Our Profession
Career Development Professionals
help individuals navigate learning & work transitions across the lifespan.
Career Development Professionals help individuals to manage learning and work, acquire and enhance skills, seek and create employment, and access community services that support personal and professional growth in an increasingly complex, interdependent and changing world.
Career Development Professionals collaborate with employers, education and training providers, community-based services, and other private and public institutions to promote positive health, social, and economic outcomes of individuals, institutions, and communities.
- help Canadians to be architects of their careers.
- mobilize their competencies to meet the complex needs of Canadians
- adhere to a Code of Ethics that supports reflection and accountability.
- promote positive health, social, and economic outcomes for individuals, institutions, and communities.
For over 30 years, our sector has worked collaboratively to advance the profession of career development, and to raise the bar for our standards of practice. In 2021, our ongoing work revitalized our original standards to create three new dynamic cornerstone documents that inform and underpin Career Development Professional’s scope of work. All three assets can be used to develop training curricula, track professional progress and growth, create certification programs, and inform the public of the value and importance of career development.
Competency Framework
The Pan-Canadian Competency Framework for Career Development Professionals details the skills, knowledge, and actions demonstrated by effective career development professionals, career influencers, career educators, and thought leaders.
National Competency Profile
The National Competency Profile for Career Development Professionals is a curation of competencies from the Competency Framework that details and describes effective performance, knowledge, understanding, and abilities for ALL Career Development Professionals regardless of role/setting.
Code of Ethics
The Code of Ethics for Career Development Professionals provides professional boundaries and practical directives for professional behaviour and practice for those who offer services in career development.
Taking Charge - Competency Self-Assessment
When it comes to your professional competencies, it's important to know your own strengths and areas for potential growth. Taking Charge is a free online tool that supports you to self-assess your current level of mastery and compare this to your desired level of mastery as a basis for building self-awareness and informing your professional development planning. Coming Soon.
National Certification
After 20+ years of discernment, dialogue, co-creation, and testing, Canada’s National Career Development Certification (NCDC) program for CDPs is ready to launch in 2024 using a validated competency-based Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) model.