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How do we attain the improvements suggested above and the savings that come with them? Some of the necessary tools are already in place. What is needed is a concerted effort to use the tools now in place effectively and in concert with each other, to increase understanding of the necessity of this paradigm shift, and to help as many Canadians as possible increase their mastery of career management skills. We need programs and resources that are based on clear career management learning and performance outcomes, and that are accountable to those who fund them. We need a means by which career practitioners, counsellors, educators and human resources specialists can easily select resources based on the outcomes they want to achieve with their clients and the skills they wish to build. We need a common map or framework of career management skills to see the linkages, or overlaps, between programs, and to identify gaps in existing programs and services. We need a common language of career management so there is no ambiguity or confusion among career practitioners, employment counsellors, educators and HR people, or between them and the public. We need a new, national career management culture.

Pioneering work on a national career management skills framework began in the United States in 1988, under the leadership of the National Occupational Information Coordinating Committee (NOICC) and its network of 58 State Occupational Information Coordinating Committees (SOICCs). The process of adapting what became the U.S. National Career Development Guidelines for Canada began in 1998, lead by the National Life/Work Centre in concert with the Canada Career Information Partnership, with support from Human Resources Development Canada. The result is Canada's Blueprint for Life/Work Designs. Thousands of American and Canadian career practitioners, employment counsellors, educators, human resources specialists and researchers have spent fourteen years developing, piloting, evaluating, revising and implementing this North American career management skills framework.

The Blueprint identifies core competencies with associated performance indicators for each competency at four developmental levels across the lifespan. The core competencies are the basis upon which career development programs can be designed. The performance indicators, which are organized by learning stages, can be used to measure learning gains and demonstrate the effectiveness of such programs.

Competencies and performance indicators are arranged under three key headings:

These competencies include the employability skills employer groups suggest are lacking in too many prospective employees, particularly youth. In fact, because work habits and attitudes strongly influence early adult earnings, educational and training programs should emphasize work behaviours as much as they emphasize job skills(39). Self-reliance grows out of the acquisition of these skills. The Blueprint recognizes that people at different ages and stages learn differently, and that even young children can learn and appreciate the Blueprint competencies. In fact, we know that attitudes toward work are formed early in life, so workforce and vocational guidance policy should take a developmental perspective. Vocational psychologists such as Super, Crites, Gribbons, and Lohnes have each concluded from their longitudinal studies that planful competence in early adolescence relates to more realistic educational and vocational choices, occupational success, and career progress.(40) For this reason, the Blueprint's core competencies are defined for four developmental levels:

There are performance indicators for each competency, at each level, organized by "learning stages." For example, the performance indicators for Competency 5 at Level 3 are:

The Blueprint provides the basis for setting the learning outcomes, establishing performance standards, and measuring success in any public or private sector agency in the career development business in Canada. It's a foundation piece of the new career management paradigm, and implementation is well underway.

Many provincial and territorial ministries of education, human resources and employment, community services and others across Canada are adopting the Blueprint as the foundation of their career management programs or imbedding its competencies into their own guidelines. Career resources, programs, curricula and services from public and private sector organizations, large and small, are being coded to the Blueprint competencies and performance indicators. Blueprint Orientation and Leadership Sessions are being offered across Canada to develop local Blueprint Facilitators to teach educators, career and employment counsellors and human resources specialists to make effective use of the Blueprint and its support materials.

Many individuals and organizations across Canada are contributing to the new career management paradigm in different ways. For example, the Conference Board of Canada's Employability Skills 2000, Human Resources Development Canada's Essential Skills, and the Workinfonet national partnership of career, learning and labour market information Internet gateway sites are making important contributions to the needed paradigm shift. The Canada Career Consortium, Industry Sector Councils, Canada Career Information Partnership, Career Circuit, Canadian Career Development Foundation, National Life/Work Centre and others are as well. The National Career Development Standards and Guidelines for Career Practitioners contributes a complementary competency framework for career and employment counsellors and career practitioners. The Real Game Series, now in thousands of schools from coast-to coast, provides national curriculum to teach career management skills in educational and community settings across Canada. The Blueprint provides a map of the career management terrain by which these and many other contributions of large and small, public and private sector organizations across Canada can be plotted and tracked.