Today is the last day of National Career Development Month. Don’t worry if it snuck up on you – there’s still time to participate and promote career development – and what better way to do that than via technology!?! Here are some ideas:

• LinkedIn
  • Update your profile.
  • Join a professional group and/or make a post or comment in one of these.
  • Explore converting a presentation to slideshare.
  • Personalize your LinkedIn address
  • Include that address in your email signature
• Play with Apps
  • Browse through the apps that are hot now.
  • Consider how they might be adapted for career counseling.
• Read NCDA’s Tech Tips
• Get ready for next year’s CD month by putting it on your calendar – always in November! Read here for some ideas. Consider updating that list and submitting to Career Convergence to inspire others.
• While at Career Convergence, take a few minutes to browse through the archives to learn something new.
• Tweet or retweet something related to career development.
• Engage in the rage – do a mannequin challenge that demos your career-related work.

Finally, take a minute and encourage others to invest in their own career development, whether it’s sprucing up their resume, reaching out to their network to keep connected, or looking at new job posts to see what’s out there and think about how to stay current.

Ready to learn from your career colleagues? Tomorrow is the deadline for submitting a conference presentation proposal for NCDA. It is an exciting time to hear about what colleagues are considering for presentations. Of course, the tech twins are submitting one on last week’s blog, focused on how to create infographics for career service delivery. Here are some others I’ve heard about:

• How career readiness impacts one’s ability to locate/evaluate/use career information, and how career information training impacts perceived value of career information.
• Application and demonstration of Cognitive Information Processing Theory in practice.
• The impact of a counselor-free intervention using the Self-Directed Search.
• Transferable skills in the workplace for recent grads
• CIP curriculum in a K12 guidance setting
• Motivational interviewing in career services
• Impact of a career course on career decision state
• …and more!

These are just a few I’ve heard about. While there’s no guarantee that all of these will be accepted, just anticipating the number of fantastic topics NCDA attendees will have available to them at the Orlando conference is like anticipating a great feast. The Tech Twins encourage you to submit proposals for the conference (we have a slight preference for tech-like proposals), so that we and others can learn from you.

Also, in prep for the conference, came across this piece about the 15 types of people you might meet at a conference. Do they capture them all? If not, what’s missing – and more importantly, which one are you? No matter who you identify with, we hope to meet you there!

Read this great article today on 100 conversation starters– especially helpful for introverts! I wish I had read these prior to the #NCDAChicago 2016 conference, but I will be putting these into practice for next year’s conference in Orlando. Some of my favorites (with my own twists) include:

• Have you been to this conference before? (If so, that opens lots of possible follow ups, such as:
  • What are some “must see sessions” or “must do events?”
  • How has it changed from previous conferences?
  • What keeps you coming back?
  • What advice do you have for someone attending for the 1st time?”). If not, it still leads to some possible follow ups:
    • What are you looking forward to seeing/doing?
    • What made you decide to come to this one?
    • What other conferences do you usually go to? How is this one similar/different?
• What did you think of the presentation/keynote, etc.?
  • Have you had experiences similar/different to what they were saying?
• What’s the most interesting presentation you’ve attended so far?
• Are you presenting? If not, “Have you thought about presenting?”
• What kind of work do you do? Which presentation topics are of most interest to you?
• What do you love about what you do? (that was their “ultimate” conversation starter – being a career counselor, this is right up my alley!).

What conversation starters have worked for you? What questions do you appreciate being asked at a conference?

NCDA 2016 provided many opportunities for professional development as well as networking with so many talented and knowledgeable colleagues who are passionate about career development, technology, and career education. We had a blast sharing from our experience, as well as learning from others.

Here’s a link to some of the presentations made by FSU faculty and students. Of particular interest to those who love technology might be this presentation: 710 Sampson, J. P., Jr., Osborn, D. S., Kettunen, J., Hou, P. C., & Miller, A. K. (2016, July). The validity of socially constructed career information. Presentation at the National Career Development Association Global Conference, Chicago.

Two reminders: (1) You can still reach out to presenters and see if they are willing to share their handouts (some are uploaded to the NCDA app)! (2) The call for proposals for next year’s conference (Orlando!) will be coming out soon, so please think about submitting! We love learning from others as much as we love sharing our information! Thanks to all who came to our presentation and who talked with us afterwards! See you in Orlando 2017!