22 - Friday, February 25, 1

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FOCUS ON EDUCATION AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT+

| Conirary to popular. belief, qualified people for entry-level,

~_ part-time, temporary and full-time positions do exist.
- And finding them is not such a difficult task.
“ \Thatis, if you're advertising in the
“North Shore News Help Wanted Section.

When your ad runs in the Help Wanted Section,
great things can happen. You'll reach more readers in
North and West Vancouver than the city’s daily papers.

Which means you will save time and money .
talking directly to more qualified candidates.
~ So the next time you need to fl an opening in your staff
~*~ all the North Shore News Classifeds
~. and’place an cd that gets results.

And throw out that old cliche about good help being

r retraining

continues to increase

or all the billions of tax

dollars spent each year

on schools, universities
and colleges, Canada’s
investment in the intellectu-
al capital of its citizens is
inadequate to meet the
work-place demands of the
1990s and beyond.

Because of job dislocation,
technological change and chron-
ic unemployment, a growing
challenge is the education and
re-education of mature workers,

Al the North Shore’s Lucas
Centre there is a vocational busi-
ness training program designed
especially for people over 45
who are unemployed or under-
qualified in their present job.

Joan Berry, who manages the
employment training division of
North Shore Continuing
Education (NSCE), has a class of
17 unemployed people between
the ages of 45 and 61 who are
looking for a new start.

The program, Lifelong
Learning, is open to anyone over
45, but Berry said the students in
the class are mostly older men
who have been employed for a
long time, and now face the
scar’ reality of unemployment.

The student body includes
everyone from university gradu-
ates, women entering the work .
force after raising families, and
two men completing their high
school education.

“The real success lies in get-
ting these people back on track
again,” said Berry. “The self con-
fidence is what's really lacking.”

Lifelong Learning is a set cur-
riculum that combines vocaticon-
al training with life skills train-
ing. Half of the course is com-
puter skills, with business
English, business math, basic .
accounting and career focus
making up the rest.

"By Greg Felton

The computer courses
include Wordperfect for both
DOS and Windows, Lotus,
Windows, ACCPAC and
Bedford, as well as keyboard
training. ; ;

All courses are part of a full-
time, full-year program of seven
hours per day and are funded!
federally through unemployment
insurance. ‘

Over all, the division has 600
full-time students of varying ages
and 42 instructors. Since
December 1991, enrolment has
risen 750%, said Lucas Centre
administrator Judy Turner,

Besides the technical training,
these mature students receive
counselling and behavioral
skills, such as how.to cope with’
unemployrnent, how. to present
themselves, how to talk to.an |
employer and how to look for
work,

.. “Looking in the newspaper
and sending out the old standard
resume doesn’t work anymore,”
she said, Toe

The mature student program
is actually the property of the:
National Academy of Older -
Canadians, said Turner. “(It)
didn’t have the expertise to run
an educational training program”
so they subcontracted us to do
it

The proposal itself came.out
of graduate research Turner did |
while studying for her master's
degree in adult education at the
University of B.C. J

Her findings interested her
professor, Jim Thornton, who. .
made a proposal to the federal ©. >
government to train people over
45. “fe 4

See Training page 23°

..is worth a thousand words’ —

hard to find. You won't be using it anymore.

100 panna

CLASSIFIED HELP WANTED ADS - PHONE 986-6222 -

]
i

Skilled

‘In 1961, unskilled jobs outnumbered skilled jobs two-to-
one. By the year 2001, almost all the jobs will require high
skills. The message is clear: the jobs of tomorrow will go
to those with the skills ro fir into such industries-as health

‘ care, telecommunications, and computers.

See you at the Career Fair

North Shore
Canada Employment Centre