Career Trends

Operationalizing Ethical Islamic Career Development: The PSP and LQPP Models as a Holistic Framework for Global Career Counseling Practice

Muhammad Basit Rana a.k.a MBR HR WALAY

Career development has evolved from a simple occupational matching process into a lifelong identity construction and meaning-making journey (Savickas, 2013). Modern career theories emphasize adaptability, identity formation, and narrative construction as essential elements of career success (Savickas et al., 2009). Career counseling plays a vital role in supporting individuals in constructing career identity, managing transitions, and integrating personal meaning into vocational decisions (National Career Development Association [NCDA], 2015).

However, contemporary frameworks often prioritize employability outcomes while insufficiently addressing ethical accountability, life balance, and long-term sustainability. This paper introduces the PSP and LQPP models as operational tools designed to address this gap.

Theoretical Framework

• Career Construction Theory conceptualizes career as an active process in which individuals construct identity through vocational behavior and life experiences (Savickas, 2013).
• Career adaptability, defined as readiness to cope with vocational tasks and transitions, is a key competency supporting career success (Savickas & Porfeli, 2012).
• The Life Design approach emphasizes integrating career with personal meaning, life roles, and social context (Savickas et al., 2009).
• This perspective aligns with holistic career development models emphasizing balance and identity coherence.

The Professional–Social–Personal (PSP) Model

The PSP model divides human functioning into three interconnected domains:

• Professional Domain
Supports vocational competence, skill development, and economic participation.

• Social Domain
Supports relational identity, social integration, and community engagement.

• Personal Domain
Supports psychological stability, identity coherence, and reflective capacity.

This model defines life balance as an essential part of building a sustainable career.

The Listening–Questioning–Predictive Ability–Problem Solving (LQPP) Model

The LQPP model provides a structured framework for career counseling intervention.

• Listening
Supports narrative expression and identity clarification.

• Questioning
Facilitates self-reflection and career identity construction.

• Predictive Ability
Supports career adaptability through anticipatory guidance.

• Problem Solving
Supports implementation of career decisions.

This structure aligns with established career counseling competencies (NCDA, 2015).

Integration of PSP and LQPP

• PSP provides life structure.
• LQPP provides counseling intervention structure.
• They apply career construction principles in practice.

Implications for Career Counseling Practice

These models support:

• Improved career clarity
• Improved ethical decision making
• Improved counseling effectiveness

This aligns with research showing career counseling improves career adaptability and identity development (Whiston et al., 2017).

Conclusion

Career development involves identity construction, life integration, and meaning creation. The PSP and LQPP models provide operational tools supporting ethical and sustainable career development. These models contribute to advancing holistic career development practice.

These models represent an emerging contribution to global career development practice by integrating structured career counseling intervention with life balance and ethical awareness. As career development continues to evolve internationally, such integrative approaches have the potential to support practitioners worldwide in addressing the complex personal, professional, ethical, and cultural dimensions of modern career development.

Global and Multicultural Relevance

In an increasingly interconnected world, career development professionals are working with clients across diverse cultural, social, and ethical contexts. The PSP and LQPP models offer adaptable frameworks that can be applied across cultures because they focus on universal human developmental dimensions: professional functioning, relational engagement, and personal identity integration.

These models support career practitioners in facilitating career clarity, adaptability, and sustainable development while respecting individual cultural and ethical values. This aligns with the growing global emphasis on culturally responsive career counseling and life design interventions.

Origin and Professional Application

Muhammad Basit Rana first conceived and developed the PSP and LQPP models in 2017 through HR WALAY, an HR Family platform. Since their development, these models have been formally implemented in structured career counseling training programs and have contributed to the professional development of over 100 Certified Career Counseling practitioners. The models are currently reaching the worldwide career development community via professional training sessions, presentations at conferences, and partnerships with international collaborators.

Contribution to Global Career Development

The introduction of the PSP and LQPP models represents a practitioner-developed contribution emerging from real-world career counseling practice. Their continued application, training implementation, and recent presentation to a global audience through the Asia Pacific Career Development Association (APCDA) mark an important step toward integrating ethical, holistic, and culturally responsive approaches within contemporary career development.

References

• National Career Development Association. (2015). NCDA career counseling competencies.
• Savickas, M. L. (2013). Career construction theory and practice. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work (2nd ed.). Wiley.
• Savickas, M. L., Nota, L., Rossier, J., Dauwalder, J., Duarte, M. E., Guichard, J., … Van Vianen, A. (2009). Life designing: A paradigm for career construction.
• Savickas, M. L., & Porfeli, E. J. (2012). Career adaptability scale.
• Whiston, S. C., et al. (2017). Effectiveness of career counseling.

About the Author

Muhammad Basit Rana (MBR HR WALAY) is a career development practitioner, trainer, and founder of HR WALAY, an HR Family. He is the Founder and Developer of the Islamic Ethical Career Development Framework and creator of the PSP and LQPP Models. Since 2017, he has trained over 100 career counseling practitioners and actively contributes to advancing ethical and holistic career development practice. He recently presented this framework to a global audience representing over 50 countries through the Asia Pacific Career Development Association (APCDA).

Helping Clients Who Are Passionate about Climate Change

By Dr. Dennis Nord 

I am very pleased to share this book with you. My hope is that it will support your work with students, clients, and trainees who are considering a move into climate-aligned or green work.

When I began writing, I had two groups in mind. The first includes people entering the job market for the first time. The second includes people who are already working in roles not clearly connected to climate solutions and are considering a transition. For both groups, the challenge is often the same: how to move toward meaningful climate work when the path feels unclear, slow, or overwhelming. This book is written for people navigating that question.

My approach begins with problems rather than job titles. Readers are encouraged to start by identifying the climate problems they care most about, because problems help focus attention and motivation. From there, the book invites individuals to think of themselves not as job seekers searching for the right title, but as problem solvers who can contribute in many different ways. This method is effective regardless of the field a job seeker ultimately chooses.

Later in the book, many examples of people working in green jobs are included, along with a wide range of job titles. This section is intended to expand imagination and reduce the fear that there are only a few acceptable paths. At the same time, the book repeatedly emphasizes that job titles can be limiting. With tens of thousands of titles in use, most people lack the experience or information needed to evaluate them meaningfully.

Instead, a more creative and flexible process is proposed. Individuals are guided to identify a climate problem of concern, clarify the functions needed to address it, and consider the skills, resources, and roles that support those functions. This approach allows people to design paths that fit their interests, values, abilities, and circumstances. The idea of satisfaction is also introduced, highlighting that meaningful work is strongly shaped by relationships. Liking and respecting the people one works with often matters more than job seekers expect.

Throughout the book, readers are directed to widely available online resources they can use to learn more about climate problems, potential solutions, and the organizations involved. The goal is not to provide all the answers, but to help readers learn how to research effectively and think strategically.

This book can be useful in practice in several ways. It can be shared directly with clients or students, used as a starting point for discussion, or serve as a guide for research assignments and reflection exercises. The ideas are meant to be adapted to different settings. Readers are encouraged to create their own exercises for groups or classes, modify the framework to suit their cultural or institutional context, and translate the text if needed, as only an English edition is currently available.

Finally, it is important to acknowledge the emotional weight that climate change carries for many people. For those who feel discouraged or overwhelmed, contributing even in small, realistic ways to climate solutions can improve well-being and restore a sense of agency. No single person will solve these problems, but many people working thoughtfully over time can make a meaningful difference. Even small reductions in harm matter.

Thank you for the work you do to support job seekers who care deeply about climate issues. This book is offered as a companion to help them prepare to make their best possible contribution.

You can download the book here.

Career, Profession, Vocation: It’s Your Call, Your Balance

By By Ma. Leonila Vitug-Urrea, PhD., Consultant IPE Global

A long-standing adage says, “You cannot give what you don’t have,” or more profoundly, that boasting of giving something you don’t have is like clouds and wind without rain. In the Anthropocene Era, where human activity has a dominant influence on Earth’s climate and ecosystems, we face a dual challenge. On one hand, we must mitigate the effects of climate change; on the other, we must navigate our careers, professions, and vocations with authenticity. Doing so allows us to contribute meaningfully to solving real problems while giving ourselves fully to others through our work, formal education, and deep personal purpose or calling.

This moment invites us to rethink how careers, professions, and vocations are structured. Rather than remaining rigid, traditional, and exclusive, these paths can evolve into flexible, equitable, and purpose-driven journeys. In such a model, everyone is recognized and valued as part of the solution to the challenges we are facing today.

One way to understand modern career paths is through a “learn, earn, yearn” cycle. At different phases of life, we continuously learn what fits and what does not. Learning involves gaining knowledge, skills, and awareness. Earning represents applying those capacities through work and contribution, whether paid or unpaid. Yearning reflects the deeper sense of meaning, purpose, and calling that draws us toward certain forms of contribution.

Career paths often begin with general education, service learning, part-time work, internships, apprenticeships, and specific training, followed by periods of employment and eventually retirement. For many, particularly those in midlife or later stages, retirement may look more like “rewirement,” where time and energy are redirected toward mentorship, new pursuits, or alternative forms of contribution that draw on accumulated experience and wisdom.

As careers become less linear, the learn, earn, and yearn cycle can unfold in many sequences. What matters is mindfulness: noticing what energizes us after doing certain tasks and letting go of what no longer fits. When learning, earning, and yearning are thoughtfully blended, they help sustain motivation across the lifespan. Our experiences become filters, allowing us to sift out misaligned aspects of work and refine our focus over time.

Alongside this personal reflection is the importance of harmonizing individuality with community. Balancing personal autonomy with collective responsibility ensures that individual identity is not lost, while the community remains cohesive and inclusive. Mutual respect allows people to express their uniqueness while contributing to shared well-being, creating a horizontal relationship where no one is diminished.

The journey often begins with the self and expands toward others. Volunteering time, being present in learning spaces, listening deeply, asking questions, sharing perspectives, and supporting one another can naturally lead to both earning, whether tangible or intangible, and yearning for a deeper sense of purpose. These experiences reinforce the connection between personal growth and collective contribution.

This is an invitation to thoughtfully engage with opportunities for learning, earning, and yearning. By reflecting on how these elements interact in our lives, we can move toward a sustainable career that supports, rather than hinders, our own life goals and the goals of others.

Together, through intentional reflection and collective effort, we can begin addressing the difficulties facing our communities today, one step at a time.

Reimagining Career Guidance for an Entrepreneurial Sri Lanka

By Sothinathan Sangjeli,

Career Consultant, SkillBridge Consultancy Pvt.Ltd., Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka stands at a critical juncture. Emerging from economic challenges, the nation’s path to sustainable growth and resilience is increasingly tied to its capacity for innovation and entrepreneurship. However, a significant disconnect persists between the emerging opportunity landscape and the aspirations of its youth. Traditional career guidance, often focused on steering students toward established professions, must evolve to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset. This article analyzes the intersection of entrepreneurship, innovation, and career guidance in the Sri Lankan context, arguing for a systemic shift to empower the next generation as innovators and creators, not merely job seekers.

Sri Lanka’s economy has historically been reliant on remittances, tourism, and traditional exports. The recent crises have exposed the vulnerabilities of this model, highlighting an urgent need for economic diversification, value addition, and homegrown solutions. Concurrently, the country boasts a 99 percent literacy rate, a high rate of tertiary education enrollment, and a burgeoning digital literacy, creating a fertile, yet underutilized, human capital base.

Innovation-driven entrepreneurship presents a powerful avenue to address local challenges from agri-tech solutions for food security to ed-tech for education access and green tech for sustainability while creating wealth and employment. The success of startups like PickMe (mobility), Kapruka (e-commerce), and Arimac (digital solutions) demonstrates latent potential. Yet, the entrepreneurial pipeline remains thin, hindered by a risk-averse culture, limited early-stage funding, and, crucially, an education and guidance system that does not systematically nurture entrepreneurial ambition.

Conventionally, career guidance in Sri Lankan schools and universities has operated on a placement model. It focuses on aptitude testing, directing students toward predefined career paths such as medicine, engineering, accounting, and law. University entrance is primarily geared toward securing placements in state and private universities. Job market preparation emphasizes CV writing and interview skills for corporate employment. This model implicitly reinforces the notion that a successful career is synonymous with securing a job in a reputable organization or the state sector.

It often overlooks creativity and problem-solving as career skills, and entrepreneurship as a viable path. Instead, it presents entrepreneurship as an unconventional, high-risk alternative rather than a structured, learnable discipline. The innovation ecosystem is underleveraged, failing to connect students with incubators, angel networks, and grant schemes.

To foster an innovative society, career guidance must be re-envisioned as a catalyst that connects individual potential with the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This involves a multi-stakeholder approach. Integrate entrepreneurship into curriculum and guidance dialogue. Counsellors themselves need training to recognize and encourage entrepreneurial traits curiosity, resilience, and initiative—from a young age. Career programs should incorporate mini-projects, design thinking workshops, and business model competitions alongside traditional university fairs.

Spotlight diverse role models. Showcase not only tech entrepreneurs but also social innovators, women entrepreneurs, and successful SMEs in manufacturing and agriculture. Build bridges between education and the ecosystem. Career advisors should have a working knowledge of local resources, startup incubators, accelerator programs, and government initiatives. Facilitate regular interactions with entrepreneurs, investors, and intrapreneurs. Site visits to innovative companies and startup spaces can be more impactful than a standard career talk. Guide students on new educational pathways—entrepreneurship degrees, diploma courses in digital marketing, fintech certifications, and innovation fellowships.

