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Career Care
By David Schlinder
A pair of doctors practice their healing methods from tasteful, suburban home offices. They aren't general physicians or surgeons, yet their impact on a person's overall health can be profound. They are career doctors. "I call myself the shovel, because I dig the dirt to find the gold," said Judit price, who collaborates with Maxine Berke in tier career counseling firm in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, which will also assist clients in job hunting. The dirt? "Today about 75 percent of workers are underemployed and around 85 percent are mismatched to their jobs," said price. "They often took the first thing that came along." The Gold? I help people make a more informative choice," said price. "What's their inner voice? Many find it with self-assessment or career testing. We offer motivation and guidance." But there's a special toll to pay for that gold. It surely includes significant time. It probably includes money, too. Most importantly though, the toll includes iron-clad dedication. Such dedication is shown by Berke and Price client Patricia Steiner of Hudson. After seeing Price, she became the full-time owner of the Magic garden, a home-based business, making herbal and dried silk flower designs – and teaching people the art. Before, she was a secretary in a Boston hospital, and did floral designs part time. Steiner said she needed Price's initial counsel to find out "What do I want to do with my life?" She wanted to leave the hospital since it was downsizing its staff, but it was difficult to face choices between the risks of a new small business and the pros and cons of working for somebody else. "I had to see how my past made me a strong individual. My family background was old fashioned; women didn't set up businesses." So Steiner felt she lacked role models. But then Steiner and Price delineated some family history in counseling. "My mom draws and paints. My grandmother was a seamstress. She and a great grandmother had large gardens. In college, I had reached more awareness of women's roles." Once Steiner became aware of these factors in her background, she reached a conclusion. "I took the positive role models of mother and grandmother – even though they attained no notoriety as business women – and included them in the rationale to make my business full-time." Steiner complemented this discovery with an inventory of her strengths and weaknesses, eyeing results of career attribute tests she was given and responding to points Price voiced on the demands of a small business. Price poses the possibility that her brand of career counseling has much in common with modern psychology or even psychiatry. Her work, like those disciplines, studies the human mind. "Of course, differences between her work and the other disciplines are myriad. Aspects from Berke and price, ranging from promotional literature to client files, are crowded with insights into the economy, especially declining job security – not normally found in a psychologist or psychiatrist office. And career counseling issues are largely taken less anxiously than diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. But like a psychologist, Price acts as "the shovel" to dig soil to reach gold, within the career counseling process. "The psychologist starts out looking at specific pieces of a personality, such as marital abuse," said price. "Career counselors should start out with the whole person, and go for improvement. We use the bigger brushstrokes." Berke and Price's high flexibility enables clients to use one or more of its services, but not all, price said, including developing a resume and job hunt without individual career counseling. Allison Cyganowski of Merrimack chose the counseling without job-hunting or business start-up assistance. "I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go back to work or school," she said. Results of a group of career tests, along with essay questions and counseling from Price, showed that Cyganowski, who holds a bachelor's degree in physics from Wells College in Aurora, NY, is well-suited to computer-related jobs and marketing. She started work recently at Sanders, a Nashua electronics firm, as a software programming assistant to help develop various products, and also plans to take course towards a master's degree in business administration, thanks to literature from Price on various schools. For further Information email: Judit Price or call: 978-256-0482 |
