This summer I finished up my contract work as a counsellor for Wilfrid Laurier University. This is the third University I have worked in and I absolutely loved working as a counsellor for the students. The downside of working for a University (at least in my experience) is that it is often contract work, for eight to nine months per year, while students are in fall and winter semesters. With contract work comes a lack of job security and a lack of extended health benefits. I decided that after this contract was up, I would begin my search for a job that was permanent and came with the perks of benefits, pension and vacation days…. And so my summer of submitting resumes and going to job interviews began.
I don’t know what the professionals would say about how to conduct a job search, but I began by identifying the type of work I did NOT want… and that included shift work, crisis oriented work, and child protection work (I have a heap of respect for people in the child protection field and I know that I could never do that extremely difficult work). Social Workers have many different types of jobs opportunities, however, most of my training and experience has been as a counsellor, so this is where I started.
About three weeks after I started to apply, I began to get calls for interviews. I do know that the professionals recommend having a few questions to ask at the interview, so I decided to figure out what was most important to me. My questions for each interview included:
1) How many sessions per day/week are expected? In my experience I know that I thrive with four sessions per day mixed with some other type of project/committee work. I also know that most places expected five sessions per day and I am used to handling this well with a structured compassion fatigue resiliency plan in place. Others ask for strictly counselling at six sessions per day or more.
2) What type of individual supervision/consultation is available? I have had some great supervision experiences and will continue to seek individual supervision/consultation as long as I am in the helping field. I use supervision for strengthening my counselling skills and discussing my on going plan for addressing compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma.
3) What type of peer group supervision/case consultation is available? I really enjoy discussing my work with other colleagues to get their perspective and to learn from each other. It also helps to normalize any struggles or trends in the work we do.
4) Is time-in-lieu or flex-time available? Let face it, in the helping field there are times where we are going to have to work overtime and most helping organizations do not have overtime in their budget – so we usually get to track our time and take it off at a later date. This can really help maintain balance – provided you actually TAKE your lieu time.
5) What types of professional development opportunities are available? One strategy for dealing with compassion fatigue is to have the training and experience needed for the position. I find professional development to be highly energizing and great self-care (provided it is a good training).
6) What are the benefits, vacation and pension opportunities? Now this was a very exciting question for me as I have been on contract work and/or self-employed for the past five years!
I felt that these were more than enough questions to ask during an interview and anything more specific could be discussed later, should an offer be made. I found that each place I interviewed with responded a bit differently to these questions and it gave me a sense of what the team/organization would be like to work with.
Notice that I didn’t ask about salary? During my job search I conducted research about average salaries for each type of organizations – so I had a general idea as to what the salary range was before attending the interview. While salary is very important, I also value the type of work, the structure of the work, the clientele, the team I’d be working with and, of course, the extended benefits, vacation and pension opportunities.
After five weeks of interviews (a total of five interviews completed) I received three job offers in less than 24 hours. While this was exciting, it was almost a bit overwhelming. I decided to base my decision on the following factors:
1) Work structure (how many clients per day and flex-time options)
2) The population/clientele I would be counselling
3) Team/Organization – who I would be working with and what other services they offered
4) Salary
5) Benefits, vacation and pension
6) Professional development opportunities
7) Individual and peer consultation opportunities
I ended up choosing the position that offered the best fit in the majority of these categories. I know myself very well in terms of maintaining health and balance as a helping professional. I am constantly aware of how my work can affect my health and I know that while I did not choose the highest paying job in salary, I did choose the job that will fit best with my needs and the services I am able to provide – and that will make me very rich in health and happiness.
I will continue to write about my experiences maintaining balance as a helping professional but from now on it will be as a counsellor working in addictions within a community health centre in downtown Ottawa.
As a helping professional you likely did not enter the field to get rich – so what is it that you value the most in the work that you do? What is the most important thing an organization could provide to help you keep your health and balance as a helper?