Redefine success and manage risk. Teach that a career can be a portfolio of experiences: a job, a side hustle, freelance work, and that entrepreneurship can be a staged journey. Highlight the universal value of entrepreneurial skills, including financial literacy, digital proficiency, networking, and negotiation, which are valuable in any career. Normalize failure by integrating discussions on intelligent risk-taking and learning from setbacks, countering stigma surrounding business failure in Sri Lankan culture.

Implementing this shift faces hurdles including systemic inertia, under-resourced career guidance professionals, and strong societal preference for stable employment pathways. Recommendations include policy reform where ministries collaborate to develop a national framework for entrepreneurship-centered career guidance. Corporate sector partnerships can fund counselor training and student innovation challenges. Media can normalize entrepreneurial journeys through coverage and storytelling. Universities can embed innovation across curricula and build industry-linked innovation hubs.

For Sri Lanka to harness its demographic dividend and build a knowledge-based, resilient economy, it must intentionally cultivate its entrepreneurial capital. Career guidance is not a peripheral activity but a central lever for this transformation. By moving from a model of placement to one of potential activation, Sri Lankan youth can be empowered to see problems as opportunities and themselves as solvers. The goal is to create a generation that does not just ask, “Which company will hire me?” but also, “What problem can I solve?” and “What value can I create?” This is the mindset that will drive innovation and entrepreneurship essential for Sri Lanka’s prosperous future.

Ways to Get Serious About Leadership Growth (Without Turning Into a Self-Help Robot)

By Sharon Redd

Leadership doesn’t start when someone gives you a title. It starts when you begin owning your effect on other people — in rooms, in meetings, in moments when things get weird. It’s easy to skim articles like this and keep doing what you’ve been doing. But real leadership development means rewiring how you operate — and doing it while you’re still in motion. Here are seven grounded ways to build your leadership skills without losing your voice in the process.

Get honest about what it’s like to be led by you

We all have gaps in how we think we show up and how others actually experience us. And until you close that gap, you’re not growing — you’re guessing. Leadership starts when you pause long enough to notice your own default settings: how you respond under pressure, how often you interrupt, what kind of clarity (or fog) you bring into a room. This is deeper than “self-awareness” as a buzzword. You need to know why self-awareness matters for leadership — and how to use it as a diagnostic, not a branding exercise.

Speak less. Listen like your reputation depends on it

Because it does. You can’t lead if people don’t trust that you’re listening. This doesn’t mean nodding while thinking of your next clever thing to say. It means picking up the unsaid, sitting with tension, and not trying to fix everything mid-sentence. If that makes you uncomfortable, you’re in the right zone. Leading with empathy changes things; it’s the fastest way to stop managing impressions and start building credibility.

Make the investment that stretches you — not flatters you

There are times when you need more than feedback loops and brainstorming sessions with your peers. You need structured thinking, hard deadlines, ethical grounding, and the kind of stretch that doesn’t let you hide. A strong EdD in leadership can give working professionals that pressure-tested space — especially when it includes a real-world capstone project, flexible learning rhythms, and frameworks that apply across industries. It’s not about the letters after your name. It’s about committing to a deeper level of clarity, strategy, and systemic influence.

Stop treating emotional intelligence like a soft skill

If you can’t read a room, you’ll wreck one. Emotional intelligence isn’t just about being “nice” or “approachable” — it’s about understanding emotional dynamics in real time, especially when people are burned out, frustrated, or quietly disengaged. You don’t need to be a therapist, but you do need to build range: regulate your reactions, spot power shifts, and adjust tone when tension spikes. Leadership means knowing when to slow things down — or when to say the thing no one else wants to.

Ask better questions. And shut up after you ask them

Want to grow? Ask people where you’re unclear, inconsistent, or flat-out wrong. And when they tell you — don’t explain it away. Leaders who improve tend to have a feedback loop that’s active, not polite. They hear things early. They fix things before they fester. If you’re not sure how to start, learn how self-reflection improves leadership behavior — and stop expecting gold stars for “being open to feedback.”

Treat learning like a daily hygiene habit

Great leaders don’t wait for someone to hand them a book or send them to a seminar. They steal lessons from every misstep, every awkward conversation, every “we’ll circle back” that turned into a vacuum. That doesn’t mean chasing every TED Talk or filling notebooks with advice you’ll never implement. It means watching your patterns and adjusting while the game is still on.

Measure your impact by what happens when you’re not in the room

Leadership is not about being indispensable — it’s about making others stronger in your absence. Can your team move without stalling when you’re out? Can people be honest with you when things get messy? Leadership that scales is leadership that leaves space. If you want that kind of influence, study why emotionally intelligent leaders earn trust and loyalty.

This isn’t a checklist. It’s a shift. If you want to grow as a leader, stop looking for someone to tell you you’re ready. Pick something that makes you slightly uncomfortable — and start. That’s where all the good stuff happens.

If Your Marketing’s Gone Flat, Here’s How to Wake It Up

By Sharon Redd

It’s easy to start phoning it in.

The email subject lines get flatter. The social posts start repeating themselves. That one “clever idea” from last quarter? You’re still milking it because nothing new has landed. And it’s not because you’re lazy. You’re running a business. You’ve got 500 tabs open in your brain and maybe—just maybe—marketing creativity isn’t at the top of the list right now.

But here’s the thing: if your marketing feels stale to you, it already feels invisible to your customers.

You don’t need a rebrand. You don’t need a 17-slide strategy doc. You need to shake the dust off. Below are seven ways to do exactly that—practical, small-business tested, and zero fluff.

Make Space for a Reset

There’s a difference between pushing out content and feeling what your marketing is doing. A dead giveaway you’re stuck? Everything feels like a to-do list. No spark. No tension. No texture. That’s your cue to step back—not with guilt, but with intent.

Give yourself permission to not be clever for a minute. Pull out that whiteboard or a cheap notebook and ask: when was the last time you felt genuinely energized by your own marketing? If it’s been a while, steal from these 9 tips for using creative marketing to reframe the question. You’re not trying to impress people. You’re trying to remember what moves you—and let that come through the work.

Catch the Moments Where Change Is Already Happening

The easiest time to try something new? When everything’s in motion anyway.

Hiring someone new? Launching a product? Changing your pricing? Those are the perfect moments to test a new tone, try an experimental format, or layer a weird, delightful little surprise into your customer journey. No one’s expecting perfect. That’s your chance to go sideways.

You don’t even have to create something from scratch. You can reuse existing assets in new ways—repurpose an onboarding checklist into an Instagram carousel, or turn an internal team update into a behind-the-scenes post. Momentum loves momentum. Don’t waste it by overplanning.

Tap Into Feeling—Not Just Features

There’s a reason your best customer reviews don’t sound like case studies. They sound like relief. Surprise. Maybe even joy.

If your content isn’t doing that—it’s not marketing, it’s just noise.

Start small. Write something that doesn’t promote anything. Reflect on a mistake. A client story. A question you weren’t sure how to answer. Then slowly thread that vulnerability back into your “real” content. The shift will be noticeable.

Not sure where to start? Look at content marketing examples that work. You’ll notice they don’t all shout. They connect. And they work because they leave room for emotion to breathe.

 

Don’t Get Precious About Platforms

Marketing used to mean: a polished post, three edited photos, and a caption you overthink for an hour.

Now? It’s scrappier. Faster. Messier. Good.

If you’ve never tried video, experiment with short-form video content that doesn’t require editing. Just use your phone. Show your product in use. Talk about something awkward you learned the hard way. End with a question you actually care about.

Or take that old blog post that no one read and chop it up into a Twitter thread. Or a LinkedIn rant. Or a messy “storytime” post on Threads. The trick isn’t being on every platform. It’s being willing to use platforms like people do—not like a brochure.

Let Your Customers Do the Talking

There’s a weird myth that being a “small business” means doing everything yourself. The best brands don’t do that. They turn customers into co-creators.

Can you give people a reason to show off your product? To tag you? To build with you?

Start by identifying where people are already showing up—your comments, your reviews, your inbox. Then make space for their input to become part of the work. One idea? Build a UGC wall on your website. Another: host a small spotlight series featuring customers or clients. If you’ve never done this before, this breakdown of how user-generated content drives growth is worth a read.

Your brand doesn’t have to be the hero. Let your people shine—and watch the flywheel turn.

Use Visuals That Mean Something

You’re scrolling. You see it. Another overly polished Canva post with vague “entrepreneur” vibes and stock-photo handshakes. Skip.

But imagine seeing a post that says: “We almost forgot this even happened… then someone sent in their version.” And it’s a real photo. Of a real moment. With a real story.

That’s where visuals land.

If you want to make people pause—make them feel. One way to do that? Let them contribute. You can even design a unique photo calendar as a way to showcase community stories, customer submissions, or even internal milestones. It’s not about being fancy. It’s about being real. Make people part of the picture—literally.

Be Bold, Even on a Budget

You don’t need a big spend to make a bold move. You need guts.

Try a hand-written postcard campaign. Start a voice memo series for email subscribers. Host a one-day-only experiment where your website looks nothing like it usually does—then invite feedback.

The best ideas often cost the least. What they do cost is attention, intention, and a little discomfort.

If you need a jumping-off point, scan through 20 low-cost marketing tactics that drive results. Then throw out the three that feel easiest. Pick one that scares you a little. That’s probably the one worth trying.

Conclusion: Creativity Isn’t a Luxury—It’s a Signal

You don’t have to be a “creative business” to use creativity well. You just have to care enough to not mail it in.

People can feel when you’re showing up with energy, curiosity, and risk. They can also feel when you’re phoning it in.

So if your marketing feels stale—it’s not a branding problem. It’s a bravery problem. And the fix isn’t louder. It’s truer.

Get weird. Get honest. Get moving.

Strengthening Career Development in the Asia Pacific and Beyond: A Review

By Tuan Anh Le

As part of Global Career Month, APCDA convened a panel of distinguished leaders from across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond to explore the future of career development. As a practitioner working in Vietnam, I found the discussion deeply relevant not only for understanding global trends but also for imagining how Vietnam can strengthen its own career development ecosystem.

The session highlighted four major themes: the societal value of career development, the professionalization of practitioners, workforce upskilling and reskilling, and the growing connection between career development and mental health.

Career Development as a Foundation for Economic and Social Progress

Across the panel, there was consensus that career development is no longer a standalone service. It is a strategic lever for supporting economic vitality, social cohesion, and human empowerment.

Arun Mittal described career development as positioned at the intersection of economic restructuring, social transition, and human aspiration. His insight captures the complexity facing many countries today: automation, green transformation, shifting industries, and rising entrepreneurial mindsets. When career guidance is embedded into national systems, individuals become more resilient, and labor markets operate more effectively.

From Japan, Yoshimi Sasaki emphasized the challenges of rapid technological change and demographic shifts. Many young workers lack long-term career vision and feel insecure about their future. Her reminder to return to three core questions: What do I want? What can I do? What is needed for a sustainable future?, reinforces the importance of reflective practice as a stabilizing force amid uncertainty.

Reframing Career Development Across the Life Course

A major theme emerged from Dr. Soon-Joo Gog’s contribution: career development must be reframed as a lifelong capability, not a one-time intervention. Singapore’s “career health” movement aims to ensure that every worker regardless of education level or industry can plan, adapt, and transition throughout longer and more unpredictable working lives.

This approach recognizes that workers frequently navigate job redesign, technological integration, and role transitions. Employers therefore play a crucial part in creating internal mobility pathways, supporting learning, and prioritizing skills-first thinking.

Equity, Mental Health, and Sustainability in Career Practice

Several panelists emphasized that modern career development must integrate human well-being and social equity.

Dr. Candy Ho highlighted the growing importance of belonging, agency, and equitable access to guidance especially in contexts of migration, reconciliation, and climate disruption. Her perspective that “every job must now be seen as a green job” underscores the importance of sustainability and reskilling as cross-cutting priorities across the region.

From the United States, Carolyn Jones reminded practitioners that career development affects far more than employment outcomes. When individuals do not have decent work, fair wages, or psychologically safe environments, sustainability and long-term well-being are compromised. Advocacy is therefore a professional obligation one that involves institutions, communities, and policy systems.

A Shared Vision for the Region

Although panelists represented diverse national contexts, their insights converged around several priorities for the Asia-Pacific:

  • Elevating career development as essential public infrastructure

  • Strengthening practitioner professionalization and standards

  • Scaling upskilling and reskilling opportunities for all workers

  • Integrating mental health considerations into career services

  • Ensuring equity for marginalized or underserved groups

  • Preparing workforces for green and digital transitions

Together, these point toward a future where career development is embedded into national agendas, employer practices, and lifelong learning cultures.

Application to Vietnam: Building a Future-Ready Career Ecosystem

Vietnam faces many similar dynamics: fast-paced digitalization, a young workforce seeking direction, and widening skill disparities. The insights from this webinar suggest several pathways for strengthening Vietnam’s career ecosystem:

  1. Promote lifelong career development literacy. Vietnam’s services remain concentrated in schools. Expanding guidance for adults, career shifters, and mid-career learners would align with international best practice.

  2. Support employers especially SMEs in career pathway design. Like Japan, many Vietnamese SMEs lack structured talent development, even though they employ much of the workforce.

  3. Integrate career development with mental health awareness. Young professionals increasingly face stress, uncertainty, and burnout. Incorporating mental-health-informed practices could significantly improve client outcomes.

  4. Prioritize equity and access. This includes women returning to work after caregiving, rural populations, displaced workers, and people with disabilities.

  5. Prepare for green transformation. Career practitioners can help workers understand how sustainability and climate adaptation will shape labor markets and skills demand in the coming decade.

