Unpacking Cannexus 2026 - Part 2: The Art and Profession of Career Development, Now and to Come

When I started EnPoint it was grounded in a simple but deeply held belief: people deserve careers where they can show up authentically most of the time, do work they enjoy most of the time, and feel connected to what they contribute most of the time.

From the outset, the focus was never on jobs. It was on careers, how people start them, build them, step away from them, return to them, and evolve over time. Mentorship became a core tool in that work because of its lasting impact. It builds confidence. It provides context about roles, industries, and workplace realities. It strengthens essential and future-ready skills. It fosters connection, to others and to one’s evolving career identity.

These outcomes matter not just for a first job, but across an entire working life. EnPoint has never been about optimizing résumés or accelerating job placement. It has been about helping people build meaningful careers, and about strengthening the career development practices within post-secondary institutions, nonprofits, and employers that support them.

It was within this context that I began attending CERIC 's Cannexus. Over the past several years, career development has moved to the centre of my work. We engage with people at every stage, those just starting out, those reintegrating, those pivoting, and those evolving long-established careers. Cannexus, in particular, has deepened my appreciation for the art, craft, and profession of career development.

This year felt especially significant as Cannexus marked its twentieth anniversary. Listening to reflections from long-standing leaders and those new to the field, and connecting with passionate practitioners across the country, prompted a broader reflection.

Many people move through post-secondary without ever engaging a career centre. Others never access employment programs, reskilling initiatives, or formal career support. They build careers anyway, often through trial and error, networks, and resilience, but not always with clarity, confidence, or equity. Some navigate this successfully. Others do not, with ripple effects that extend far beyond work. The clearest takeaway for me is this: career development is everyone’s responsibility.

It belongs to the individual building a career. It belongs to the systems designed to support them, employers, educational institutions, community organizations, funders, and governments. It belongs to the families and communities that provide support and stability.

Career development is not solely the mandate of career development practitioners, though their role is essential. It is a shared responsibility, particularly at a time when Canada’s competitiveness, resilience, and social cohesion depend on how well we enable people to learn, adapt, and contribute over time. With that lens, the reflections that follow are less about a single conference and more about what the past twenty years of career development reveal, and what the next twenty may demand of us.

20 Years of Career Development in Motion

Over the past two decades, career development has shifted from a narrow focus on matching people to jobs toward a broader practice of navigation. Panelists reflected on several pivotal changes:

• from episodic decisions to lifelong guidance

• from linear pathways to non-linear, iterative careers

• from deficit-based thinking to strengths, flow, and adaptability

• and, with some debate, from “follow your passion” narratives to a more grounded emphasis on skills, exposure, and learning agility

One speaker reframed the issue of unemployment in a way that resonated deeply: Is it an individual problem or a systems problem?

That distinction matters. When career outcomes are treated as solely individual responsibility, structural barriers fade from view, barriers such as access to experience, mentorship, networks, and meaningful learning through work. Career development is often where these tensions surface. At its best, the field has matured into a profession that understands how adults learn, recognizes the emotional and identity dimensions of work, and embraces its role in helping people adapt, not just decide.

Mentorship: Not a Nice-to-Have, but a System Lever

If one concept surfaced repeatedly as both opportunity and gap, it was mentorship. Leaders reflected on the pivotal role mentorship played in their own careers, helping them reframe rejection as learning, supporting first-generation professionals and newcomers, and offering perspective during moments of doubt or transition.

Yet mentorship remains unevenly accessible, for learners, workers, and even career professionals. Informal networks often determine who benefits, while those without social capital navigate alone. This is why mentorship matters not only as a relationship, but as a deliberate design choice.

When embedded intentionally, mentorship accelerates experiential learning, strengthens confidence and professional identity, supports skill translation across roles, and improves retention and belonging. Career development systems that rely on mentorship by accident produce uneven results. Systems that design for it can shift outcomes at scale.

The Case for the Human -- and AI

No conversation about the future of career development can avoid AI. Across Cannexus, AI surfaced less as a technical issue and more as an emotional and ethical one. There was genuine excitement about efficiency and expanded access, alongside hesitation, uncertainty, and questions about professional identity.

