About Victoria
For over 40 years, I have helped clients balance who they are with what they do.
I got into career counseling purely by accident when I started working as a receptionist at an employment agency. I had just graduated from college and I thought I wanted to be a doctor, but in the meantime I needed a job so I got hired there.
I was clearly too chatty to be a receptionist, though, so I was quickly promoted to working with those who were looking for jobs. It was immediately apparent that I had the skills to be a good career counselor -- I was a good listener, I had good instincts, and I could quickly assess a person's skills and strengths and match-make them into a job where it felt like it would be a good fit.
Because of my strong job matchmaking and assessment skills, and the enjoyment I received from helping others find jobs, I stayed there until I moved to California years later. By then, I knew I wanted to do career development work in a more meaningful way by working with clients through a deeper process.
I was then introduced to Richard Bolles, who had just written What Color Is Your Parachute? and was looking for people to learn his career development and job search process. That was the very beginning of the career development process that he popularized with his book and through my training with him I found the work to be deeper, more meaningful and more useful to clients.
It was also the perfect match for my skill set - good listening skills, accurate assessment skills, etc. - and it allowed me to deepen my connection with clients and build a trusted relationship with them so they could open up to me, look honestly at themselves and identify what did and didn't work about their work choices, and how they were making them.
Richard Bolles and I subsequently co-authored a career development workbook together, and I team-taught with him around the country for eight years.
I’ve remained in life planning/career counseling ever since because it has always remained fresh and meaningful for me. With every decade, the world changed, and my interests changed, so that it was almost like starting a new job, or like having a brand-new canvas every 10 years.
For example, some years I was especially interested in motivation. Some years I was especially interested in fear. Some years I was especially focused on looking at the role of family background, once I realized that I needed to understand one’s family background to understand what was motivating them in either a plus or minus way.
My work with clients always remains interesting because I also bring in whatever I'm particularly interested in at the moment, and infuse it into the vodka of the career development cocktail for a new flavor!