This webinar reaffirmed how interconnected our work has become and why collaboration across borders is vital. As Vietnam continues its economic and educational transformation, insights from the Asia-Pacific region offer both guidance and inspiration. Career development, when positioned as a public good, has the power to unlock human potential and contribute to a more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable future for all.

Soft Skills Drive Career Success and Advancement

By Sothinathan Sangjeli,

Career Consultant, SkillBridge Consultancy Pvt.Ltd., Sri Lanka

In the intricate architecture of a successful career, technical expertise has long been visible as the sturdy bricks and mortar. However, in today’s dynamic and interconnected job market, it is the less tangible element—the unseen force of soft skills—that acts as the essential binding agent, determining the structure’s resilience, adaptability, and ultimate height. Soft skills, those personal attributes and interpersonal abilities that dictate how we interact, adapt, and manage ourselves, have surged from being desirable complements to indispensable core competencies for both career selection and long-term professional advancement.

The New Currency in a Transformed Economy

The escalating emphasis on soft skills is not a passing trend but a fundamental shift driven by powerful macroeconomic and technological forces:

1. The Rise of AI and Automation

As machines master many technical and repetitive tasks, human value shifts toward capabilities technology cannot easily replicate—creativity, emotional intelligence, nuanced communication, ethical judgment.

2. The Hybrid and Global Workplace

Modern work involves virtual meetings, cross-cultural teams, and asynchronous communication. Skills like empathy, clarity, and active listening become operational necessities for cohesion and trust.

3. Pace of Change and Innovation

Industries evolve rapidly. Technical skills may expire quickly, but adaptability, learning agility, and problem-solving remain evergreen.

This shift is reshaping hiring practices. Employers increasingly prioritize well-rounded candidates with both hard and soft skills, recognizing that strong technical performers who lack collaboration, communication, or time-management skills can hinder productivity.

The Deciding Factor in Career Selection

The influence of soft skills begins far before promotions—it starts at career choice. One’s natural or developed soft skill strengths can indicate fields where they will excel:

  • Empathetic, patient individuals may thrive in healthcare, therapy, or education.

  • Critical thinkers and problem-solvers may flourish in consulting, engineering, or data science.

  • Creative, articulate individuals may be drawn to marketing, design, or entrepreneurship.

Understanding one’s soft skill profile is essential for self-assessment. It shifts the question from “What can I do?” to “Where will I fit and flourish?” This alignment often predicts satisfaction and longevity.

The Catalyst for Career Advancement

Technical skills may secure entry-level roles, but soft skills fuel upward trajectory. Research shows employees who blend hard and soft skills advance faster than peers who rely solely on technical strengths.

These capabilities signal leadership potential—someone who can guide teams, communicate strategy, mentor others, and represent the organization effectively.

They are markers of promotability.

The Essential Toolkit: Key Soft Skills

Employers consistently highlight several core soft skills:

Communication

Articulating ideas clearly, active listening, tailoring messages to audiences.

Adaptability & Flexibility

Embracing change, pivoting strategies, staying resilient under pressure.

Problem-Solving & Critical Thinking

Analyzing complex issues, identifying root causes, evaluating options, implementing solutions.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

Understanding one’s own and others’ emotions, managing conflict, building rapport, leading with empathy.

Teamwork & Collaboration

Working toward common goals, valuing diverse perspectives, contributing constructively within teams.

Modern professionals should view their skill set as a dual-bladed tool. Hard skills are sharp and essential for defined tasks. Soft skills form the equally sharp, versatile blade for navigating human and strategic dimensions of work.

Technical expertise opens the door, but soft skills propel careers, deepen relationships, and drive long-term leadership success.

They are the unseen force that transforms a job into a career, and an employee into a leader.

Shaping Future-Ready Campuses: Lessons from Building a Dynamic Career Development Center

By Hafiz Kasman, Kinobi COO

Universities in Hong Kong and Macao are at a pivotal point in redefining how career services prepare students for an evolving job market. The whitepaper reveals that many institutions still depend on outdated systems, with limited staffing and budgets—averaging one career staff per 1,200 students and annual budgets often below HK$500,000. Meanwhile, Generation Z students expect personalized guidance, technology-driven solutions, and purposeful career pathways.

Underemployment rates and administrative inefficiencies have exposed the urgent need for transformation. While only 25–50% of undergraduates currently engage with career services before graduation, leading universities are pioneering new models. The University of Macau, for instance, embeds career planning within residential colleges, ensuring early exposure for all students. Others, like HKCT Institute of Higher Education, invest heavily in professional certifications such as NCDA and GCDF to raise the quality of career coaching.

Technology adoption remains uneven—57% of universities still lack a comprehensive career management system. However, many plan to integrate AI features for CV reviews, mock interviews, and job matching within the next three years. The report recommends a strategic shift toward AI-enabled platforms like Kinobi AI, which can automate workflows, improve engagement, and allow staff to focus on personalised student support.

The whitepaper concludes that to stay competitive and relevant, universities must transition from activity-based to outcome-driven approaches, invest in staff development, and embrace digital innovation. By doing so, career centres can evolve into strategic pillars that empower students to thrive in the workforce and ensure that higher education continues to deliver meaningful, future-ready outcomes.

Read the whitepaper here.

For more information: https://kinobi.ai/ebooks/hongkong-macao-universities-whitepaper/

Webinar Reflection: Hope, Adaptability, and Career Development in Vietnam and Asia

By Le Tuan Anh

When I joined the recent webinar on Hope and Adaptability, I didn’t expect it to hit so close to home. The conversation about how we find meaning in times of rapid change perfectly mirrors what I see every week in my coaching sessions across Vietnam, professionals, educators, and career counselors trying to stay hopeful and relevant in a landscape that evolves faster than our training can catch up.

1. The Asian Career Landscape Is Shifting

Across Asia, especially in countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, career development is being redefined. Ten years ago, the conversation was about getting a job. Today, it’s about staying employable, reinventing yourself, and finding purpose beyond a title.

In Vietnam, I often work with professionals in their 40s and 50s who’ve spent two decades climbing the corporate ladder. They come to me not because they failed, but because they succeeded and now feel lost in their success. The world has moved. The tools they mastered are outdated. Younger colleagues speak in the language of data, design thinking, and AI-assisted workflows. Suddenly, experience feels heavy.

That’s where hope and adaptability intersect. Hope gives us the courage to start again. Adaptability gives us the skills to make that hope real.

2. Adaptability in Practice: What It Looks Like in Vietnam

Adaptability here doesn’t always mean changing jobs, sometimes it means changing how you work.
 I’ve seen a marketing director learn to use Canva and ChatGPT to design her own campaigns instead of waiting for her team. A lecturer who once resisted technology now uses AI tools to design interactive learning experiences for students. A career counselor at a local university learned LinkedIn analytics to help students track engagement and refine their online presence.

These are small actions, but they represent a new mindset: adapt first, perfect later.

In a country where lifelong learning is still a new concept, helping clients build this mindset matters more than teaching any specific tool. As practitioners, we don’t need to be experts in every technology but we do need to model curiosity.

3. The Role of AI: From Disruption to Deepened Human Connection

The webinar framed adaptability not as passive flexibility but as conscious, value-driven action and this perspective reshaped how I see the role of AI in career development. In Asia, AI has arrived faster than our systems can adapt, yet slower than our fears imagine. Many counselors worry that automation will diminish our human value. But in practice, AI can expand our human work when we use it to deepen empathy, not replace it.

In my sessions, I integrate AI tools like ChatGPT to personalize guidance at scale. For example, I use AI to analyze a client’s career story and generate reflection prompts linked to their personal values, or to create draft LinkedIn profiles that reflect both skill and voice. I’ve also used AI to design hope-based career exercises: clients input challenges they face, and the system returns tailored “what-if” scenarios that open pathways they hadn’t seen.

This aligns with the webinar’s theme, holding creative tension between what is and what could be. AI helps counselors and clients visualize the “what could be” faster, so that the real work, building motivation, meaning, and courage can begin earlier. Used wisely, AI gives us more time to sit with the human side of change: fear, hope, and identity reconstruction.

4. Personal Branding for Career Counselors in Asia: A Practice of Hope

Another insight from the webinar that resonates strongly is the idea that hope thrives when meaning is shared. For career practitioners in Asia, personal branding is not about self-promotion, it’s about creating visibility for meaningful conversations around change. In many Asian cultures, career transitions are still accompanied by shame or secrecy. When counselors show up authentically online, they normalize the idea that transformation is not failure but growth.

In my case, I use LinkedIn to document both success stories and uncertainties, the “messy middle” of professional reinvention. I write about how clients in Vietnam adapt to AI, switch from corporate jobs to freelance work, or rediscover purpose in midlife. These stories spark dialogue, connect practitioners across borders, and remind others that adaptability is not a Western idea; it’s a shared Asian resilience.

To make this real, here are three practices I often share with peers:

  1. Model what adaptability looks like. Show how you learn new tools or rethink your own practice after webinars like this.
  2. Bridge theory and lived experience. Translate career models into local contexts — tell stories of Vietnamese or Asian clients, not abstract cases.
  3. Collaborate regionally. Join cross-country mentoring circles or content exchanges so that “Asian career development” becomes a collective voice, not isolated efforts.

Through authentic storytelling and open sharing, we become living examples of the very hope and adaptability we teach. Our visibility doesn’t just market our services — it models the mindset of change.

5. Reframing Hope and Adaptability for Our Region

Hope is not optimism. It’s the discipline to keep learning even when outcomes are uncertain. Adaptability is not flexibility alone; it’s the decision to keep acting even when you’re unsure.

In Asia, we often grow up valuing stability, a “good job,” a “safe career.” But the future demands something else: the courage to reimagine ourselves repeatedly. The most inspiring clients I’ve worked with are not the youngest or the most tech-savvy, they’re the ones who dare to ask, “What’s next for me, and who do I want to become?”

As practitioners, our job is to help them hold that question long enough to find their own answer.

6. Looking Forward

I left the webinar reminded that adaptability is not a single skill, it’s a philosophy. It’s how we lead our clients, how we build our careers, and how we define success in a region that’s both fast-growing and full of contradictions.

My next step is to weave this lens into the training programs I design for universities and HR teams in Vietnam: integrating AI literacy, personal branding, and reflective career design into one learning path. Because in a future defined by change, the most hopeful act we can take is to keep learning how to adapt together.

Change doesn’t always ask for a plan. Sometimes it asks for a posture, open, curious, and quietly brave.

Shaping Future-Ready Campuses: Lessons from Building a Dynamic Career Development Center

By Le Tuan Anh

Reflecting on the webinar by Dr. Vandana Gambhir and Dr. Ma. Leonila Urrea and what it means for Vietnam’s career centers

  1. A practical roadmap for career centers

The webinar offered more than a conceptual framework. It was a field guide to strengthening a university Career Development Center (CDC) around three core anchors: Needs, Goals, and Partnerships.

Instead of repeating the usual “career readiness” rhetoric, the speakers challenged participants to identify exactly whose needs they serve (students, employers, faculty, or alumni), what measurable goals define success, and which partnerships make those goals possible.

Their message was refreshingly grounded: start small, start real.
If the CDC lacks budget or full-time staff, use what’s already at hand Google Sites for resources, Google Classroom for job readiness content, peer facilitators for workshops, alumni as mentors, and free digital tools for career tracking. Impact, they argued, is built step by step, not by waiting for an ideal structure.

  1. Key takeaways
  2. Define purpose before programming
    Many career centers fall into the “event trap”: running fairs and talks without linking them to outcomes. The speakers advised beginning with the end in mind, map employability outcomes, then design programs that ladder up to them.
  3. Build an ecosystem, not a silo
    The strongest CDCs operate as a hub connecting academics, employers, parents, and the student body. Each has a different motivation, but alignment starts with conversation. Collaboration matters more than ownership.
  4. Data is credibility
    Instead of counting events, collect impact data: number of students placed, employer satisfaction, internship-to-hire conversion, student confidence before and after programs. Numbers, when paired with narratives, convince leadership to invest.
  5. Scale through partnerships
    The Philippine and Indian examples showed how external partnerships with NGOs, professional associations, or industry councils accelerate growth. A small CDC team can amplify its reach if it learns to share platforms and visibility.
  1. Connecting to the Vietnamese context

Across Vietnamese universities, I often see centers that are passionate yet constrained. Most operate at the activity level, not the system level. The webinar’s model provides a timely mirror.

  • Needs: Vietnamese CDCs serve diverse student populations from career-undecided freshmen to job-ready seniors but few have clear segmentation. Applying the “needs mapping” approach could help centers design differentiated tracks (career exploration, job readiness, graduate opportunities).
  • Goals: Many centers still measure by “number of events.” Re-framing success around employability outcomes would shift conversations with university leadership.
  • Partnerships: Industry relations tend to live within separate units (alumni, marketing, or corporate relations). Integrating them under a shared employability strategy could multiply impact without adding cost.
  1. How I’ll apply these ideas in my work

I plan to embed this framework into the consulting and capacity-building programs I run with university career teams in Vietnam. Concretely:

  1. 90-day operational audit: use the Needs–Goals–Partnerships checklist to identify quick wins and bottlenecks.
  2. Partner mapping: visualize who currently supports the center and who could from local businesses to student clubs.
  3. Outcome dashboard: co-create a one-page metrics board linking programs to student employment outcomes.

This approach turns an abstract idea into something implementable, especially for universities with limited manpower or funding. It also aligns with global standards while respecting local constraints.

