Career Counselling in Toronto
From helping you make a big career move, to managing work burnout, career counselling allows you to get the most out of your professional life.
Career counselling can help you:
- Identify your prospects
- Set boundaries at work
- Manage and alleviate burnout
- Identify your professional strengths
- Decide what you want from your career
- Provide clarity on where you want to go next
Some reasons why people seek psychotherapy to focus on their career are:
- Job loss
- Changing careers
- Opening your own business
- Discrimination in the workplace
- Feeling under-valued in your job
- Balancing work life with family life
- Finding work in a global recession
- Feeling overworked or under-utilized
- Figuring out your post-secondary major
- Challenges of entrepreneurship or self-employment
- Learning how to communicate with your boss and coworkers (e.g., about projects, promotions, or boundaries)
Career counselling can help you define or redefine what you want from your career, what your prospects are, and if you are in transition, clarity on where you want to go next.
What happens in a career counselling session?
Career transitions and burnout can be incredibly anxiety inducing. Having a career counsellor by your side throughout the process can help you feel confident about your professional decisions.
Career counselling can help you set goals, explore motivations, and face challenges. Therapy allows you to develop your potential to make positive changes in your life, so that you realise and achieve your intention.
Our career therapists also motivate you to develop tools and resources to change your current environments, change automatic negative thought patterns and negative self-talk, and promote psychologically healthier patterns of living.
Career counselling can be split up into three sections, and depending on your needs, a career counsellor will address one or more:
- Internal development
- Professional communication
- Decision making
Internal development
If you are looking for career-centred internal development, a career counsellor might focus on one or more of the following:
- Cope with a job loss
- Uncovering your blindspots
- Helping you develop assertiveness
- Recognizing where your strengths lie
- Developing self-esteem and confidence
- Work place/task related anxieties (e.g., perfectionism or fear of public speaking)
- Identifying your skills, interests, personality and values to see what career best suits you
In this section, the focus is establishing self-awareness and self-growth and translating that into the workplace.
Professional communication
This section focuses on communicating with your coworkers, boss, and even friends and family about your career trajectory, transition, or boundaries. Common goals related to professional communication include:
- Leaving a workplace respectfully
- Asking for more responsibilities at work
- Planning how you will ask for a promotion or raise
- Communicating that you are burnt out or stressed
- Learning how to prepare for an interview and write a resume
- Having difficult discussions about career changes with loved ones
- Learning how to speak to HR about a complex or harmful experience
- Setting boundaries at work (e.g., letting people know you’re unavailable after 5pm)
Professional communication is an important part of any career, and career counselling can help you set yourself up for success.
Decision making
Decision making refers to ‘career moves’. Making the choice to leave a job, transition into a new field, or even accept a promotion can be difficult. A career counsellor can help you:
- Navigate the job market
- Decide what career is right for you
- Make a short- and long-term career plan
- Weigh the pros and cons of leaving a job
- Decide what you want to major in college or university
- Deliberate your strengths, areas of opportunity, interest, and values as you search for jobs
Whether you want to start a business, transition to a new job, or simply decide what to do with your professional life, a career counsellor can help you feel confident in your choices.
How does career counselling work at KMA Therapy?
Career counselling at KMA Therapy begins with a 50-minute introductory session with one of our intake counsellors.
In these 50 minutes, we will ask important questions to determine what you want out of counselling. Some common career counselling questions include:
- Where do you want to be a month, a year, and five years from now?
- What motivates and inspires you?
- How long have you been at your job? How long do you want to be at your job?
Here at KMA Therapy, we believe it’s important that we get to know you so that your career counsellor is the right fit. The consultation is also a wonderful time to address any questions you may have.
We will provide you with a customised ‘plan of action’. It includes the recommended career counsellor who is best equipped to help you, as well as any additional testing or psychological services we feel would be helpful.
Get started with career counselling today
KMA Therapy has five locations throughout Toronto and we offer online therapy, too. To learn more about trauma therapy, give us a call at 416 487 6288 or fill out our registration form to have our care coordinator reach out with more information. You can also book a session with us directly.
If you want to learn about other issues we provide services for, check out our issues page.
As you continue your career counselling journey, read these helpful articles:
