The second set of skills I teach are the research skills that one requires in order to learn about the world of work. There are numerous kinds of written resources that can be gold mines of information for the career changer. But, I have found that most people don't know how to find valuable career reference materials or current information on career trends in a specific field of interest. Teaching women how to find this kind of information in libraries is essential if we expect them to find their way down new career paths.

Library research is only one form of investigation used to track down occupational information. The other very important way to learn about the world of work is to use a technique that Richard Bolles popularized in What Colour is Your Parachute? - the informational interview. This is a process of information gathering where the career changer goes out into work situations and talks to individuals about their jobs in order to get a first hand look at what a job is really like. In this way a woman gets the chance to explore alternatives, to discover the day to day reality of various work environments and to evaluate them against her own criteria for career satisfaction.

I teach women techniques for conducting informational interviews and for evaluating the information they receive. This involves clarifying the objectives of such interviews (particularly distinguishing them from manipulative job search tactics or job interviews), identifying lines of questioning that will draw out the information they need, and reassuring more timid individuals of their right to ask people for time and information.

Once women have developed interviewing skills, they need to learn to evaluate the information gained, using the personal criteria they identified in the self-assessment process. "Going out" into the workplace to research and "coming back" to one's internal sense of direction is an important process that is repeated several times. Like a pendulum women need to learn to go outside themselves for information within themselves without losing their balance and inner motivation. Research is the art of tracking down in- formation through talking with people and reading. Although I have stressed "occupational" information as the goal of career research, women seeking career change need other kinds of information as well: What are my daycare options? What kinds of financial supports are available to me? Teaching research skills and supporting women through the research phase of their counseling will give them the opportunity to gather all the relevant information they need in order to make a career decision.

The sum of all these skills adds up to an ability to navigate through a sea of career choices without losing sight of who you are and what you need for career satisfaction. As a woman's needs and values change, she can go back to using the self-assessment process. As her job situation becomes less challenging for her, women who have been counseled in this way will have the skills to research the alternatives once again. This ability, once gained, is seldom lost and can give women the courage to face the lifelong task of maintaining career fulfillment.

Career Counselling Must Help Women Address the Issue of Childbearing

Traditional career counseling has explored career choice outside of family context. Questions about having and raising children are not normally asked of people who want to examine occupational alternatives. This leads me to conclude that most career counselling is based on male assumptions that work is something done outside the home, that it is a breadwinning function, that it is separate from family life.

The implications for women receiving such counselling are astounding to me: They are forced to segregate work and family life in their minds. They are pressured into conforming to male life cycles, which can put them on the defensive about whether or not to have children and when. Childbearing is not seen as part of career development, but rather an obstacle to it. So women who want to have children end up feeling discouraged and put down about life goals that are important to them.