  1. Final reflection

What I valued most in this webinar wasn’t a model, it was the mindset shift.
A Career Development Center isn’t a service desk; it’s a learning partner that evolves with its students.

In Vietnam, where higher education is changing fast, we need more of these cross-border conversations practical, generous, and honest about resource realities. This webinar reminded me why I continue to bridge global insights with local practice: to help each career center become not just a place where students find jobs, but where they build purpose.

The Long Game: Self-Care Habits That Keep Entrepreneurs Sane, Focused, and Growing

By Sharon Redd

Success isn’t just about hustle. It’s about staying whole while everything around you strains, accelerates, and demands more. Entrepreneurs burn bright — and burn out just as fast when self-care is treated like a side project. That mindset isn’t just flawed; it’s expensive. Burnout doesn’t send an invoice, but it always collects. These aren’t “productivity hacks.” They’re rhythms that help you show up with a brain that still works and a nervous system that hasn’t gone feral. Because scaling a business while your body is scaling collapse is not a long game.

Build Mindfulness Into Your Routine

Mindfulness isn’t just for meltdowns. It’s the difference between reacting to chaos and choosing how you enter a room. You don’t need to sit on a cushion or chant in Sanskrit — but you do need to notice what your attention is doing. A few breaths before a pitch, a quick body check before an email blitz, even one minute of silence in your car — these recalibrate more than you think. Entrepreneurs who train themselves to pause are often the ones who avoid preventable mistakes. They listen better. They pivot faster. They recover quicker when things break, which they always do.

Incorporate Movement Into Your Day

You were not built to sit for ten hours while solving complex problems. Motion matters. And no, this isn’t a call to “optimize your workout routine.” It’s about integrating movement. A walk between meetings can clear a mental jam better than a Slack brainstorm. Five minutes of stretching mid-day resets your nervous system when caffeine just masks the crash. You don’t need a gym badge. You need a body that’s not silently giving up on you while your mind is still pitching Series A.

Explore Gentle, Plant-Based Stress Supports

Stress will find you. What you reach for when it does — that’s where you’ve built your habits. While some entrepreneurs hit the wall with caffeine, alcohol, or sugar, others are turning toward safe, plant-based supports that don’t tax the system. Aromatherapy with lavender oil has shown calming effects when used consistently. Adaptogens like ashwagandha have become popular for easing pressure without sedating drive. And some are exploring THCa, a non-psychoactive cannabinoid. Learn about this and its potential to promote a sense of calm without intoxication.

Use Boundaries to Protect Your Time

Your time is your scarcest asset, and your calendar is either your shield or your undoing. If every minute is reactive, you’re not leading — you’re absorbing. Start with one real boundary: a meeting-free block, a strict no-call morning, a shutdown routine after 6 p.m. Build from there. Entrepreneurs who protect their best hours — not just fill them — make higher-leverage decisions. You don’t need more hours. You need fewer leaks. And if your boundaries aren’t visible, your team won’t believe in theirs either.

Prioritize Consistent, High-Quality Sleep

Sleep isn’t weakness. It’s where your decision-making recalibrates, your memory consolidates, and your patience regenerates. Yet too many founders wear exhaustion like a badge. You’re not “pushing through” — you’re pushing downhill with worn brakes. A consistent wind-down routine, screen-free final hours, and getting to bed before midnight aren’t wellness tropes. They’re leadership tools. The version of you who slept six good hours will hire better, sell clearer, and say “no” faster. The version who’s slept four will say something they regret.

Treat Rest as a Strategic Resource

Creative output requires input. But in startup culture, rest gets framed as a delay, not a driver. That’s backwards. Rest — real rest, not scrolling while half-slumped on the couch — fuels the next smart move. Walks with no agenda. Play that isn’t productive. A weekend without work tabs open. These are not indulgences. They’re maintenance. Entrepreneurs who treat rest like strategy tend to show up with more clarity and fewer regrets. It’s not about laziness. It’s about longevity.

Maintain Social and Personal Connections

Founders isolate. It’s often unintentional — the grind narrows your circle and stretches your time thin. But disconnection kills creativity. You need a few people who remind you you’re human. Not clients. Not collaborators. Actual humans who don’t care about your OKRs. Text a friend. Say yes to that invite you almost declined. Even ten minutes with someone who sees you, not your business, can refuel your clarity faster than another productivity podcast ever will.

You don’t have to burn out to prove you care. You don’t have to suffer to scale. The most sustainable entrepreneurs aren’t always the smartest or most funded — they’re the ones who treat recovery like infrastructure. They don’t wait until everything breaks. They build in space. They honor rhythm. They know their body is the first system they’re responsible for, and the most critical one to maintain. The game is long. Your strategy should be too.

Discover career development opportunities with the Asia Pacific Career Development Association, where you can connect with professionals, access valuable resources, and stay ahead in the dynamic field of career development across the Asia Pacific region!

Starting Over: Turning a Career Setback into a Business

By Sharon Redd

Experiencing a career setback can feel like freefall — one minute you’re stable, and the next, you’re sifting through job boards with your confidence in pieces. But here’s the catch: the people who build something worthwhile after they fall? They usually weren’t the most prepared. They were the most awake. That moment of shock cracked something open — and in the space where routine used to live, a new possibility can grow. Starting your own business isn’t about turning pain into profit. It’s about using disruption as raw material. If you’ve hit a wall, it might be the perfect time to build a door.

Rebuilding After a Career Setback

The first thing to collapse in a career setback is usually your story. “I was on track.” “I had momentum.” “I knew who I was.” When that story crumbles, the temptation is to wait for someone to hand you a new one. Don’t. Reframing what happened is not spin — it’s empowerment. When you treat the setback like data instead of failure, you get your power back. Ask yourself what it showed you, not just what it took from you. The hardest part isn’t starting something new — it’s believing that you’re still someone who can.

Take Inventory of Your Skills

Don’t rush into the next idea just because you’re scared to be still. Sit with the discomfort long enough to ask better questions. What have you done that energized you — even once? What do people come to you for? What are you not willing to tolerate again? Inventory isn’t just about listing skills. It’s about decoding your own patterns. Often, your next move isn’t about reinvention. It’s about reallocation. The version of you who got knocked down still has value — you just need to find where it fits now.

Use a Business Degree to Strengthen Your Foundation

When confidence is low, structured learning can be stabilizing. Earning a business degree — especially online — can help fill gaps in accounting, management, communication, or marketing. And for many, it’s less about the credential and more about the rhythm: showing up to something every week, producing, getting feedback. Online programs make it possible to work full-time and study at your own pace, which matters when rebuilding your life. You’re not just getting information — you’re proving to yourself that you’re still in motion.

Pick a Business That Fits Your Life

Some people pick a business idea because it’s trending. Others pick what looks “safe.” Neither is sustainable. Start with what you wouldn’t mind obsessing over for a year — because you will. Consider service models, digital-first products, or skills-based offerings that don’t require huge startup capital. Don’t overthink differentiation — just look for a wedge where your experience gives you an unique advantage. What seems obvious to you might be magic to someone else. That’s your opening.

Start With What You Can Afford

Forget the glossy startup myth. Most businesses begin on nights and weekends, using borrowed tools and secondhand faith. Prioritize frictionless decisions. Can you test the idea with $50? Can you barter for your first client? Can you hold onto part-time work while building? The goal isn’t to impress anyone — it’s to stay in the game long enough to get traction. People confuse bootstrapping with scarcity. But done right, it creates the kind of focus you can’t fake.

Build a Brand That’s Easy to Remember

Naming isn’t just about logos and domains. It’s about clarity. What problem are you solving? Who needs to remember you? What feeling should your brand evoke? You’re not looking for the cleverest option — you’re looking for the clearest signal. Start with tone: bold, calm, technical, playful? Then map the name, the colors, the copy — everything — to that vibe. Don’t stall in perfection. Pick something that fits now. You can evolve it later. Most people don’t fail because their brand was bad. They fail because they never launched.

Deal With Impostor Syndrome Early

Impostor syndrome doesn’t care how talented you are. It feeds on timing — and few moments are riper for it than after a professional fall. That voice in your head will sound reasonable. It will remind you of your limits, your last failure, your invisible résumé gaps. Don’t argue with it. Just do the thing anyway. Action creates evidence. Evidence rewrites belief. The sooner you accept that discomfort is part of the process, the less power it holds. Confidence isn’t a prerequisite. It’s a byproduct.

You don’t need a cofounder, a pitch deck, or a perfect plan to start. You need traction. You need momentum. Starting a business after a career collapse isn’t about proving your worth — it’s about rebuilding a world where you don’t need permission to act. You’re allowed to make it small. You’re allowed to change your mind. But you owe yourself the experiment. Because the worst-case scenario isn’t failure. It’s staying exactly where you are and calling it stability.

Discover a world of career development opportunities with the Asia Pacific Career Development Association, where professionals connect, learn, and grow in the vibrant Asia Pacific region!

The Role of Parents in Career Choices

By Sothinathan Sangjeli, DBA(Red.) MBA(SEU), EMSc -SM(AeU), BBA(EU), HNDA(SLIATE), ACPM, AMSLIM, OTHM(UK), MGIOC, APCDA, Career Consultant, SkillBridge Consultancy Pvt.Ltd., Sri Lanka

Parents play a pivotal role in shaping their children’s career paths. From early childhood, their attitudes, values, and decisions influence how children perceive success and what professions they consider achievable. Career guidance provided to parents is not only about informing them of job options but also about empowering them to support their children in choosing careers aligned with talents, passions, and future opportunities.

Today, the landscape of careers is broader and more dynamic than ever before, and without structured guidance, many parents risk pushing their children into outdated or unsuitable choices.

 

Parental Guidance in Early Stages

Traditional Career Expectations: Historically, parents directed children into careers considered stable or prestigious, often based on their own experiences or cultural norms (Bandura, 1971; Bourdieu, 1986). Professions such as medicine, engineering, or law dominated these expectations. This “blueprint model” left adolescents with limited autonomy and often resulted in poor person–environment fit (Holland, 1997). Many individuals later experienced dissatisfaction, burnout, or mid-career changes. In earlier times, parents commonly emphasized professions like medicine, law, engineering, or teaching. These were seen as “safe” and respectable careers, ensuring financial stability and social recognition.

  • Limited Access to Career Information: Decades ago, resources such as career counsellors, aptitude tests, or online research tools were rare. Parents relied mainly on community opinions, relatives, or their own experiences, often leading to narrow choices.
  • Influence of Social and Cultural Norms: Cultural values shaped career decisions significantly. Many parents pushed children into family businesses or jobs that reinforced social status, even if they didn’t align with the child’s abilities or interests.

Modern Parental Role in Career Guidance

  • Rise of Career Counselling and Assessments: Schools and universities now provide structured career counselling services. Parents can access psychometric tests and counselling sessions to better understand their children’s strengths and weaknesses.
  • Exposure to Global Opportunities: Today’s generation has opportunities across technology, digital entrepreneurship, creative industries, and global roles that were unimaginable decades ago. Parents with proper guidance can encourage children to embrace diverse and futuristic career options.
  • Technology and Online Resources: With the internet, parents have access to free resources, webinars, e-learning, and job trend data. This helps them stay updated and advise their children more effectively.

Comparisons Between Early Stages and Current Stages

In the early stages, career awareness was limited, with students having only narrow choices, whereas in the current stages, there is broad awareness and global exposure to different career paths. Parental influence used to be dominant with rigid expectations, but today it has shifted to a more collaborative and supportive role. Opportunities were once restricted to a few traditional roles, while now diverse industries and digital careers are widely available. Decision-making in the past was largely parent-driven, but at present, it is more of a shared process between parents and children.

Support systems were minimal in earlier times, with little to no counselling, whereas today, schools, career coaches, and online platforms provide strong guidance and support. Parents today are more informed and flexible compared to the rigid, authority-driven guidance of earlier generations.

Importance of Career Guidance for Parents

  • Helping Children Identify Strengths and Talents: Guided parents can support children in recognizing their natural abilities and nurturing them into future career skills.
  • Avoiding Unrealistic Expectations: Parents often unknowingly impose their own unfulfilled dreams on children. Proper guidance helps them balance expectations with reality.
  • Building Confidence in Career Decisions: When parents are informed, they create a safe environment where children feel encouraged to explore and decide without fear of failure.

Strategies for Effective Career Guidance to Parents

  • Career Workshops and Seminars for Parents: Schools and institutions should organize workshops to help parents stay informed about modern career landscapes.
  • Collaborative Decision-Making: Instead of dictating, parents should engage in discussions with their children, considering interests, aptitude, and career prospects.
  • Encouraging Exploration and Experimentation: Parents must allow children to try internships, part-time jobs, and projects to explore interests before settling on a career.
  • Using Psychometric and Aptitude Tests: Scientific tools provide clarity on strengths and suitable career paths, reducing guesswork and pressure.

Role of Schools and Institutions in Guiding Parents

  • Parent-Teacher Collaboration: Teachers often notice hidden talents in children. Collaboration between teachers and parents strengthens career decisions.
  • Career Counselling Cells: Many schools now have dedicated career guidance centers, offering structured resources to both parents and students.

Common Mistakes Parents Make in Career Guidance

  • Forcing Personal Aspirations: Some parents push children to follow careers they themselves wished for but never pursued.
  • Ignoring Child’s Passion: Disregarding personal interests can lead to frustration and burnout in the long run.
  • Overemphasis on Job Security: While financial stability is important, excessive focus on “safe jobs” may limit creativity and personal growth.

