It is an acronym I came up with to support my young clients. Feel free to play around with the words and create your own acronym.

What’s the tool’s name? Discover your BEAVI©
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The acronym facilitates reflection on what makes you happy, what gives you meaning and motivates you to act i.e., the thing that prompts you to get up and start doing stuff.
BEAVI is an acronym for:
B - Beliefs
E - Experiences
A - Abilities/Skills
V - Values
I - Interests
 
With my support and assistance clients proceed to unravel the value of these five factors through powerful inquisitive questioning and 5 tasks that raise awareness, stimulate reflection, and provide in-depth insight into my clients’ BEAVI©.

Discover your BEAVI © Bundle is a professionally designed narrative career coaching instrument. Use Discover your BEAVI© Bundle as a resource to assist you in launching self-awareness among your students or young clients. A Discover your BEAVI result underscores each client’s unique repertoire. The assessment tool is very simple and its power lies in its simplicity.
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Discover your BEAVI© supports you to enable students to understand their BEAVI © (beliefs, experiences, abilities, values and interests). It is intended to be a self-awareness and personal reflexivity tool. 

Self-assessment plays an important role in helping youth discover what is most important to them. Start with group discussions if you are using the BEAVI© in your classroom and follow up with individual conversations to elevate self-awareness and increase engagement. It is the self-knowledge and the discussions that motivate students to employ their BEAVI© and take the next confident step.
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The discussions should focus on what students can do and choose the category that they think is a best fit. As they self-assess and think about everyday behaviour, utilizing the questions below, they will move forward. There is no right or wrong answer. Students do not need to answer the questions, they are provided to launch self-reflection.
 
·      What are the first words that come to mind when describing yourself? 
·      What do you consider to be your two or three most outstanding accomplishments from the past three or four years? Why did you select these as most important? 
·      Reflect on any experiences that you think are reflective of your personality, character, intellectual capacity or passions. Be prepared to talk about your choice.
·      In what area(s) have you shown the most development and growth during the past three or four years?
·      What do you consider to be your most outstanding personality trait? 
What do you like to do during your free time?                                                               

BEAVI© results provide a visual of who they are, what they have accomplished, and the experiences they enjoyed. In effect, a self-assessment opportunity.
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Try the coaching and assessment out and connect with me if you have any questions or concerns. Remember, if you are working one-on-one with young clients, make sure to alternate tasks with reflexive conversations.

The past few months have been busy supporting young clients to complete university applications. Most applications require students to write essays that describe their lives, successes, failures, commitments and or learning. They are asked questions that many adults may not be able to answer. Yet, the young students persevere in completing the applications convinced that this is the path for them.
 
I can see the huge transformation in my young clients. The essay questions lead them to dig deep to uncover who they are and truly get to know themselves (beliefs, experiences, abilities, values, and interests or BEAVI© as I like to call them) and where they are headed. They evolve from having little self-awareness to gaining a deeper understanding of their true identity and how they fit in the world.

Many parents criticize universities for mandating these essays as part of the application process. You have to agree that the process is very stressful. As a Career and Academic Coach, I find the reflection that goes into writing these essays very valuable. The reflection process takes them on a very unique yet challenging journey. As my young clients struggle and persevere, I find myself wondering, if we want to prepare students for the world of work, why were students not asked these career reflective questions in school?
 
The resistance is clear.

Starting career conversations at 13 years old is too early, firmly stated a parent as I was getting ready to present at a parent event.
 
Statistics agree... “Among youth aged 25 who were asked about their career expectations on a regular basis from the age of 15, few held to the career expectations they had as teenagers” (Statistics Canada, 2015). So perhaps the parent knows something I don’t???

I agree, I replied, particularly if we are asking them, what do you want to be when you grow up? This is NOT a career conversation.
 
I encouraged the parent to listen first and engage after...

"Career guidance should consist of offering sufficiently varied work experiences, and counselling when individuals experience conflicts that impede direction finding" (Luken, 2019). Great research and I also agree. I am big on encouraging exploration and planned experiences. However, if we wait until it is time to find direction, we may have waited too long.

“More than 13% of young adults were still undecided about a career at age 25, while almost 4 in 10 (38.3%) had decided to pursue a new career” (Statistics Canada, 2015).

