After running his two-week-long Implicit Career Search once a month for 16 years, Jim Niemi, owner of Stepping Stones Consulting, is, himself, entering a new career phase.
With the provincial government’s new Employment Program set to start up in Salmon Arm on April 2, Niemi will be closing his doors and moving on.
“The whole model is different than what we’ve been delivering. What I’m doing doesn’t fit in that model,” he explained. “I think it was mutually agreed with what the new RFP (request for proposal) called for – we couldn’t find a way to make it fit.”
Niemi also operated the Employment Place, which will become the location for the new government program to be run by (WCG) West Coast Group International.
“Change is inevitable when the government makes wholesale changes like they do – you either fit in to that change or create a new path.”
Stepping Stones will be winding down its operations March 31 and Niemi will be available throughout April. He’s hoping to hold a couple of open houses where people can “pop in and say hello and not goodbye,” he explains. “I’m pretty convinced the Implicit Career Search itself, the workshop – it’s touched a lot of lives.”
Niemi said he doesn’t have a negative reaction to having to close his business in response to the new program, “but you go through the emotional stages of sadness and what-not, but there’s a part of me that’s more excited about it.”
Overall, he said, “I appreciate what the community’s meant for me and how I’ve served the community. That’s what life’s supposed to be all about.”