Striking the Balance in Parental Involvement

Career guidance to parents plays a critical role in shaping children’s career paths. Unlike the past, today’s environment demands informed, flexible, and collaborative parenting. Parents who balance their guidance with their children’s interests foster confident, successful, and satisfied professionals.

 

Remembering the GETT Global Careers Event: Securing Stability: Upskilling and Retention of Talent

By Momoko Asaka- Veriteworks Inc, CEO/ Past APCDA President

As career development professionals, APCDA members are constantly seeking fresh perspectives on how to equip people for a rapidly changing world of work. This panel, part of the “Unlocking the Power of Global Perspectives in Careers” event hosted by Global Educational Travel and Tours (GETT) on September 11, 2025, offered valuable insights from across the Asia Pacific and beyond on how to upskill, reskill, and retain talent in times of uncertainty. The discussion was moderated by Ruth McAteer and featured panelists Tuan-Anh Le (Vietnam), Baktiar Hasnan (Malaysia), Momoko Asaka (Japan), and Bella Doswell (Canada/UK).

 

Key Themes and Audience Insights

The panel explored how to secure stability in a rapidly shifting labor market through upskilling, reskilling, and talent retention. Using Slido, participants voted on the greatest challenges:

  • Connecting with labor market trends (ranked #1)
  • Embracing lifelong learning
  • Dealing with difficult transitions
  • Educating organizations and policy makers

This real-time feedback showed a clear desire for bridging education and employment, especially through practical and scalable solutions.

 

Highlights from the Four Panelists

Tuan-Anh Le emphasized proactive career planning for students, introducing a five-step model: self-understanding → market scanning → learning roadmap → gaining experience → personal branding. He stressed that “career paths are not straight lines” and encouraged students to focus on skills, not job titles, and to ask for help from mentors.

 

Baktiar Hasnan framed retention as a strategic national issue, not just an HR task. He proposed three practitioner roles:

  • Diagnostic: go beyond exit interviews; run stay interviews and analyze data at a granular level
  • Strategist: build internal mobility frameworks and targeted upskilling plans
  • Ecosystem Builder: supply evidence-based insights to policymakers and promote mentoring cultures
    He cited Singapore’s integrated national mentoring approach as a successful model.

Momoko Asaka shared Japan’s challenge of low adult participation in formal learning (~3%) compared with OECD peers. She proposed three keys to cultivating a growth mindset for lifelong learning:

  • Build self-awareness (strengths, values, learning styles)
  • Design small wins (short online courses, mini-projects)
  • Foster learning communities to sustain motivation and well-being
    She also introduced the HR Library, a 700-member subscription community supporting HR professionals through study sessions and counselor consultations.

Bella Doswell spoke from her experience in career transition and outplacement. She stressed beginning with stability and confidence before adding new training, using micro-credentials and short programs while coaching branding, job search, and interviews.

“Change is external, but transition is internal — and emotional support is key.”

Common Threads & Final Messages

Across the discussion, the panel returned to several cross-cutting strategies:

  • Networking as a bridge between sectors and countries
  • Labour market intelligence (LMI) to target learning
  • Personal branding and visibility at all career stages
  • Mentorship and sponsorship to nurture internal talent
  • Collaboration between HR, recruiters, and CDPs to align human and market needs

The panel closed with one-sentence advice:

  • Bella: “Inventory what you already bring before reinventing.”
  • Momoko: “Even small, curiosity-led steps build confidence and growth.”
  • Baktiar: “Follow your curiosity—and fall in love with something.”
  • Tuan-Anh: “Keep building your personal brand—and let’s stay connected.”

Why this matters for APCDA members:
This session exemplified how our Asia Pacific network can cross-pollinate practices and insights, offering actionable ideas for supporting students, employees, and organizations through transitions while fostering sustainable growth mindsets.

Smart Tips for Building an Excellent Home Office That Impresses Clients

By Sharon Redd

Creating a home office that doubles as a client-ready meeting space is more than just buying a desk and chair. It’s about curating an environment that inspires confidence in your business and makes clients feel respected—whether they step into your home or log in for a video call. Every decision you make, from lighting to seating to décor, shapes how professional you look and how comfortable your clients feel. The good news is you don’t need a massive budget or endless square footage. With attention to detail and the right choices, your home office can feel like an extension of a polished corporate space.

Choosing the Right Spot

The first decision is location, and it matters more than you might think. A corner of a spare bedroom might work for day-to-day tasks, but hosting client calls for a space with fewer distractions and more polish. Start by evaluating the room’s natural light and stability, since light can influence both in-person ambience and how you appear on camera. A quiet, well-ventilated room free from high-traffic household noise sets the right tone. Once chosen, commit to treating that room as your professional base—not just an afterthought squeezed between family duties.

Tech That Supports Virtual Meetings

Your equipment can make or break a client’s first impression during virtual sessions. A fuzzy image or muffled sound instantly undermines credibility, no matter how sharp your ideas are. Prioritize a clear camera, reliable microphone, and stable internet. Even something as simple as raising the camera above eye level creates a more natural, flattering view. Layer in soft lighting to reduce shadows, and keep backup gear—like an extra headset—within reach. Small upgrades here send the message that you take the interaction seriously.

Protecting Your Home Office Investment

Even the best-designed home office can grind to a halt if a major system in your home stops working. An electrical fault, broken furnace, or plumbing leak doesn’t just interrupt your comfort—it disrupts your ability to host clients and maintain a reliable schedule. To avoid these costly interruptions, consider a home warranty; this might help by covering the repair or replacement of essential systems and appliances when they fail. These plans can be customized annually with optional add-ons, so you’re not left paying out-of-pocket for breakdowns caused by normal wear and tear.

Designing for In-Person Clients

When clients step into your space, they’re not just seeing your office—they’re experiencing your brand. Aim for a setting that balances professionalism with comfort. Consider creating a space that welcomes clients by dedicating part of the room to a small seating arrangement. Even two chairs and a side table can transform a workspace into a consultation zone. Keep surfaces uncluttered, showcase a few relevant achievements or books, and avoid turning the room into a storage catch-all. Subtle touches—like a carafe of water or fresh flowers—signal care and thoughtfulness.

Seating and Comfort for Meetings.

Your seating choices speak louder than you realize. A worn-out chair says you cut corners, while a supportive, attractive chair tells clients you value both function and form. Investing in a beautiful, supportive chair is as much about your comfort as it is about theirs. If space allows, add an extra guest chair with good back support. Clients who sit comfortably are more likely to stay focused on the conversation rather than the furniture beneath them. Think of your seating as part of the hospitality experience you provide.

Balancing Style and Productivity

A home office shouldn’t feel sterile, but it also shouldn’t look like a living room. Striking the right balance helps you stay productive while impressing visitors. Try layering visual interest with functional decor. For example, choose shelves that display both reference books and tasteful décor, or add artwork that sparks conversation without overwhelming the space. Every element should pull double duty—elevating the aesthetic while reinforcing the purpose of the room as a place of business.

Avoiding Unprofessional Visuals

No matter how well you design your space, a few missteps can undo the impression you want to make. Be mindful of common unprofessional home office mistakes, like cluttered bookshelves, poor lighting, or distracting personal items in the background of video calls. Clients notice these details, consciously or not. Avoid mismatched furniture, messy cords, and overly casual décor. By editing your space with a critical eye, you ensure the image you project aligns with the professionalism you want to convey.

A home-based office can be more than a place where you work; it can be a professional hub that reassures clients they’ve chosen wisely in working with you. By being intentional about location, investing in the right tech, designing with clients in mind, and avoiding common pitfalls, you create an environment that signals credibility and care. Every choice—from where the desk sits to how the lighting falls—becomes part of the story you’re telling. Build that story thoughtfully, and your office will impress clients long before the first handshake or Zoom greeting.

___________

Sharon Redd created Live All the Way to help others live life to the ABSOLUTE FULLEST. She believes life all the way is a life with all the toppings! It’s ordering guacamole and queso at the restaurant. It’s wearing those bright pink shoes, no matter what anyone else thinks. It’s using your formal china for every meal and hugging your friends every time you see them. It’s eating ice cream for breakfast and so much more. Her goal, each and every day, is to live all the way and her mission is to help others do the same.

The AI Career Coaching Playbook

Curated by Han Kok Kwang – 1st Legacy Partner Lifetime Member, APCDA & 1st NCDA Master Trainer in Asia 

Note:  This article is a response to the recent Webinar called “1121 How can AI be used by Career Practitioners? Aug 2025”

Part 1: Safe & Ready – The Foundations For coaches who are curious but cautious Why Every Coach Needs This Now

The career coaching landscape has shifted permanently.

  • Clients are already testing AI tools like ChatGPT on their
  • Competing providers are advertising “AI-enhanced”
  • Employers expect jobseekers to adapt quickly to an AI-driven

This isn’t about replacing human connection. It’s about amplifying your coaching impact while preserving trust and depth.

The Privacy-First Framework

Your non-negotiable foundation

Golden Rule: Only input information your client would comfortably share at a professional networking event.

Safe Zone (Always Acceptable)
  • Job titles and career history
  • Skills and competencies
  • Industry experience
  • Professional achievements (anonymized)
  • Career interests and goals
  • Educational background
  • Geographic preferences (city/region level)
Danger Zone (Never Input)
  • Full names or identifying information
  • Contact details (phone, email, address)
  • Employee/student ID numbers
  • Company-confidential data (clients, revenue, trade secrets)
  • Mental health or personal struggles
  • Family circumstances
  • Salary or financial details
  • Reference contacts

Pro Tip: Create “client personas” to anonymize data.

  • Instead of: “John Tan, Finance Manager at ”
  • Use: “Mid-level banking professional with 12 years in risk management seeking transition into fintech.”

The AI Readiness Assessment

Your professional standard before bringing AI into sessions

Score yourself honestly (1–10 scale). You need 35+ points to safely integrate AI.

Technical Readiness (10 points)
  • Platform Security (5): I use trusted, secure AI
  • Prompt Competency (5): I can write effective prompts & critique
Professional Readiness (15 points)
  • Purpose Clarity (5): I know exactly why I’m using
  • Human-First Commitment (5): AI supplements, never replaces
  • Critical Thinking (5): I can spot bias and
Ethical Readiness (15 points)
  • Privacy Protection (5): I anonymize all client
  • Informed Consent (5): Clients know how/why AI is being
  • Boundary Awareness (5): I never use AI in crisis or sensitive
Cultural Competency (10 points)
  • Cultural Adaptation (5): I adapt outputs to
  • Inclusion Awareness (5): I spot and correct
Scoring:
  • 35–50: Ready to integrate AI
  • 25–34: Practice more before live
  • <25: Focus on foundational coaching
The 3-Step Starter Pathway

(For hesitant or clueless coaches)

1.    Resumé Impact Enhancement Prompt:

“You are a senior recruiter reviewing resumes for [target role]. Rewrite these achievement bullets for maximum impact: [insert bullets]. Include metrics, action verbs, and relevant keywords. Suggest one ‘proof of work’ project to validate each claim.”

#Coach Role: Discuss authenticity, highlight proof-of-work projects as growth opportunities.

2.    Skills Gap Strategic Analysis Prompt:

“Analyze the top 20 job postings for [target role] in [region]. Identify the top 12 skills. Separate into ‘must-have’ vs ‘differentiator’ skills. Suggest 3 positioning strategies for a professional with [X background]. Provide a 90-day learning roadmap with free/low-cost resources.”

#Coach Role: Ensure the learning roadmap is realistic.

Hidden Job Market Navigation Prompt:

“You are a career strategist for the hidden job market in [industry/region]. Suggest 10 hidden entry points (alumni, associations, volunteering, content creation). Draft 3 LinkedIn outreach templates (value-first, respectful). Identify 5 types of ‘gatekeepers’ on LinkedIn who influence hiring decisions.”

#Coach Role: Teach that 80% of jobs are hidden. LinkedIn = unfair advantage.

Part 1 Takeaway

Start small, stay safe. Use personas, check your readiness, and practice with the 3 starter prompts. AI is a co-pilot, you are the pilot.

Part 2: Practice & Progress – Beyond Basics

For coaches ready to deepen application

Advanced Prompt 1: Career Transition Narrative Prompt:

“Create a LinkedIn About section (150 words) for a professional moving from [old field] to [new field] in [region]. Must bridge past to future, highlight transferable skills, and end with a forward-looking statement. Add 3 versions of an elevator pitch (30s, 60s, 90s).” #Coach Role: Use this to rebuild client identity, not just polish words.

 

Advanced Prompt 2: Interview Simulation with Cultural Intelligence Prompt:

“Design an interview system for [role/industry/region]. Include 15 STAR questions, gold- standard answers, common mistakes, coaching prompts, and culturally appropriate follow-up strategies.”

#Coach Role: Use cultural insights (e.g., indirect in Asia vs direct in US).

Advanced Prompt 3: Market Intelligence & Positioning Prompt:

“Analyze the market for [role/industry/region]. Identify growth sectors, emerging skills, candidate profiles, salary ranges, and risks. Provide 3 differentiation strategies with milestones.”

#Coach Role: Use this to give clients clarity about where to compete.

Cultural Competency Deep Dive

Asia-Pacific
  • Respect hierarchy, emphasize certifications, use indirect
Europe
  • Consider multilingual skills, mobility, work-life balance
North America
  • Emphasize quantified impact, direct communication, thought
Latin America
  • Highlight personal relationships, bilingualism, family
Bias Watch (examples)
  • Gender bias: AI suggesting nursing for women, IT for
  • Education elitism: Overvaluing Ivy League
  • Tech bias: Over-promoting IT
  • Socioeconomic bias: Assuming access to expensive

#Coach Role: Always adapt outputs, don’t deliver them raw.

