The Eos life-work resource centre
page updated 8 September 2010Career services for you
Eos life-career planning programmes
There are many reasons for doing a life-career planning programme: you may feel bored or restless in your job and want something more challenging. You may want more quality time for your family and yourself after working in a well-paid but high pressure job. If you have been raising children you may want to return to work as they grow more independent.We offer a range of programmes for career development, change and relevant education or training. These are available to private and employer-sponsored clients. They include career crisis support if needed. We offer several versions according to the career stage of each client:
- Adult Career Review - our main programme for adults. It's OK to be you! - know yourself better than most employers would ever discover in interviews. Develop your own life- and career plans. Become more independent. And choose training and development (courses and work assignments) that will increase your chances of getting the jobs you want in the future.
- Executive & Professional Development programmes- additional interpretation for clients in professional or management roles e.g. how personality profiling can be helpful to understand relationships with colleagues, staff and clients,options for professional or postgraduate courses and CPD (continuing professional development) priorities.
- Self-employment career planning and development programmes- similar to the Executive & Professional Development programme - but where personal life plans, career plans and business plans are very closely linked. Also useful for career development in family businesses. Also useful for successful PAYE professionals who are thinking of leaving salaried jobs to become self-employed.
- Senior Management Development programmes - working with senior managers, directors and CEO's. These programmes include time to discuss strategic organisational issues e.g. value of different personalities in a top team, and the effects of strategic changes (e.g. mergers & take-overs) on staff motivation and performance. Includes exploring long term career visions - when you have reached the top of the mountain where do you go next?
These are individual, one-to-one programmes usually held at our premises in Send. Full programmes are 12-14 hours covered in several sessions of 2-3 hours, typically once a week depending on your availability. This gives clients time to review topics between sessions and to try them out at work or during job searches.
"Take time out to plan your future"
How Eos life-career planning works
In the past people could train for a single trade or career and follow it through for many years, often in the same organisation. Times are changing and many skills can become obsolete within a few years. So it is unwise to rely on someone else to tell you what your future career should be. It is more important to learn how to plan and manage you own career. Eos life-career planning programmes will help you to identify at least two alternative career plans about 5 years ahead - a main plan and at least one fallback. These plans aim to cover your next 2-3 jobs and relevant qualifications or training. We explain how to update these as you progress and when conditions change. We also show you how to link these plans with your personal priorities and life-plans for the same period.We offer potential clients a free Preview session to discuss your situation and to see the kind of activities we cover before you choose to go ahead. We also identify any special subjects you may want to cover e.g. immediate problems at work, personal life changes or temporary work options while you do the programme.
These are the main features of our life-career planning programmes:
- We offer you a number of personal exercises and psychometric tests with detailed feedback on each one. This is the most comprehensive life-career assessment programme we know of in the UK.
- We use a career counselling approach - working with you, explaining why we use each activity. This takes a little more time than the "test and tell" career guidance approach that tells you where to go next without explanations. This helps you to develop your own career management skills and coaching you how to use them when you make other career plans and changes in the future. We include your personality profile to help you choose jobs that will suit you best within in your chosen career area and organisation.
- If you don't have qualifications, or if you dropped out of education before completing your course, you may have more potential than you realise. Aptitude tests are specially useful to help people with limited qualifications, or who have lost confidence in their ability, to discover hidden potential for further studies or new career opportunities.
- Most career programmes produce computer listings of potential jobs. We go further and translate these into personal job maps, unique to Eos, that enable you to identify your preferred options in more detail - identifying types of organisations as well as types of job that may suit you.
- When you identify your preferred options we show you how to develop short and medium term career plans. We recommend specific courses and qualifications that will help you reach your goals, and advise you on job search techniques including CV formats and interview skills.
- Each programme also includes adult life-skills e.g. coping with stress, change and working relationships, plus a special life-planning exercise. This enables you to set your career plans in context with your personal life priorities and commitments. These may be essential to developing achievable career plans in balance with personal life e.g. for working parents and international careers.