Students hesitate to take action or commit to a decision because they are typically presented with structured weekly schedules. Real life is not so neatly packed. Some students experienced the chaos that life can be during COVID. Research is showing that this experience was almost a good one teaching students to adapt, a skill that is typically not taught in school.

Life is chaotic presenting us with new problems and tough decisions every single day. “The notion of traditional occupations that have provided vocational stability is vanishing, and university students are being trained for occupations that are yet to be discovered” (Livingstone, 2018). Imagine where your thoughts would be headed if you were in high school...

Career conversations at an early age (yes 13 and younger) focus on constructing identity, taking initiative and pursuing interests. Career initiatives at an early age centre on becoming socially active (yes, pick up the playground garbage with your child or volunteer in homeless shelters) or building an awareness of the work of others. Career guidance at an early age encourages understanding of stereotypes and employing creativity to solve problems.

“Awareness, and education were primarily identified as having been helpful and wished for” in a recent study that aimed to investigate career decision making among successful youth (Nordin & Mathew, 2024).

Most importantly, career development at an early age is about opening young minds to learn and experience a life typically lived in chaos so they are not hesitant when it is time to decide on what's next.

University admission letters have trickled in adding new dilemmas to the young people I work with. The “reach” universities that have said, “we are pleased” bring with them financial cost, separation from home and adapting to a new lifestyle that my young clients did not have time to think about. The letters that started with, “we regret to” transport students to a state of utter dismay and uncertainty. How well do we prepare students for these situations?
 
More importantly, how well have we prepared students to transition from school to life after grade 12? So many choices (job, college, university, apprenticeship...) yet so little time if we wait till grade 11 or 12 to have career infused conversations.

Have fun! Reflect and share!

​I am known for my mission to raise awareness about Career Literacy. I am also known for my passion to discuss established and trendy career terms. A recent term, Career Cushioning, was shared by leader and co-host of Career Buzz, Mark Franklin. I had never heard of it...so I set out to learn more about it and just in case you were like me in the dark about it, here is what I found out.
 
According to Wikipedia, career cushioning refers to employees who discreetly upskill and network as a contingency plan in the event of job loss. Still as per Wikipedia, the term came to prominence in 2022 following the COVID-19 pandemic layoffs and stems from cushioning in dating, where partners have a backup plan and cushioning a fall. Did you guys already know this?
 
ChatGPT confirms that career cushioning is the practice of proactively preparing for potential job loss or career changes by building a safety net. It’s similar to financial cushioning—having a backup plan to stay secure during uncertain times. ChapGPT reiterated that while the concept has been around for decades, career cushioning became trendy again in 2022.

​I became curious as to what the research says about it. Not surprisingly, an uptick in research on the management and benefits of career cushioning was evident starting in 2023.
 
One article in Strategic Finance (2023) highlights the unprecedented raised interest in career cushioning. It provides strategies for employers to deal with this phenomenon to avoid the loss of career cushioned employees; strategies such as accepting career cushioning as a given and prioritizing succession planning. I am now intrigued by the ripple effects of career cushioning. Do you see the employee benefits in this? I see it as very good news for employees as employers seek new ways to motivate employees to not only stay but to also be engaged in the work they do.
 
Another article in the Journal of Management and Organization (2024) describes career cushioning as an informal term that suggests a way to soften the blow in case of unexpected career changes. The article once more targets employers stressing better management practices that aim to retain employees and to ensure companies survive and remain innovative. How cool would this be for employees at all levels?
 
Ironically, while Career Development Professionals (CDPs) never (perhaps rarely?) use the term career cushioning, I know that many of us advise our clients to regularly update their resumes, their skills and their network. You can watch CDPs providing this advice on my YouTube channel such as Wayne Pagani saying, “don’t wait until the tsunami hits”, Diane Hudson recommending that you “always have an updated resume”, Marie Zimenoff wanting to ensure that “you have the network and the people that will help you move from one thing to the next” and many more...
 
To say the least, career cushioning is the perfect informal term that I hope will continue to trend. Are you with me? Did you already know this term? Share your thoughts.  

I am Hoda Kilani, Career and Academic Coach. As a private practitioner, I work with students, parents, teachers and community partners sharing the latest strategies to innovatively craft your career journey your way. Follow me and subscribe to this newsletter for more career insights.