Career Counseling, Outplacement & Career Transition Services
Career Counseling & Outplacement/Career Transition Services:
- Individual Career Counseling – short-term, typically 1-6 sessions – in person in Maine or by phone from any location
- Customized Outplacement and Career Transition Services – for employers who want to offer employees a choice of a cost-effective options for employees or for self-referred individuals with an outplacement services as part of a severance package
- Retention Programs – for organizations and their employees to increase job satisfaction, productivity and retention
Individual Career Counseling
Barbara works compassionately and effectively with people who want to change some aspect of their work or explore a new career direction. Highly experienced and extensively educated in career counseling models and applications, she is passionate about helping people explore possibilities, make good decisions and sustain healthy and satisfying work choices that go beyond work as a source of income.
Individuals may identify ways to make their current jobs more satisfying, or they may decide on a new career path.
Barbara’s approach incorporates focused questions that reveal the heart of the matter combined with effective strategic actions that support individuals to:
- Increase clarity about work needs, desires and intentions
- Identify and change attitudes, behaviors and patterns that limit work satisfaction
- Create an effective career transition strategy or imagine possibilities for the next life phase
- More successfully balance work and family life
- Identify work and education opportunities and options and their requirements
- Learn current and effective ways to secure work by strategic networking and tapping community resources
- Create professional work-related documents, including résumés, cover letters, graduate school applications and professional portfolios
- Adjust to new work situations through professional development and mindful work performance
- Build self-esteem and develop the ability to articulate accomplishments
To learn more about individual career counseling or to schedule an appointment, contact Barbara at (207) 775-6400, barb@barbarababkirk.com
Outplacement Consulting and Career Transition Services
Outplacement Consulting and Career Transition Services from Heart At Work are compassionate, competitively priced, and always customized to reflect individual needs and employer parameters. Program options can be designed expressly for employees at any level in the organization.
Programs and services may include individual career counseling and/or job search workshops and can be designed for one employee, small groups, or larger groups of up to 100. To meet the needs of 10 or more employees, Barbara draws on an experienced team of career consultants to assist with the range of services requested:
- Career counseling that addresses the individual’s values, life stage, competencies and interests to clarify career direction and options.
- Administration of the Myers Briggs Type Inventory (personality assessment) with an emphasis on work history and future choices.
- Résumé and cover letter coaching and document reviews including; editing and design for optimal effectiveness.
- Development of an effective job search strategy and specific steps to secure job leads, employment, or resources targeted to creation of a business ventures.
- Marketplace resources and information on job postings on the Internet and locally.
- Interviewing strategies and coaching on salary and benefits negotiations.
Since a layoff impacts employee’s lives beyond work, it is an option to involve experts such as investment, tax and credit advisors and state unemployment benefits professionals to join Barbara’s team to address questions, offer advice as well as current and accurate information.
Specific outplacement and career transition services fees depend on the number of individuals to be served as well as their time and roles within the organization.
Barbara and her team are professional career counselors with experience offering outplacement/transitions services to an array of employers across industries that have included among others: Bernstein Shur, Corning Inc, IDEXX, UNUM, Bates and Bowdoin Colleges, Maine Audubon, the Portland Public Schools, PROP, Woodard and Curran, The University of Maine, Spurwink Services, Lonza Biosciences, and Moss Inc.
