Career Planning
By Jenny Hill
Echelon Training Ltd.,1998. A4 ringbinder resource pack, £169 plus £5 carriage,
ISBN 1 901600 02 5.

Confidence Builders
By Gael Lindenfield.
Echelon Training Ltd., 1998. A4 ringbinder resource pack, £169 plus £5 carriage.
ISBN 1 901600 03 3.

These are two new activity resource packs from a new (to me) activity publisher. Each ringbinder contains 30 activities that are concerned with the title subjects. The activities are laid out in the format of purpose; time required; numbers; materials required; instructions; a summary; and all handouts, activity sheets and visuals required in 'Confidence Builders', with more variety of layout in 'Career Planning'. These layouts of the activities are very clear and comprehensive for use in self-development and training activities. Time required for the activities ranges from 20 to 45 minutes, the majority requiring 30 minutes.

'Career Planning' activities include such ones as Time Mapping; My Key Workskills; Developing Career Resilience; Constructing a Clear CV; Networking; Up is not the Only Way; and so on, and in 'Confidence Builders', Building Self-esteem; Become more Proactive; Confident Listening; Powerful Praise; The Art of Self-promotion; Confident Presentations; Risk Taking; and so on. Most of the activities in both packs are fresh ones, rather than as so often happens, rehashes of many-times repeated oldies. As in the best activity collections, the individual ones can either stand alone or can be combined easily in a mix and match course or workshop programme.

Accompanying the activity pages is a separate booklet, a Trainer's Guide, of 12 pages ('Career Planning') and 35 pages ('Confidence Builders'). The 'Career Planning' booklet contains such guidelines as Planning a Workshop; Leading a Discussion; One Minute Critic (a reactionnaire for a workshop); a Career Planning Programme; and a shortlist of self-help workbooks. The 'Confidence Builders' booklet contains sections on planning and preparing training sessions; frameworks for training techniques; checklists of training methods; and sample programmes for running four different modules using the activities.

I found these resource packs refreshing and can recommend them to training practitioners or managers who are interested in self-development. In addition, via the Internet at LearningMatters where thumbprints of all Echelon's published activities can be viewed and the activities themselves purchased on-line either singly or in mixed multiples.

Leslie Rae