 

Part 2 Takeaway

Move beyond polishing documents — use AI to strengthen identity, prepare deeply for interviews, and read market signals. Always through a cultural lens.

Part 3: Mastery & Measurement – Market Relevant

For coaches aiming for leadership-level AI use

Specialized Applications
  • Executives: Market intelligence, discreet
  • Graduates: Entry-level job mapping, interview
  • Career Plateau Clients: Internal mobility, lateral
Ethical Compass: Five Pillars & Red Lines Five Pillars
  1. Transparency — clients know when AI is
  2. Agency — AI informs, clients
  3. Privacy — confidentiality
  4. Authenticity — client’s voice, not AI’s.
  5. Competence — keep learning

Red Lines: Never use AI in:

  • Mental health crisis
  • Legal or compliance issues
  • Personal/family disclosures
  • When client requests “AI-free” coaching
Quality Assurance Framework Before Sessions
  • Consent obtained
  • Privacy check complete
  • Session objectives set
During Sessions
  • AI supports, coach leads
  • Outputs evaluated for bias/culture
  • Client agency preserved
After Sessions
  • Gather feedback
  • Measure outcomes
  • Note cultural adaptations
Measuring Success Client Metrics
  • Reduced job search time
  • Higher interview conversion rates
  • Improved confidence and clarity
  • Career progression over time
Coach Metrics
  • Session efficiency
  • Client retention & referrals
  • Professional confidence with AI
  • Growth in cultural competency
Implementation Timeline (12 Weeks)
  • Weeks 1–2: Build foundations (privacy, readiness, personas).
  • Weeks 3–4: Pilot resumé + skills
  • Weeks 5–8: Expand to hidden job market & cultural
  • Weeks 9–12: Master advanced prompts, measure
Part 3 Takeaway

Mastery isn’t about fancy prompts. It’s about consistent ethics, measurable outcomes, and cultural sensitivity. AI makes you faster, but your human judgment makes you valuable.

Final Conclusion

The choice isn’t whether to adopt AI. It’s whether to do it thoughtfully, ethically, and

effectively.

  • Part 1: Start safe with privacy, readiness, and 3 starter
  • Part 2: Progress with narratives, interviews, market intelligence, and cultural
  • Part 3: Master specialized applications, ethics, and
AI won’t replace career coaches.

But career coaches who refuse to engage with AI may be replaced by peers who integrate it with humanity and wisdom.

Start today. Your clients are counting on it.

Smart Starts: Funding Your IoT Prototype While Building Investor Confidence

The Life Values Inventory

Dr Catherine Hughes, Lecturer – Career Education, RMIT University, Australia

Available at: https://www.lifevaluesinventory.org/index.html

Career practitioners starting out in private practice and those who work in career services in schools, colleges or universities often have a small budget that may limit expenditure available for commercial career assessment tools. Being able to access career assessment tools that are theoretically sound, and well-researched and free of charge is a bonus. 

 

The Life Values Inventory Brown & Crace, 1996, 2002) is a high-quality assessment tool that is free of charge. The Life Values Inventory is derived from Brown’s holistic values-based theory of life role choice and satisfaction (Brown, 1996, 2002). It is also informed by Rokeach’s (1973) theory of human values and the life-space segment of Super’s theory of career development (1990). The Life Values Inventory is supported with a Facilitator’s Guide that summarises the underpinning career development theory, describes the development of the Life Values Inventory and reports the psychometric properties. The conclusion is that overall, internal consistency reliability and test-retest reliability are adequate to use the inventory with adults and adolescents.

The Life Values Inventory assesses 14 core values including:

 

  1. Achievement – striving to accomplish goals and tasks.
  2. Belonging – feeling connected to and accepted by others.
  3. Concern for Environment – valuing nature and sustainability.
  4. Concern for Others – caring for the well-being of others.
  5. Creativity – expressing oneself in unique and innovative ways.
  6. Financial Prosperity – pursuing wealth and financial security.
  7. Health and Activity – maintaining physical and mental well-being.
  8. Humility – being modest and unassuming.
  9. Independence – valuing self-reliance and autonomy.
  10. Interdependence – prioritising the needs and values of family or group.
  11. Privacy – maintaining personal space and boundaries.
  12. Responsibility – being accountable and reliable.
  13. Objective Analysis – valuing knowledge and empirical evidence.
  14. Spirituality – seeking meaning and connection with something greater

Highly prioritized values are assumed to be determinants of life role choices and life satisfaction.

There are five sections to the Life Values Inventory:

  1. What currently guides your behavior? This involves responding to statements that represent various beliefs.
  2. Clarifying your values. This explores the relationship between the importance of each value and how much time and energy is devoted to each one.
  3. Values and life roles. This involves the client selecting the roles where they want to express each value. The roles include:
  • Work/academics
  • Important relationships
  • Leisure and community activities
  1. Understanding the results and strategies for optimizing the expression of values.
  2. Values and flourishing – the shift from values clarification to personal development.

The authors recommend that the Life Values Inventory can be used for purposes such as:

  • Linking values to behavior and life roles
  • Career and life role development
  • Managing life adjustment and transitions
  • Retirement and leisure planning
  • Teambuilding and development
  • Leadership training and development
  • Relationships and values
  • Research

Career practitioners are advised to attend to values and help clients to clarify, prioritize and articulate their values in different life-role contexts as a means of improving life role decision-making and life satisfaction. A career assessment tool with a strong theoretical foundation and a growing evidence base that is free of charge is a useful addition to a career practitioner’s toolkit.

References

Brown, D. (1996). Brown’s values-based, holistic model of career and life-role choices and satisfaction. In D. Brown and L. Brooks & Associates (Eds.), Career choice and development (3rd ed., pp. 337-372). Jossey-Bass Publishers

Brown, D. (2002). The role of work and cultural values in occupational choice, satisfaction, and success: A theoretical statement. Journal of Counseling and Development, 80(1), 48–56. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6678.2002.tb00165.x

Brown, D., & Crace, R. K. (1996). Values in life role choices and outcomes: A conceptual model. The Career Development Quarterly, 44(3), 211–223. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-0045.1996.tb00252.x

Rokeach, M. (1973). The nature of human values. Free Press.

Super, D. E. (1990). A life-span, life-space approach to career development. In D. Brown and L. Brooks (Eds.), Career choice and development: Applying contemporary theories to practice (2nd ed., pp. 197-261). Jossey-Bass Inc.

New Book: Wisdom to Know the Difference

By Sujata Ives

Our very own Dr. Sujata Ives has written a second book entitled “Wisdom To Know The Difference” which will be launching on LinkedIn on September 15th, and will be available on Amazon. Her prior book and workbook on Amazon & Kindle “Activate Success – Tips, Tools, & Insights To Be A Leader In Your Niche” hit Bestselling status.

As a leader in APCDA, NCDA, MCDA, MCA, ACA, World Council for Global & Intercultural Competencies UNESCO, and as a military wife, Dr. Sujata felt an upward pull in her heart-brain to write her books. She enthusiastically shares her knowledge and wisdom, as well as her prowess as a military wife for the purpose of creating peaceful workplaces and communities.

Wisdom To Know The Difference is a new book that explores the enduring principles of wisdom through the lens of a bicultural woman and professional with a vocal cord challenge that has had to navigate through her schema and contemporary life. Blending ancient philosophies, neuroscience, and real-life stories, she invites readers to rethink what it means to live and lead wisely in an age of distraction, noise, and information overload. Rather than offering quick fixes or cliché advice, the book delves into common sense themes like resilience, thoughtful decision-making, humility, and the power of perspective. With clarity and depth, she shows that wisdom is not a destination, but a lifelong practice—one that is more relevant than ever in our fast-changing world.

Drawing from her nineteen global moves and upon insights gained from nations, world cultures, ancient philosophies, and modern psychology, the daily questions that the book provides weave together timeless truths with fresh perspectives. It is evident that Dr. Sujata is intelligent and holds a library of knowledge from her interactions with leaders, philosophers, scientists, and everyday people who embody wisdom in quiet but powerful ways. 

These narratives reveal that wisdom often hides in the overlooked moments: in silence before speaking, in compassion during conflict, or in choosing patience over impulse. Her book emphasizes that true wisdom is not about intellect or age alone, but about cultivating self-awareness, empathy, acceptance, and the courage to act with integrity.

Each daily prompt includes practical mental and thought exercises, making the book both inspirational and actionable. Whether you are a seasoned or emerging leader seeking direction, a professional navigating complexity, or someone simply craving deeper meaning, Wisdom To Know The Difference offers a guide to anchoring yourself amid uncertainty. It encourages a more thoughtful way of engaging with your world—one that values depth over speed, connection over ego, and presence over perfection. In a noisy culture that often confuses cleverness and prestidigitation with wisdom, Dr. Sujata’s book is a profound call to what truly matters.

Dr. Sujata is the Chair of the APCDA Program Committee and much more!
Feel free to contact her on LinkedIn. 

Wisdom to Know the Difference
Tips and Strategies for Cultivating a Healthy Relationship with Money

By Sharon Redd

Lady on her desk reviewing her budgets

Money isn’t just about math; it’s about meaning. Every dollar you earn, spend, or save carries a story, a belief, and an emotional charge. Building a healthy relationship with money means untangling those stories, questioning the beliefs that no longer serve you, and replacing them with practices that foster stability and peace. It’s not a single decision — it’s a lifelong dialogue between your values, your habits, and the world you live in.

Understanding Your Money Mindset

Long before you opened your first bank account, you were already forming ideas about money. Family conversations, cultural cues, and personal experiences became the blueprint for how you think and feel about finances today. If you’ve ever wondered why certain financial choices feel almost instinctive, it’s worth pausing to notice how early beliefs shape your financial outlook. Awareness of those inherited beliefs can be the first step toward reshaping them into something more empowering.
Identifying Emotional Triggers and Money Scripts
Sometimes the biggest threat to your financial health isn’t a lack of income—it’s the emotional pull behind your spending or saving decisions. Maybe you shop when you’re stressed or hoard cash when you feel uncertain. By learning to spot emotional spending patterns rooted in your psyche, you can catch yourself in those moments and choose a different path. This isn’t about judgment; it’s about breaking the loop.

Investing in Education for Long-Term Gains
One of the most overlooked ways to improve your financial future is by expanding your skill set through targeted education. Flexible online programs make it possible to study without stepping away from your job, ensuring you keep earning while you learn. Industry-recognized certifications like CompTIA can signal to employers that you have both the technical expertise and the initiative to grow. These credentials often open doors to higher-paying roles, more stable employment, and a wider network of opportunities.

Setting Goals That Align with Your Values
A savings target or debt-repayment plan will only hold your attention if it feels connected to what truly matters to you. Chasing someone else’s 

definition of success can leave you burned out and unsatisfied, even if you “hit the number.” Instead, take time to see how your core values guide smart financial goals. Aligning money moves with personal meaning makes the process feel less like sacrifice and more like self-care.

Building Supportive Habits & Systems
Willpower is unreliable, especially when life gets busy or stressful. That’s why smart money management often comes down to setting up systems that make good decisions automatic. You can let automated savings reduce decision fatigue so you’re building wealth without the daily debate about “should I transfer this now?” These systems become quiet allies, working in the background while you focus on living.

Reframing Self-Worth Beyond Comparison
Nothing distorts your financial reality faster than measuring it against someone else’s. Social media, casual conversations, and even family gatherings can turn into a silent competition over who’s “doing better.” Learning to resist comparing your finances to others relentlessly to others relentlessly can free up mental energy for your own goals. Your worth isn’t tied to the size of your account balance or the brand of your car — and believing that is a powerful form of financial resilience.

When to Seek External Help or Dialogue
Sometimes money challenges go deeper than spreadsheets and budgets. If anxiety, conflict, or shame keep you from making progress, it may be time to explore financial therapy for deeper emotional insight. Talking through the emotional side of money with a trained professional can help you untangle old patterns and move forward with clarity.
Cultivating a healthy relationship with money isn’t about chasing perfection. It’s about building awareness, creating systems that serve you, and grounding your financial life in values that matter. Over time, these choices compound into something far more valuable than any single purchase: a sense of confidence that your money, and the way you manage it, reflects who you truly are.

Smart Starts: Funding Your IoT Prototype While Building Investor Confidence

By Sharon Redd

The Internet of Things (IoT) might sound technical, but it’s simply about connecting everyday devices—like sensors, machines, and tools—to the internet so they can collect and share data. For career counselors, this matters because IoT startups are becoming a major source of new jobs, from hardware engineering and data analytics to sales and operations. When you understand what these companies do, you can better guide clients toward emerging opportunities in industries ranging from healthcare to manufacturing. And for the founders building these companies, knowing how to secure early funding is the first step to turning a connected idea into a real business.

Know Your Terrain Before You Spend

If you’re developing an IoT solution, your funding strategy has to reflect two truths: it takes real capital to build a hardware-software stack, and early funds rarely come from a single source. Most founders misfire by only chasing venture capital. Instead, map out multiple financing routes for IoT startups, combining self-funding, small grants, and convertible notes long before you even think about Series A. Each source aligns with a different stage of proof. The more sources you combine early on, the more resilience you have as conditions shift—and the less vulnerable you’ll be when a single round falls through.

