…w what is going to walk through our office door. This is one aspect of the job that keeps it interesting, but it is also the aspect of our job that absolutely wears us down. I can have 20 things on my to-do list for the day and have one situation walk in which then makes me drop everything and address that student need. Those 20 things didn’t go away, but were triaged to lower priority. Many school counselors will stay super late and try to get al…
…l breaker (but could be!), however it may mean the difference in getting a job offer or not if the contest is close. Think about how you want to portray yourself and what image you want the interview panel to get as you walk in the door. Do you want a just out of the gym look with messed up hair and blue jeans or a professional go-getter wearing business to business casual wear. I would caution on the side of dressing up than down whether you are…
…r put on a college fair. Colleges are also hosts of massive recruiting and job fairs throughout the year. At NTHS and in TTUSD – we put on several fair events each year having to do with job options for high school students and CTE/STEAM programs. So, many of us are aware of an information fair – but we often don’t use them. We tried something new this year I like to fancy myself a fan of efficiency, and I am constantly working on tweaking our p…
…u ensure that groups run smoothly, it also will help diminish the “college hunting” and “family packs”. We have some reps attend from schools with more “clout” than others and often students/parents will try to weasel their way into the groups with those reps. While not a bad thing – we are very clear that this event is not a college fair and not really about any specific colleges (they do speak some about their own practices at the end of the eve…
…’t realize how much event (and test) coordination would tag along with the job. I typically dread processing registrations, sign ups and getting info out to attendees for things like parent nights, test prep workshops, and most recently – a community college case study. It just wears on you. Luckily, I rediscovered and re-purposed a great online program (and yes – there is an app for that) that takes 75% of the headache of event planning away! Wha…
…arring an emergency, they have that full time to work with me. This is our job…not our charity Another boundary that I think is healthy and helps you be more efficient is your time. I have made it a goal of mine to ensure that, when I am at work I have 110% of my energy invested in my students and my job, but sometime between 3pm and 4pm – I go home. I hear of counselors staying almost every day until 5pm or 7pm. If this is you on a regular basis…
…rtise. I did have to look at my culture and area around me too. When I was job hunting and interviewing – I purchased a bunch of ties thinking I would be wearing them every day. However after looking at what our regional dress code is like – I choose not to wear ties to work. I felt that it would be “overdress” and perhaps send the wrong image to my more casual students/parents/stakeholders. Consider this when designing or re-designing your wardro…
…ontacts around the country about five pressing questions for people in the job market and what counselors are looking for when interviewing for new hires. Thank you to all my friends who took the time to answer some of the questions – many from #scchat on Twitter and my fellow board members at CASC. I picked a few answers from each that you can look through below for tips and advice. [Tweet “Getting #schoolcounselor interview advice from wise coun…
…rd pages to PDF’s – a simple, web-based tool is available to us to get the job done. PDFMerge! PDFMerge! (www.pdfmerge.com), a free tool, will allow you to upload many separate files to their website through the several boxes by clicking the Browse button and finding each file on your harddrive. When selecting your files, keep in mind that the order you place them in the boxes will be the order they are merged together in. Once the magic of PDFMer…
…as to why such a long silence from me. I recently moved and started a new job in the Lake Tahoe area as the high school counselor at a small high school. We moved mid-August and I started right away, so most of you can empathize with the work it takes to get settled, get students scheduled, and make time to write. We are really loving going from the beach to the mountains and I hope to get a new post up within the next week or so. I also wanted t…
