Date: | July, 2011 |
Reports to (Job Title): | Director or Assistant Director, Centre for Career Action (Alumni Career Advisor jointly reports to Snr. Alumni Officer, Partnerships) |
Jobs Reporting (Job Titles): | |
Location: | Waterloo |
Career Advisors provide career guidance and support to educate and motivate students (undergraduate and graduate, co-op and regular), alumni and staff to develop career goals and to take action to achieve those goals. Each advisor on the team has one or more areas of particular advising knowledge and skill (e.g., career indecision or change, further education, self-marketing, co-op process navigation), and may work with one or more student populations (e.g., undergraduate students, graduate students, students who wish to go to professional or graduate school), alumni or staff.
Provide consistent and measurable career (and co-op) education/advisement for all students (co-op, regular) at all levels (undergraduate, graduate), alumni and staff
|
Provide support to Student Advisors across all teams
|
Engage in activities that support the Centre for Career Action as a leading edge centre of excellence and expertise in career development and advisement. These activities include:
|
Act as functional lead for a key program/service offered through the Centre for Career Action. Examples include:
|
MS Word | Excel | PowerPoint | Other |
Intermediate |
Intermediate | Intermediate |
Intermediate – online based communications (e.g., email/skype), social media (e.g. facebook) |
The Career Advisors require strong verbal and written communication skills, and strong interpersonal and advising skills. They need to motivate and educate students, alumni and staff and bring a customer-service focus to the role. Career Advisors are problem-solvers and team players.
Career Advisors do not supervise others: The job has specialized work with minimal supervision. Career Advisors provide co-worker support and coaching such as advising others of new trends, coaching for emerging best practices, coaching Student Advisors on career advising, providing co-worker with feedback to ensure consistency in performance.
Career Advisors do not supervise others: The job has specialized work with minimal supervision. Career Advisors provide co-worker support and coaching such as advising others of new trends, coaching for emerging best practices, coaching Student Advisors on career advising, providing co-worker with feedback to ensure consistency in performance.
Problem solving
Career Advisors solve problems about how to advise individual clients who are experiencing sometimes serious difficulties, and knowing when to refer to others (e.g., counseling services), interpersonal issues such as dealing with other staff members when there is a difference of opinion or approach, or difficulties getting necessary information from another department.
Financial Accountability
One Career Advisor has a book budget of less than $10,000 in order to maintain the print resources.
Internal and External Contacts
Internal
Career Advisors deal with multiple departments on campus: Library, Centre for Extended Learning, Counseling Services, Centre for Teaching Excellence, Housing, Registrar's Office, Human Resources, Office for Organizational and Human Development, Office for Persons with Disabilities, Student Success Office, Alumni Affairs, Staff Association, IST, WatPD, faculty, administrative assistants, and student societies. For example, collaborate with other department or student group to develop joint programs and develop relationships to encourage referrals
External
Career Advisors exchange information with other university Career Centres and community partners.
Career Advisors make decisions about how best to advise clients, when to refer the client to another person or department, designing or customizing workshops, resources or events, ways to stay on top of advising best practices and technology, and prioritizing regular work with clients, special projects, and deadlines.
This role requires exertion of physical or sensory effort resulting in moderate fatigue, strain or risk of injury.
This role involves moderate psychological risk resulting from unavoidable exposure to hazardous, disagreeable or uncomfortable environmental conditions. The Career Advisor role may include exposure to emotionally disturbing experiences and/or interactions with people who are upset, angry, abusive, aggressive, unstable or unpredictable (e.g., occasional emotionally charged issues with students or alumni who require counselling, staff who are facing job loss or other employment challenges), unusual hours or schedules and irregular and/or high volumes and multiple and/or tight deadlines beyond one's control (e.g., January and September are particularly high volume due to student advisement demands, co-op resumes that are due, workshops and grad school application deadlines). As well, the Career Advisor may experience last minute requests with short delivery deadlines (e.g., request by a professor to conduct a custom workshop for his/her class).