Practitioners were clear on one point. AI can assist with information, but it cannot replace self-awareness, accountability, judgment, or meaning-making. In a post-pandemic context, this distinction feels sharper. People value digital tools, yet they still want a human presence, someone to challenge assumptions, reflect patterns back to them, and provide accountability when direction feels unclear. 

Thanks Sonny KH Wong, M.Ed., RP for sharing your perspective and your students' as it relates to this and for highlighting the potential damaging impact AI can have from a career development/ career exploration lens by perpetuating negative self-talk and self-limiting beliefs, particularly in cases where users may already be in a vulnerable place. 

This is not an argument against AI. AI can surface options, accelerate drafting, and simulate scenarios. It can act as a thinking partner, helping individuals explore possibilities more efficiently. Career development professionals help people decide, adapt, learn from experience, and remain anchored to their evolving identity over time.

The future is not human or machine. It is human judgment supported by tools, not replaced by them.

From Career Literacy to Skills Literacy, and Why Both Matter

A recurring theme was the shift from job titles to skills. Panelists spoke about skills as currency, adaptability as a meta-skill, and the importance of learning through experience and translating capabilities across contexts.

Skills literacy, understanding how skills are built, transferred, and renewed, is increasingly essential. But it is not enough on its own. Career literacy still matters. It helps people understand how systems function, how opportunities are structured, and how power, access, and constraints shape outcomes.

A focus on skills alone risks placing responsibility solely on the individual to learn more and adapt faster, without acknowledging the systems in which those skills operate. The path forward is integration. Career literacy helps people understand the terrain, and skills literacy helps them move within it, strengthening both agency and awareness.

How Career Development Practitioners Sustain Their Own Learning

A quieter but important thread at Cannexus focused not on programs or systems, but on the people doing the work. Gatherings like Cannexus offer connection, research, and new ideas. Just as importantly, they provide space for intentional professional development. That matters because career development is not static work. Practitioners continually ask others to reflect, adapt, learn, reframe setbacks, sit with uncertainty, and imagine new possibilities.

If career development is lifelong, it must apply to practitioners as well. One session on how people learn reinforced this. Participants reflected on moments of meaningful learning that changed how they thought or acted. The common insight was clear: learning that lasts is not purely cognitive.

It is aligned with identity, grounded in trust and psychological safety. It mostly happens when people feel regulated, not overwhelmed. It builds on the wisdom already present in the room. This has direct implications for practice. Career professionals operate in emotionally complex spaces, holding anxiety, disappointment, and hope. Without space to regulate and continue growing themselves, the work risks becoming transactional or draining.

Research referenced during the session underscored this point. Client outcomes differ when practitioners show up grounded and aligned versus depleted or disconnected from their own development. In that sense, tending to one’s own growth is not a luxury, it is part of ethical practice

Cannexus modelled this this year in their "Carousel Talks" where we gathered in small groups to talk about a particular topic - a favourite of mine was that hosted by Kimberley Rawes where we talked about facilitation best practices to make learning impactful for adults. Loved the flash cards and active design- great example of the above in practice! 

Professional development, then, is not simply about new tools or trends. It is about sustaining the capacity to do this work well over time. This extends beyond those with a formal career development designation. Educators, managers, mentors, HR professionals, and community leaders all play a role in helping others navigate change.

If career development is a shared responsibility, so is modelling the learning, reflection, and adaptability we ask of others.

Looking Forward

The career development sector is being asked to do more than ever. It must support longer and more complex careers, bridge learning and work, address inequity, humanize technology, and help people remain grounded through constant change.

Whether situated in education, community organizations, workforce systems, or within employers, the work is converging around a shared purpose: enabling people to build meaningful and adaptable lives through work.

The future of career development will not be defined by a single model or platform. It will be defined by whether we are willing to design systems that are as human as the people they serve.

As we look ahead, a few questions are lingering for me:

1. What responsibilities are we placing on individuals that should be carried by systems?

2. Where does mentorship belong, as a program, a practice, or core infrastructure?

3. What would it mean to treat career development as a public good rather than