Essential Elements of Career Counseling

1. Essential Elements of Career Counseling Ria E. Baker, Ph.D., LPC-S

2. Career counseling defined • A process in which a counselor works collaboratively to help clients/students clarify, specify, implement, and adjust to work-related decisions. • CC addresses the interaction of work with other life roles.

3. What is career counseling? • Frank Parsons (1909) – Father of career guidance and counseling profession. • George Merrill – pioneer and forerunner of career guidance (acad./tech/voc. training) • “Parsonian approach”: • 1. Develop a clear understanding of yourself, aptitudes, abilities, interests, resources, limitations, and other qualities. • 2. Develop knowledge of the requirements and conditions of success, advantages and disadvantages, compensation, opportunities, and prospects in different lines of work. • 3. use “true reasoning” on the relations of these two groups of facts.

4. Career Counseling • Career counselors (CC) incorporate a variety of interventions into their work with clients with self-information. • CC supplement the traditional approaches to career interventions with counseling-based strategies that actively engage clients in the career counseling process. • CC collaborate with clients to construct career interventions that address each client’s concerns and context.

5. History of career counseling Contextual influences • Late 1800s: Social reform interacting with the rise of the industrial revolution • Early 1900: Cognizance of individual differences • 1920s: The classification of military personnel and issues of national defense • Rising concern about people with disabilities and mental illness • 1930s: Economic exigencies and needs to match persons with available employment opportunities during the Great Depression.

6. History cont. • 1940/50s: National defense • 1960s: Democratization of education, civil rights, women’s rights, and occupational opportunities in the Great Society programs • 1970s: Concerns for equity and special needs populations in a climate of economic austerity • 1980/90s: Transformation from an industrial to an information-based global economy and from military to economic competition among nations.

7. History • First counseling related professional association in U.S.: National Vocational Guidance Association. • Now: National Career Development Association (NCDA) - 1913

8. Workers in the U.S. • Tenuous employment security • Anxiety about the prospect of being laid off • Commitment to more hours of work • Work longer hours, take less vacation • Average working U.S. citizen works approx. 200 hours more per year than in 1970s • Many people are deciding that it makes more sense to work to live (rather than living to work).

9. Seven common career counseling myths • Career counselors have at their disposal standardized assessments that can be used to tell people which occupation they should choose. • Work role decisions can be made in isolation from other life roles. • CC does not address personal issues. • CC do not need extensive counseling expertise to do their work competently. • CC does not address the client’s context and culture. • CC is required only when a career decision must be made. • CC ends when a career decision is made.

10. Career Counseling • A complex activity that encompasses a full range of clients’ life experiences – human development issues. • Multicultural competence important – knowledge, skills, awareness • Understanding how race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, physical abilities, family constellations, geography… influence client’s world view, career options.

11. Culturally encapsulated approaches (Wrenn, 1962) • Standardized assessment in CC lack cultural equivalence, appropriate norm groups, and linguistic equivalence (Fouad, 1993). • Persons of diverse racial/ethnic groups guided into narrow range of occupational options (Aubrey, 1977) • CC attempted to fit clients to a particular career counseling approach, rather than providing services that fit the client’s context. • Ignore those who approach decisions from a collectivistic orientation or intuitive style

12. CC needs to: • Engage in ongoing activities that foster multicultural awareness, knowledge, and sensitivity. • Cultural immersion experiences are also vital to fostering multicultural sensitivity. • Career choice and adjustments are continual process (Super, 1990).

13. Career counseling competencies • Career development theory • Individual and group counseling skills • Individual/group assessment • Information/resources • Program promotion, management, implementation • Coaching, consultation, performance improvement • Diverse populations • Supervision • Ethical/legal issues • Research/evaluation • Technology

14. The role of NCDA • Administers and interprets formal and informal assessments to help client clarify and specify relevant self-characteristics • Encourages experience-based exploratory activities • Uses career planning systems and occupational information systems to help individuals better understand the world of work • Provides opportunities for improving decision-making skills • Assists in developing of individualized career plans • Teaches job-search strategies, interview skills, resume development • Helps to resolve potential personal conflicts on the job, through practice in developing relevant interpersonal skills • Assists in understanding the integration of work and other life roles • Provides support for persons experiencing job stress, job loss, and/or career transition (www.ncda.org)