA providing updated information on multidisciplinary employment counseling to agencies, staff, governors, counselors and the public. The dialog is similar to the training received in the "old days", except for the new vocabulary, technology and court decisions. As NECA members, it is now our responsibility to step up to the plate to advocate and demonstrate how employment counseling works. It will require us to knock on the doors of other professional counselors to design collaborative systems to serve any person and their family who comes in seeking training and employment, but have dysfunction in their lives, e.g., substance abuse, mental health issues, domestic abuse, grief over job loss that is causing family system issues. Administrators are now identifying these case management needs and finding that their current programs are not solving the problems, and staff are stating they don't have the proper training. "A four-hour course in paraprofessional counseling skills is not solving the problem," agencies report.

There is a great need for employment counselors with the NECA competencies, but they cannot find them. Why? Fewer people have selected this college major in recent years, many college counseling programs do not have this major, and staff with this college major are often opting for early retirement. Agencies need help to upgrade staff competencies, so they can perform their job, i.e., work at the One Stop Career Center; understand the DSM-IV words; know symptoms of cocaine usage; help those who are extremely angry or very scared while guiding them to employment as a healthy alternative to treatment. What can NECA members do?

Lots of things, like:

Help agencies and staff access ACA and NECA resources, i.e., to make them aware of the existence of the Employment Counseling profession! Show how it is not being delivered, people are being hurt by the lack of service, and employers are folding or relocating out of the US due to the unskilled labor force. I plan to tell all ACA Division Presidents about this need, for it impacts the whole counseling profession in a positive way---the demand for multidisciplinary-trained employment counselors far exceeds the supply.
NECA members who are university professors can market the employment counseling field to students as a counseling field with jobs that utilizes many counseling strategies from assessment to diagnosis to employment plans that authorize treatment expenditures.
Show local areas that there are new funding streams that can be used to support employment counseling, e.g., evening anger management and parenting classes, developing mental health treatment plans that focus on the ability to go to work rather than treatment, and working with welfare social workers to promote wellness in the family. I remember when I went to graduate school I was required to learn how to work with various populations, including the mentally ill, mentally stressed (phobias, anxiety disorders, learning disabled, work phobia, etc.), disadvantaged, uneducated, immigrants as well as college students. The counseling courses stressed individual needs and employment plans, proper selection of employment testing methods, combining resources to develop comprehensive guidance programs, and having everything address legal and ethical requirements. (All the while wearing bell bottoms!)
Be creative and fund positions for mental health counselors and psychologists, probation officers with counseling training, substance abuse counselors, and job service counselors to co-case manage clients at the One Stop Career Centers. Personally, I find it an exciting time for our field. It has been twenty years since we have had such a demand for our services. Let's work together to make a difference!

On another note, I do want to tout the success of the NECA Workshop and ACA Convention. Both had dynamic presentations and promoted futuristic trends in our profession. Please mark "San Antonio" on your calendars in March, 2001, as the next events occur. Margaret Robinson is requesting NECA Workshop proposal submissions in this newsletter. Remember that you can claim NCC credits for giving workshops, as well as attending them!

This next year will focus on WIA implementation issues, as well as continued integration of employment counselors in TANF agencies as they begin to seek justification for Congressional reauthorization. Job service is also finding a resurgence in hiring more employment counselors to staff the One Stop Centers. Let's continue helping our customers: private practitioners and staff helping people prepare for, obtain and retain employment; college counseling programs needing to upgrade employment counseling curricula; expanding services at agencies receiving federal funds with employment as their outcomes; and praising politicians for their wisdom in drafting new legislation supporting employment counseling initiatives.

I thank all of you for your enthusiasm this past year as our field was rediscovered and want to leave you with food for thought. Participating in NECA as an officer is unbelievably rewarding at all levels and develops strong leadership skills that will serve you well. It is also a lot of fun! Get involved and help your profession. Start as a NECA Committee Member or Trustee and learn as you go. Our association is like a school of fish: we stick together, support each other, have lots of fun swimming around, and learn things as we explore new cities where the annual Workshop is held. There is nothing more fulfilling than seeing old friends at the annual meeting. Come and join us in San Antonio and find yourself welcomed as an old friend from the beginning. Here is wishing you sunrises full of joy, success and blessed events. Most of all, enjoy your work and the assistance you give others to reach their potential. You are very special. Your President, Kathy Buckovetz.

ARE YOU Y2K COMPLAISANT?

Bill Fenson, President-Elect-Elect

There are two key phrases that we've all heard bandied about almost ad nauseum - customer service and networking. It seems that no business or employment-related discussion can fail to feature one or both. But why? Might it be that both are crucial to employment and business success? Let's take a look.

Today's world, the Twenty First Century, offers consumers myriad opportunities to 'shop around' for the 'best buy.' No matter what industry, no matter what location, the days of being the 'only game in town' are long gone. With the Internet, overnight delivery, fax machines, etc., there is no such thing as a captive audience. No matter what product or service you offer, whether furniture or fashion, plumbing or pruning, counseling or carpentry, it is not your price, or your location, that drives your success. It is your customer service.

Can your clients rely on you for up-to-date skills and market info? Do you know not only the best job search advice, but the most knowledgeable URL's (web site addresses)? Can you speak to them intelligently about the latest workplace equipment and software? Do you actually read, and sometimes contribute to industry publications, and are you familiar with recent legislation and decision makers? Do you vote?