Choose Scalable Hardware Early

Founders often wait too long to move off dev boards. But picking production-grade hardware early signals operational maturity. When investors see that you’ve planned for 10 units and 10,000, you earn more than a nod—you earn runway. That’s where OnLogic comes in. Their lineup offers options to buy server computers built for real-world IoT deployments: fanless, industrial-grade, and spec’d for edge computing from day one. Choosing gear that scales doesn’t just help your prototype run—it tells your investors you’re building with the long game in mind.

Signal Through Structure, Not Just Hype

The best investors aren’t swayed by charisma—they’re moved by structure. And in the IoT space, where margins and infrastructure matter, they’re looking for founders who understand operational motion. You don’t just show them a cool demo. You show them a system that could scale. One overlooked edge? Revenue structure. The IoT startups that land term sheets often offer unique revenue models that attract investors, whether through tiered software subscriptions on top of hardware or monetizing device-level analytics. That kind of blend shows investors you’re not just building things—you’re building income.

Follow the VC Landscape Flow

Venture capital used to mean chasing the biggest fish in the flashiest pond. Now, investors are more cautious, and hardware isn’t seen as the black sheep it once was. There’s been a quiet uptick in seed and early stage fund flows toward IoT platforms solving B2B infrastructure pain points. If you’re positioning your pitch in 2025, take note: the VCs writing checks are often ex-operators. They value hard-won metrics over glossy mockups. Show them your shipping schedule. Break down your gross margin range. And prove you’ve made friends with your supply chain before they become your co-owners.

Build a Prototype That Can Pitch Itself

You don’t need a final product to pitch. But you do need a working prototype that answers the investor’s first silent question: “Is this real?” This is not about polish. It’s about proof. Show a prototype that connects, transmits, and reacts in the physical world. Demonstrate the bottlenecks you’ve already hit—and how you resolved them. That story builds trust. And there’s reason to believe that how prototype funding attracts investment isn’t just anecdotal: it’s practical. A functioning prototype forces specificity in your bill of materials, power requirements, and processing needs—all things that make the next pitch meeting more credible than the last.

Your Deck Isn’t a Presentation—It’s a Filter

Think of your pitch deck as a filtering tool. Not every investor is right for your stage or your sector. A well-built deck makes that visible fast. And for IoT startups, the visuals and narrative must do double-duty: they need to explain both the product and the ecosystem it fits into. That’s where structure wins. A core slide structure for IoT decks includes market layers, data flow diagrams, and a timeline that shows when hardware transitions to service. Do not lead with TAM. Lead with traction—or better yet, clarity. Investors fund what they can explain at dinner.

Show What You’ve Built—And Where It’s Going

The worst thing you can do in a pitch meeting is talk in theory when you could show motion. Bring your prototype. Or, if logistics block you, bring a video of it in action. More than half of hardware founders miss this moment—don’t. Know how to showcase prototypes during investor pitches in a way that builds curiosity instead of explanation fatigue. Think less: “Here’s how it works,” and more: “Here’s what it changed.” Show how your early units are being used, even in a test context. If there’s a sensor, show the data. If there’s a motor, show it moving. Don’t pitch a product. Pitch its effect.

Building an IoT company is an act of real-world commitment. Unlike pure SaaS, you’re not just imagining use—you’re engineering it. That means your funding strategy, your prototype decisions, and your pitch rhythm all have to build confidence through clarity. You don’t need every answer upfront. But you do need to prove that you’re asking the right questions—and solving them in motion.

Reflections from APCDA China: A Journey I Didn't Expect

By Hafiz Kasman, Co-Founder, Kinobi AI

When I signed up for the APCDA Conference in Zhengzhou, China, I thought I’d get a few learnings, maybe meet a couple of people, and head home with a slightly better understanding of the career development landscape. What I didn’t expect was to leave with new friendships, unforgettable memories, and a deeper sense of purpose.

I came alone, not knowing a single soul. But right from the start, the APCDA community welcomed me with open arms. It didn’t take long before I was sharing stories over hotpot, climbing the city tower with newfound friends, and exploring the local food scene like a local. It reminded me how powerful human connection can be—even when we come from very different places.

Professionally, the conversations I had with attendees (APCDA members, fellow ‘vendor’ attendees and even student helpers, alike!) were insightful and thought-provoking. But what stuck with me most was the shared mission that tied us all together: helping students build better careers, because better careers lead to better lives. No matter where we’re from, that mission is the common thread.

Looking ahead, we’re putting together a white paper on the State of Career Centers in Hong Kong and Macau. It will provide insights into coaching and career centre administrative practices across universities, offering valuable benchmarking data to support students, career teams, and the wider higher education ecosystem.

If you’re working in the space, have ideas to share, or simply want to be part of the conversation, we’d love to have you join us. This is just the start—other markets will follow soon.

Let’s keep pushing forward, together.

—————————–

Hafiz Kasman is the Co-founder and COO of Kinobi, a Singapore-based SaaS career management platform that supports over 1.2 million students and more than 60 universities across Asia-Pacific, including Singapore, Indonesia, and Hong Kong, partnering with leading institutions such as Nanyang Technological University and the Singapore Institute of Management. Committed to youth development, Hafiz has made significant contributions through initiatives like Mentoring SG, MENDAKI, and the ASEAN Youth Fellowship.

20+ Years in Career Development. Suddenly… Replaceable.

By Han Kok Kwang, Bestselling Author, 1st Legacy Partner Lifetime Member of APCDA & 1st NCDA (US) Master Trainer in Asia

You’re not alone.

Last month, I watched a client get better career advice from ChatGPT in 5 minutes than I gave her in our entire first session. That stung.

AI isn’t just changing how people job search. It’s quietly rewriting our entire profession, whether we want to admit it or not.

So here’s the question that’s been keeping me up:

Are You a Career Strategist — or Becoming a Career Relic?

Let’s find out. Answer these 10 uncomfortable yes/no questions:

1. Do you still spend 45 minutes walking through Holland Code results when a free AI tool can generate a personalized career list in 12 seconds?

2. Are you still rewriting résumés manually, one painful bullet point at a time — even though GPT-4 can create targeted versions for multiple roles instantly?

3. Do you teach job search strategies that were cutting-edge in 2015 (or earlier), like “use job boards” and “network with your alumni”?

4. Have you used ChatGPT… but only to fix your own grammar or summarize articles?

5. Do you still avoid creating digital tools or scalable resources because “my clients need that human touch”?

6. Do you believe your superpower is empathy — yet struggle to help more than 8 people a week because everything takes so long?

7. Is most of your training based on legacy models (RIASEC, Super, MBTI etc..) without ever testing how AI can modernize or replace chunks of them?

8. Are you scared to experiment with paid tools like Perplexity, Claude, or custom GPTs because they feel too technical?

9. Do you dismiss AI-generated career advice as “too basic” without actually testing what GPT-4o or Claude can really do?

10. Do you think your job is safe because “AI can’t replace human empathy”?

If You Answered “Yes” to 6 or More…
You may be quietly sliding toward irrelevance — even if your heart is in exactly the right place.

Because here’s the brutal truth I learned: AI doesn’t need to replace you completely.

It just needs to be good enough that your clients don’t need you as often. For basic career conversations, skill assessments, and résumé feedback… it already is.
And that “good enough” bar keeps rising every month.

Don’t be Future-Ready! When you’re preparing to be future-ready”, it’s often code for “you’re still doing the same stuff, just with better branding.”

Instead, be AI-integrated now!

• Using AI to generate instant labor market insights, emerging job titles, and skill gap analysis
• Training clients on prompt engineering and building proof-of-work portfolios
• Creating bite-sized courses and digital roadmaps clients can access 24/7
• Productizing your wisdom to reach 1,000 people — not just 10
• Automating the routine stuff, so that you can focus on the complex emotional work, major life transitions, and nuanced decision-making that actually requires human insight

This Isn’t About Shaming Anyone.
You’ve guided real people through terrifying career transitions. That matters. Your empathy saved someone’s confidence. Your experience prevented costly mistakes.
But what got you here won’t get you through what’s coming next.

Want to Start Small?
Try this tonight: Ask ChatGPT to analyze your current résumé coaching process and suggest how to automate 80% of it. Then build your practice around the 20% that only you can do — the complex emotional processing, the nuanced life design work, the accountability through major transitions. That’s where you’re irreplaceable.

Career Relics defend the past.
Career Strategists build the future.
Which one are you becoming?

******

To stay updated, connect with Han on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hankokkwang/ or check out AI-powered career credentials at https://www.personalmaster.com

Transforming Pain into Power: Reflections on Toxic Workplaces from a Vietnamese Perspective

By Le Tuan Anh

I recently watched the recording of the discussion “Transforming Pain into Power: Coping Strategies for a Toxic Workplace,” facilitated by Dr. Marilyn Maze — and it left me with more questions than answers, in a good way. The event wasn’t a lecture. It was a space for people to speak openly about the emotional weight of toxic work environments and to explore how we might turn those painful experiences into something meaningful.

One of the most resonant comments in the session was: “It feels toxic.” That phrasing stuck with me because it centers the experience — not just the observable behaviors or systems. Toxicity isn’t always about dramatic incidents or obvious abuse. Often, it’s about how drained, silenced, or invisible we feel over time. And as the discussion highlighted, recognizing those feelings is the first step toward reclaiming our power.

Cultural Perceptions: Why Context Matters

Watching this as someone working in Vietnam, I couldn’t help but notice how much cultural context shapes our experience of workplace pain. In Vietnamese work culture — especially in traditional corporations or government settings — hierarchy, saving face, and endurance are deeply embedded values. Speaking up about unfairness or burnout is often seen as weak, ungrateful, or even disrespectful.

Many of my clients and colleagues describe workplace struggles in terms that mirror what was shared in the session — feelings of being micromanaged, emotionally exhausted, or stuck in jobs that don’t align with their values. But the coping strategies available to them can feel limited. “Just quit” is rarely a viable option when family expectations, social reputation, and financial pressure are all at play.

What Makes It Worse?

One trend discussed in the session — the “Return to Office” push — is especially relevant. While the shift back to physical offices may feel natural in some countries, in Vietnam it has brought mixed reactions. For some, working from home gave a rare sense of autonomy and emotional breathing space. Returning has meant returning not just to desks, but to office politics, rigid schedules, and performative presence.

Add to that the generational gap between younger employees (more vocal, value-driven) and older managers (more duty-bound, status-focused), and you’ve got a recipe for quiet resentment and miscommunication.

So, What Can We Do?

Here are a few key takeaways — both from the discussion and my own work with Vietnamese professionals navigating workplace toxicity:

  • Name the experience: Even if you can’t change the system immediately, being able to say “this feels toxic” gives clarity. It helps you separate your self-worth from the dysfunction around you.

  • Find your people: Whether it’s a peer group, coach, or therapist, having a safe space to process what you’re going through can make all the difference.

  • Redefine strength: In our culture, strength is often equated with endurance. But sometimes, strength looks like setting a boundary, asking for support, or deciding to leave.

  • Start small shifts: If quitting isn’t possible, what can you shift? Your schedule? Your interactions? Your expectations? Even small changes can create a sense of agency.

  • Advocate for systemic change: Especially for those of us in leadership or HR roles, part of transforming pain into power is making sure others don’t go through the same cycles.

Final Thoughts

I’m grateful this conversation happened — and that it centered lived experience, not just theory. It reminded me that pain in the workplace is not just an individual issue; it’s a collective signal that something isn’t working. And as we share those stories, across cultures and contexts, we begin to find new ways forward.

Toxicity may show up differently in Vietnam than it does elsewhere, but the longing for dignity, growth, and safety at work is universal. The more we can speak honestly about what hurts, the more likely we are to build environments that heal.

The webinar was called “Transforming Pain into Power” to emphasize the importance of the role of career practitioners in helping our clients to:

  1. Recognize, acknowledge, and name their pain
  2. Identify ways of improving the situation

As career practitioners, these are skills that we have and using these skills with clients experiencing their work as toxic is a very important step in the healing process. Also, we provide a valuable service when we teach our clients important life skills related to using assertiveness effectively and negotiating a structure that reduces destructive emotions and allows the employee to be productive.

Look for Webinar #1603 in our Store.

Cultural and Social Influences on Career Decision-Making in Vietnam​

By Le Tuan Anh

In Vietnam, career decisions are rarely made in isolation. They are shaped by a complex web of individual desires, family expectations, social norms, and economic conditions. As a career consultant supporting Vietnamese students and young professionals, I have seen firsthand how these influences interact and shift over time.

1. Family Expectations

Vietnamese culture places a strong emphasis on filial duty (hiếu). Parents often play an active role in guiding or even determining their children’s educational and career choices. A common scenario is parents urging their child to pursue a “safe” career—such as finance, IT, or government work—regardless of the student’s personal interests. In rural and working-class families, being the first generation to attend university often comes with added pressure to “succeed” by securing a prestigious, high-income role.

2. Education System and Exam Culture

The high-stakes national entrance exam system tends to steer students into certain majors based more on scores than passion or fit. Once admitted into a university program, students often feel locked into that field, believing they must “làm đúng ngành học” (work in the field they studied), even if their interests evolve. This can restrict career exploration and reinforce rigid decision-making at a young age.

3. Social Comparison and Online Influence

In the age of social media, Vietnamese youth are increasingly influenced by peer success stories and curated images of career achievement. Seeing friends become digital marketers, KOLs, or startup founders can create both inspiration and anxiety.

There is often pressure to keep up or “prove” one’s success through visible milestones like promotions, overseas scholarships, or impressive LinkedIn titles.

