Re-Careering After Mid-Life at USM

The sub-title for this course is “Organizing Serendipity for those with Lots of Experience!”. Serendipity occurs when you find good things by accident.  How do you organize a serendipitous accident?   When you are re-careering it means redefining your favorite skill sets so that you can discover and create opportunities through new eyes.

The program encourages a humorous and encouraging look at the issues that concern older workers.  Participants will apply their capacity for pattern recognition to the task of articulating the skills they have for sale and creating new markets for their talents.  While it may appear that job success is a serendipitous affair, the program demonstrates that serendipity occurs when career changers find job opportunities by knowing what they are looking for and knowing where to look.

The course will be offered in two, two-hour sessions one week apart.  The topics will include:

• Session One

  • Why are you re-careering?
  • The Nature of Your Pathway to a New Career
    • Your Career Time Line
    • Identifying the talents you want to employ
       
• Session Two
  • ARB: Accomplishments - Results – Benefits - Describing your skills in saleable terms
  • Marketing through networks and synergistic  relationships

Participants will leave the course prepared to identify their success patterns, define and articulate the skills they want to offer the workplace, and build a marketing strategy.

Instructor Bio: For the last forty years Bill Stone has helped individuals with career decision making, especially adults re-careering at the mid-point of their working lives.  Bill received his doctorate from Vanderbilt University where he focused his research on career development issues. He is a National Certified Career Counselor (NCCC). He is the co-author of Beginning the Career Exploration System and The Career Exploration System, published by AGS.   During his career he has authored numerous career related articles, a commercially successful workbook series and given presentations at state and national conference including the key note at National Interactive Television Conference, The National Career Development Conference in Chicago, and the National Consultation on Careers, Ottawa, Canada.  His most recent book, Chaos Creativity, and Careers will be used during this workshop.

This course is supported by ACE.

This course is being held as part of USM's Professional Development program and is offered for four hours taking place on April 28th and May 5th, from 5:30-7:30 pm at Portland's Abromson Community Education Center.

Session #1 Thursday April 28th 5:30-7:30pm

Session #2 Thursday May 5th 5:30-7:30pm