At a time when information, instructions and advice on every imaginable subject can be found by typing a few keywords on an internet search engine, what can you, the real live flesh-and-blood employment counselor, offer? How can you induce a potential client away from the keyboard? You guessed it. Customer service. This is warmth, rapport, instantaneous positive feedback with a smile, a gesture, a personal chat over coffee, and the knowledge through relationship building over time that you take yourself and your professional integrity seriously enough to keep abreast of the latest techniques for career success - yours as well as your clients'.

In the 'success tools family,' networking is a very close sibling to customer service. How many of you have stressed to your clients the value of networking as a job search and career enhancing tool, and how many have preached that their success might be driven by 'who they know?' Yet, how many counselors do not practice what they preach, do not attend their own conferences, read their own journals, chat with their own compadres?

I know, I know - never enough hours, no time for classes, can't fit in the conference. Well, what if I could suggest a tool - an inexpensive, maybe even free, user-friendly-as-can-be tool that would provide instantaneous customer service and networking opportunity 24/7, and leave you available to anyone in the world and you to them at no charge? And, what if this tool could allow you to counsel your clients or brainstorm with your buds from a great distance, anytime anywhere, in any 'kick-back' mode of dress you wished, and would provide you up-to-the-minute dialogue and information resources on the latest industry technology, and all this from the comfort of your own home or office, or boat, or beach chair? Well, I can. It's here. It's been around for quite some time.

E-mail. It'll expand your audience, enlarge your networking base, free up your time, and impress your clients. And it's free. There are numerous web site sources for free e-mail. Yahoo, for example (www.yahoo.com), or Juno (www.juno.com), or hot mail (www.hotmail.com) will all walk you through their very easy installation procedures.

Editor's Message - Report of Workshop

Andrew Helwig

The annual NECA Workshop, conducted in association with the American Counseling Association World Conference, was held at the US Department of Labor in Washington, DC in March. NECA President-elect Margaret Robinson, who works for the Department of Employment Services, facilitated the arrangements.

A welcoming address was provided by William Kamela, Chief of Staff in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training. He indicated that the Department of Labor budget request was being submitted at that time and 85% of that budget is for Employment and Training Administration activities. He encouraged more partnerships in states and localities because community-wide solutions are needed and better leverage resources. In short, agencies need to work together including co-locating when possible. Kamela indicated that 1.5 million jobs are now available in America's Job Bank which also includes 700,000 resumes. There is a plan to establish a DOL Leadership Academy to help develop skills and train staff who work in employment and training programs.

O*NET was addressed by Dr. Marilyn Silver, O*NET Project Director, and Jim Wood. Three new assessments are pending and waiting approval before release. Two of these are the Interest Profiler and the Aptitude Profiler. They are intended to be counseling tools. O*NET is designed to replace the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and includes 900 occupations which will be presented in a new occupational classification system dictated by the US Office of Management and Budget to be used by all US government agencies. Dr. Silver announced that the system will go on-line in a "couple of months" although much of the information resources have been available for some time. O*NET expects that many agencies, organizations, and private vendors will use the system in their own ways in the development of materials and computer applications. To see what the State of New York is doing, for example, contact: www.nycareerzone.net. Wood indicated that the O*NET project staff is also working on lots of enhancements to the system including hyperlinks, applications for people with disabilities, text versions, and a high visual version. For more information, you can email Dr. Silver at: msilver@doleta.gov.

A luncheon speaker was Jill Golden who is the Director of Grants Administration for the Center for Workforce Success at the National Association of Manufacturers. She indicated that through surveys, many employers report that job applicants have skill deficits. Also, with the labor shortage, many employers cannot expand or develop new products. The manufacturing sector is still a strong and important segment of the economy and many personnel directors are saying that schools are not adequately preparing students for the work they need to have done. For more information, contact: www.nam.org.

Dr. Claudette McCarty presented an informative and entertaining review titled "A Multigenerational Approach to Counseling and Career Needs." Using information from several 'generational experts,' she presented the characteristics, expectations, and workplace implications for Flappers (1900-1915), Depression Kids (1916-1934), The Quiet Generation (1935-1945) [yes, I am], Baby Boomers (1946-1964), The Lost Generation (1965-1969), Birth Dearth (1970-1977), and Echo Boomers (1978-Present). She provided a thorough handout and indicated that she can be contacted at: mccartyc@cinstate.cc.oh.us. She is affiliated with Cincinnati State Technical and Community College but is retiring soon.

Workshop participants were given another opportunity to learn more about themselves and an assessment device which could be used with clients. Workshop regulars, Dr. Robert Drummond from the University of North Florida, and his daughter, Heather Senterfitt, presented the NEO 4 assessment instrument. The NEO 4 provides information about interests, interaction style, style of activity, information about attitudes, learning styles, and character information.

There were many other presentations including those by our own Michael Lazarchick on employment counseling as a process of healing, and Bobbi Floyd and Roger Gantzarow reviewing their experience with the Career Development Facilitator Training in Michigan and Wisconsin. All three are NECA Past Presidents. Paula Faith Bourne gave an impassioned finale about respecting human potential by "Connecting the Head, the Hand, and the Heart."

Overall, the workshop was very well done with many new presenters and ideas. The two days went very quickly. Next stop - San Antonio in March 2001.

On the first evening of the workshop, a number of us took advantage of a guided bus tour visiting many of the sights and memorials around the capitol. I had never been to the impressive Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial. The gentle mist and rain through much of the tour provided a fitting mood especially for visiting the veterans' memorials, The Wall, for Vietnam veterans, and the haunting platoon of soldiers walking into a clearing representing Korean War veterans. Visiting at night and seeing the memorials with the well-designed lighting gave a perspective I never experienced when I visited in the past during the day. The champagne and the scrumptious dessert goodies on board the bus were well received.