4. Economic Context and Market Trends

Vietnam’s rapidly changing economy presents both opportunities and unpredictability. The rise of tech startups, the digital economy, and global outsourcing has created new career paths that didn’t exist a decade ago. However, the job market can be saturated or unstable in some sectors. This leads many young people to make pragmatic
decisions: accepting jobs outside their passion area to gain financial stability or take care of family.

5. Limited Access to Career Guidance

Although career counseling is growing in Vietnam, many students still lack access to personalized career advice. Most public schools do not provide structured career education, and career theories are often taught in a theoretical or Western-centric way without cultural adaptation. This leaves students to rely on informal sources—parents, friends, online content—which can perpetuate myths or create confusion.

Conclusion

Career decision-making in Vietnam is not just about individual interest or fit—it is a negotiation between self, family, society, and structure. To support young Vietnamese in making informed and fulfilling decisions, we need more context-sensitive tools, localized
guidance, and a broader definition of success that respects both personal growth and cultural values.

What ‘CAREER’ means in Sri Lanka: Culture or Context?​

By S. Sangjeli

In Sri Lanka, it is customary to think of “career” as an individual’s long-term pathway related to work and professional growth. Career decisions depend upon education, qualifications, social expectations, and personal desire. However, these decisions are influenced by certain cultural and societal meanings, which are equally important to grasp.

Sometimes, a career stalls so slowly that you don’t even realize it until the dread of Monday mornings feels heavier than ever. Other times, it slams into you out of nowhere, and you’re left wondering where all your momentum disappeared to. No matter how it hits you, standing still when you know you’re built to move forward is a brutal feeling. The good news? Reviving your career trajectory isn’t about reinvention for reinvention’s sake — it’s about reconnecting with the reasons you started, and giving yourself permission to pivot with clarity and guts.

Reconnect with What Actually Matters to You

It’s easy to chase titles, salaries, and applause until you forget what you actually want out of work. If you’re feeling stuck, you owe it to yourself to get brutally honest about what still lights you up and what doesn’t. Sit with that discomfort — don’t rush to fix it just because it’s uncomfortable. Realigning your career with your current values is less about radical change and more about choosing yourself first.

Get Comfortable Being a Beginner Again

There’s a weird pride that comes with being the expert in a room, but pride can quietly become the reason you stay stuck. Let yourself be bad at something new, whether it’s a
skill you’ve always admired from a distance or an industry you’ve been secretly curious about. Growth happens when you let yourself stumble without making it mean something ugly about your worth. If you want to move again, you’ll need to start where movement is possible — and that usually means starting over, at least a little.

Audit Your Network Without Guilt

Sometimes it’s not about who you know, but about who still knows you. Your career network is not a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing; it needs tending, weeding, and new planting. Take a long, honest look at who’s still in your corner and who’s just familiar noise, and don’t be afraid to cut ties with connections that drain more than they offer. Building an intentional network — even if it’s smaller — will always beat hoarding business cards from people you barely remember.

Stop Over-Romanticizing Your Past Success

Hanging onto old wins like they’re proof you shouldn’t have to change is a trap you don’t want to fall into. Celebrate what you’ve done, sure, but don’t let it weigh down the person you’re trying to become. What got you here won’t necessarily get you there, and clinging too tightly to past achievements can make you blind to new opportunities. Your career is a living thing — it’s allowed to grow in weird, unexpected directions that don’t look like what you originally planned.

These factors may influence career decisions of people in Sri Lankan culture or context:

Career decisions are very personal. In the Sri Lankan context, several sociological, cultural, and economic factors come into play. A few are widely embedded in the traditions of this country, family setup, education system, and socio-economic environment.

Career decisions are influenced by cultural and religious values. Particularly in conservative communities, occupations like teaching, social work, and healthcare that are viewed as morally or service-oriented are typically preferred. Furthermore, traditional gender roles may limit girls’ career options by discouraging them from pursuing particular occupations or working in remote areas. These cultural restrictions are gradually shifting, though, particularly in cities.

Another important factor is the nation’s fiercely competitive, exam-based educational system. A student’s eligibility for a university education or vocational training is primarily determined by their performance on the GCE Ordinary Level and Advanced Level exams. Regardless of their interests or skills, some students are steered towards vocational or technical education, while others who perform well are frequently encouraged to pursue academic careers.

Many Sri Lankans have serious concerns about their job security and stability, which makes them strongly favor government employment. These jobs are regarded as respectable and secure, and they provide long-term advantages like pensions and job security. Because of this, many young people place a higher value on job security than on creativity or personal interests, frequently ignoring chances for entrepreneurship or the private sector.

Career choices are also influenced by social standing and perceptions in the community. Certain professions are highly regarded in Sri Lankan society, and students may choose these careers because of the social recognition they provide rather than because they are driven by passion. Since students frequently model their goals after people they admire, peer pressure and the success stories of community members also play a part.

Lastly, career planning is significantly impacted by the expanding trend of foreign employment. Many Sri Lankans seek jobs in nursing, construction, hospitality, or caregiving with the express intention of finding work overseas. Working abroad is a desirable career choice because it offers the chance to increase income and provide for their family through remittances.

In conclusion, a variety of factors, including social recognition, financial constraints, cultural values, educational outcomes, job security concerns, family expectations, and international employment opportunities, influence career choices in Sri Lanka. To help young people choose fulfilling and long-lasting careers, educators, legislators, and career counsellors must have a thorough understanding of these factors.

——
S. Sengjeli won the Outstanding Career Practitioner Award for 2025. https://asiapacificcda.org/list-of-adward-recipients/#Sothinathan

How to Breathe New Life Into a Stalled Career Without Losing Yourself

By Sharon Redd

Image: Freepik

Sometimes, a career stalls so slowly that you don’t even realize it until the dread of Monday mornings feels heavier than ever. Other times, it slams into you out of nowhere,
and you’re left wondering where all your momentum disappeared to. No matter how it hits you, standing still when you know you’re built to move forward is a brutal feeling. The good news? Reviving your career trajectory isn’t about reinvention for reinvention’s sake — it’s about reconnecting with the reasons you started, and giving yourself permission to pivot with clarity and guts.

Reconnect with What Actually Matters to You

It’s easy to chase titles, salaries, and applause until you forget what you actually want out of work. If you’re feeling stuck, you owe it to yourself to get brutally honest about what still lights you up and what doesn’t. Sit with that discomfort — don’t rush to fix it just because it’s uncomfortable. Realigning your career with your current values is less about radical change and more about choosing yourself first.

Get Comfortable Being a Beginner Again

There’s a weird pride that comes with being the expert in a room, but pride can quietly become the reason you stay stuck. Let yourself be bad at something new, whether it’s a
skill you’ve always admired from a distance or an industry you’ve been secretly curious about. Growth happens when you let yourself stumble without making it mean something ugly about your worth. If you want to move again, you’ll need to start where movement is possible — and that usually means starting over, at least a little.

Audit Your Network Without Guilt

Sometimes it’s not about who you know, but about who still knows you. Your career network is not a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing; it needs tending, weeding, and new planting. Take a long, honest look at who’s still in your corner and who’s just familiar noise, and don’t be afraid to cut ties with connections that drain more than they offer. Building an intentional network — even if it’s smaller — will always beat hoarding business cards from people you barely remember.

Stop Over-Romanticizing Your Past Success

Hanging onto old wins like they’re proof you shouldn’t have to change is a trap you don’t want to fall into. Celebrate what you’ve done, sure, but don’t let it weigh down the person you’re trying to become. What got you here won’t necessarily get you there, and clinging too tightly to past achievements can make you blind to new opportunities. Your career is a living thing — it’s allowed to grow in weird, unexpected directions that don’t look like what you originally planned.

Return to School Without Pressuring Yourself to Start Over

When your career feels like it’s stuck in neutral, stepping back into the classroom can be one of the smartest moves you make — not to start over, but to add new fuel to the fire
you’ve already built. These days, online programs make it easier than ever to keep working while leveling up, offering real flexibility no matter what path you’re on. For instance, if you’re thinking about moving deeper into the business world, checking out master of business administration options could help you sharpen your leadership instincts, master strategic planning, and gain a solid grip on financial management.

Invest in Skills That Scare You

It’s tempting to double down on what you’re already good at when you feel stuck, but sometimes the antidote is leaning into what feels intimidating. Signing up for a course, workshop, or certification that makes your palms sweat a little can breathe oxygen into your career faster than waiting for motivation to magically show up. Choose growth that actually challenges you rather than growth that feels safe and comfortable. Fear, when harnessed right, is often just a sign you’re heading somewhere worth going.

Change Your Surroundings to Revive Your Energy

People underestimate how much their environment impacts ambition. If you’ve been trying to revive your career from the same coffee shop, the same office, or even the same browser tabs for the past six months, it’s no wonder it feels like pushing a rock uphill. Shake things up — work somewhere new, rearrange your space, even alter your daily routine just enough to jolt your brain out of autopilot. A tiny environmental shift can make the possibility of bigger professional shifts feel a lot less overwhelming.

Own the Story You’re Telling Yourself

The hardest part of unsticking your career often isn’t external — it’s internal. If you keep telling yourself you’re too old, too late, too behind, that story is going to keep being true. You don’t have to lie to yourself with toxic positivity, but you do need to tell a story that leaves room for movement, change, and good things still ahead. When you control your narrative, you start to control your next steps too — and that’s where real momentum builds. 

Stuckness feels permanent when you’re living inside it, but it never is. Your career isn’t supposed to be a smooth, upward slope — it’s messy, jagged, full of weird detours you
couldn’t have predicted even if you tried. Breathing new life into your trajectory isn’t about scrambling harder or pretending you’re fine; it’s about pausing long enough to make moves that actually mean something to you. You’re not behind — you’re just on the part of the path where the real stories start.

———————————
Sharon Redd created Live All the Way to help others live life to the ABSOLUTE FULLEST. She believes life all the way is a life with all the toppings! It’s ordering guacamole and queso at the restaurant. It’s wearing those bright pink shoes, no matter what anyone else thinks. It’s using your formal china for every meal and hugging your friends every time you see them. It’s eating ice cream for breakfast and so much more. Her goal, each and every day, is to live all the way and her mission is to help others do the same.

Co-writing an APCDA Newsletter Article​

By Catherine Hughes and Momoko Asaka

The News Committee is inviting APCDA members to co-write an article for the APCDA newsletter.

Based on the 2024 APCDA member survey, two topics of interest to members include:

  • Career development theories
  • Career models and culture

We invite you to contribute content related to these two topics. We will develop an article for publication in the APCDA newsletter based on the content that you provide.

The title of the article might be something like:

Cultural perspectives on the meaning of career and influences on career choice and decision making within the Asia Pacific region.

Context: Most theories of vocational psychology and career development have been developed for, and are based on, Western samples. Therefore, some aspects of these theories may not be relevant in some countries or cultural contexts (Leong & Pearce, 2014).

Some Theoretical Examples of the Meaning of Career 

  1. Life-span, Life-space Career Theory:

“… a sequence of positions occupied by a person during the course of a lifetime.” (Super, 1957)

“The constellation of interacting, varying, roles constitute the career.” (Super, 1980)

  1. Career Construction Theory

“… a reflection on the course of one’s vocational behavior, not vocational behavior itself. This reflection can focus on actual events such as one’s occupations (objective career) or on their meaning (subjective career)” (Savickas, 2002, p.152)

  1. Cognitive Information Processing Theory

“… time extended working out of a purposeful life pattern through work undertaken by the person” (Reardon et al., 2022, p. 5).

These definitions of career are developed in a North American cultural context. It is possible that these definitions do not translate well into your country, culture or careers practice context.

Here is a question for you:

What does ‘career’ mean in your country, culture or context?

Please:
• Email your responses to: News@AsiaPacificCDA.org
• Use the subject line: News Article – meaning of career and influences on career decision making

Include:
• Your name so you can be acknowledged as one of the authors of the article
• Your country
• Your career development practice context
• The meaning of ‘career’ in your country/culture/context

Influences on Career Decision Making

The Systems Theory of Career Development (Patton & McMahon, 1999) is map of factors at the individual, social and environmental/societal systems levels that influence a person’s career development, including chance events, and change over time. 

Here is a question for you:

What factors may influence career decisions of people in your country, culture or context?

Please:
• Email your responses to: News@AsiaPacificCDA.org
• Use the subject line: News Article – meaning of career and influences on career decision making

Include:
• Your name so you can be acknowledged as one of the authors of the article
• Your country
• Your career development practice context
• The meaning of ‘career’ in your country/culture/context

We look forward to receiving your responses to the above two questions.

References

Leong, F. T. L. & Pearce, M. (2014). Indigenous models of career development and vocational psychology. In G. Arulmani, A. J. Bakshi, F. T. L. Leong, & A. G. Watts (Eds.) Handbook of Career Development: International Perspectives. 1st ed, pp, 67-81. New York, NY: Springer New York, 2014.

Patton, W., & McMahon, M. (1999). Career development and systems theory: A new relationship. Pacific Grove,CA: Brooks/Cole.

Reardon, R. C., Lenz, J. G., Peterson, G. P., & Sampson, J. P. (2022). Career development and planning: A comprehensive approach (7th ed.). Kendall Hunt.

Savickas, M. L. (2002). Career construction: A developmental theory of vocational behavior. In D. Brown. Career Choice and Development. 4th ed, pp 149-205. Jossey-Bass.

Super, D. E. 1957. The Psychology of Careers. New York: Harper& Row.

Super, D. E. (1990). A life-span, life-space approach to career development. In D. Brown & L. Brooks (Eds.),2 New Trends in Theory Development in CareerCareer choice and development: Applying contemporary theories to practice (2nd ed., pp. 197–261). San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.