Website: http://www.bayareacareercenter.com/

Re: High-tech career counselor?
Hello. I have the perfect solution for you: Bay Area Career Center. They are the reformulated Alumnae Resources/Lifeprint orgnazation that was in San Francisco until it folded. It was truly a shame. I think it hit some financial challenges when the dot com bust occured and a good amount of its funding dried up from their corporate sponsors. I think some of the counselors who had a passion for helping others regrouped and have developed BACC. Although it appears to be a very streamlined version of AR, I think it is offering two key components - career counselors and workshops. In paticular they offer one specific workshop called Self Assessment. It was PHENOMENAL!! You go through a series of excercises to explore your values, your skills, interests, personality and work environment. You probably already have some sense of this in your head but when you are done you end up with a comprehensive understanding (on paper). And when you then see it in black and white it really allows you to take the information and use it to assess many aspects of your jobs and yourself in terms of how to pursue new jobs/careers. Sometimes you learn that you actually have skills you like, but its the company which is the wrong fit, or the wrong industry. It helped me hone in on certain skills/interests/traits to stay focused on and to pay attention on areas to stay away from. It's a great tool for jumping into figure out what you want (and what you don't want). I think getting your thought process out of the tactical 'technical alphabet soup' (I happen to be technical too) and use this opportunity to look more strategically at what I mentioned above will help tremendously. Once you go through the assessment it's then quite useful to continue individual sessions if you need to and they will leverage the info. I think if you aren't into taking the workshop (with others) you can probably do it in an accelerated version one-one. I did feel that the input from the others perspectives in the workshop was helpful. I can't say enough about the course. I have a friend who went through it too and she is also a proponent of this process. The cool thing about the counselors is that you can read up on their profiles and pick one that you think would be a match to work with and also have an informal interview first before selecting. They've all dealt with high tech folks there so I don't think you can go wrong with any of them. Anyway here is the website: http://www.bayareacareercenter.com/ Please feel free to get in touch with me if you want to talk further. Hilary