- Our Executive and Management programmes include wider interpretation and advice to show how you can also use career management skills to develop your staff, and to manage strategic planning, conflict and change in organisations.
- Some career plans may seem almost impossible to achieve, or may go into areas where there are very limited chances of success or at least of earning a stable income e.g. careers in media, writing, performing arts, social reform or developing a highly succesful business. These may need special career strategies - combining a convential day job while developing a longer term plan for the unique area your feel drawn to.
"Don't give up the day job" is good advice. But learning to trust your own intuition and "following your dream" is very important too. When you find the right career path you may find that opportunities you thought impossible begin to open up, together with meeting the people who will help you make them happen. Even with your present employer (if you have one) there may be new opportunities - if you know how to tell them what you are looking for.About 1 in 3 of our clients are coping with a serious work or personal crisis e.g. off sick due to work pressures, or after a major change like redundancy, merger, separation or bereavement. We specialise in helping clients to recognise and manage high stress situations or transitions, and to turn crises into opportunities. See Eos life-work themes for examples of some of the situations we have helped clients to overcome and Career First Aid for immediate coping strategies.
Costs
Eos has separate pricing structures for private and corporate clients, available with our Information Packs. A typical Career Review programme costs about the same as a thorough annual service for a car. But while servicing a car helps to keep you mobile and safe a life-career planning programme may help to maintain or improve your earning potential for several years. Several discounts are also available to private clients to make programmes as affordable as possible. Corporate rates are competitive with other professional consultancies and reflect the added value of identifying the wider potential of members of staff or saving the cost and disruption of staff turnover or sickness.Long distance support
As modern communications improve - like email and Skype - we have been able to extend Eos services to clients in many locations. Some activities e.g. testing sessions need to be face to face, usually in Surrey and sometimes in London or other regions. Recently several clients have used Skype (internet video) for discussion or mentoring sessions.Follow-up support and mentoring
All life-career planning programmes include a free follow-up session in the first year. If you are a former Eos Client you are welcome to a free update pack which you can use to update your personal life and career plans with selected exercises from the current Eos programmes. Former Eos clients are also welcome to additional mentoring sessions e.g. to discuss interviews, job offers, training higher education courses etc. with reduced fees.Client workshops and networking events
We see clients from a wide range of careers. They are often facing similar problems as employment conditions change in specific types of work, and discover new work and training opportunities after completing a career review programme. From time to time we offer informal networking opportunities e.g. our Eos Netwalks - see Eos Network News.We also organise occasional workshop programmes or "masterclasses" where clients can meet others in the same work area, or facing similar challenges e.g. starting in a different career area, starting new courses, returning to working after raising children and surviving mergers or redundancy. We look forward to running more client workshops in the New Year, open to private and corporate clients who have completed an individual life-career planning programme.
Location
Eos is based at Send, between Woking and Guildford in Surrey. This is 5 miles South West of M25 Junction 10 (A3). Nearest station Woking, fast trains only 24 minutes to London Waterloo. Most of our private clients come from within a 50 mile radius of Woking. [Click here for Map - provided by Multimap. Set map scale to 10,000 for local roads. The "Directions" option will also give you a route from your address to 'Eos Career Services' at GU23 7ET. ].
Contacting Eos
If you would like an Information Pack and costs for our life-career planning programmes for private clients in the UK contact Dai Williams by Email at: eosuk@btinternet.com or write or phone:Eos Career Services, 32 Send, Road, Send, Woking, Surrey GU23 7ET, UK
Phone: (UK): 01483-222017
Career First Aid on the Internet
Because some people are too far away to use our personal programmes we offer some of our life-skills resources to you online, wherever you are. If you or someone you know are currently facing a career crisis now try our Eos life-work on-line Career Briefings. These include our Career First Aid survival guide, Managing the Life-Work Boundary and Safe and Dangerous Organisations.page updated 8 September 2010 © Eos Career Services 2010
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