Career Counseling Strategies and Techniques for the 21st Century

1. Career Counseling Strategies and Techniques for the 21st Century Chapter 8

2. Career Development Interventions • Career development interventions provide the historical foundation for the counseling profession (Dorn). • The counseling field emerged from three distinct movements (Herr & Cramer): • vocational/career guidance • psychological measurement • personality development

3. Career Interventions, continued • We know relatively little about the career counseling process (Niles & Anderson). • Career counselors rarely study how career counseling actually works.

4. What Do We Know? • There is a positive relationship between counselor confidence in establishing a therapeutic relationship and client confidence in coping with career transitions. • Career counseling clients devote considerable attention to noncareer concerns in sessions.

5. What We Know • Career counselors tend to give information and set limits more frequently during career counseling than during general counseling. • Career counseling participants identify aspects of self-exploration, support, and educating as the most important and helpful career counseling interventions.

6. What We Know • There seems to be a close relationship between the processes of psychotherapy and career counseling. • Developing an effective working alliance is critical to positive outcomes in career counseling.

7. Expanding the Limited View of Career Counseling • Students often conclude that career counseling is a sequence of interventions that resembles the following: • Step 1: Client presents for career counseling. • Step 2: Counselor gathers client information and administers a test battery. • Step 3: Counselor interprets tests and identifies a few appropriate occupational options for the client.

8. Characteristics of This Approach • Counselor is in charge of the process. • Counselor is directive and authoritative. • Clients are passive recipients of a predetermined test battery. • Career counseling becomes something that is done to clients rather than something the counselor and client participate in collaboratively.

9. Career Counseling and Mental Health Counseling (Niles & Pate) • Given the relationship between work and mental health, it is perplexing that there has been an artificial distinction between career counseling and mental health counseling. • Career counseling and personal counseling are often referred to as if they were completely separate entities. • In fact, there are few things more personal than a career choice.

10. Career Counseling in the 21st Century (CACREP) • Career counseling is both a counseling specialty and • a core element of the general practice of counseling.

11. Crites’ View • The need for career counseling is greater than the need for psychotherapy. • Career counseling • can be therapeutic. • should follow psychotherapy. • is more effective than psychotherapy. • is more difficult than psychotherapy.

12. Definition of Career Counseling (Brown and Brooks) • Career counseling is an interpersonal process designed to assist individuals with career development problems.

13. Designing Career Counseling Strategies for the 21st Century • Career counselors must respond to • global unemployment • corporate downsizing • jobless economy • global competition of small companies via information highway • workerless factories

14. Designing Career Counseling Strategies for the 21st Century, continued • redefinition of social contract between employers and employees • increase in the number of companies offering daycare and parental leave • increase in the number of families with dual incomes • increase in the number of people working from home

15. Requirements of Today’s Workplace • Using computer technology • Engaging in lifelong learning • Interacting effectively with diverse co-workers • Tolerating ambiguity in job security • Being vigilant about maintaining a high level of self and occupational awareness to maintain marketability

16. Characteristics of Career Development Interventions That Foster Self-Affirmation • Provide counseling-based career assistance • Provide support to their clients • Attend to their clients’ life structure issues • Empower clients to clarify their self-concepts and construct their own lives • Exhibit understanding that every counseling relationship is cross-cultural

17. Classifying Forms of Client Resistance • Response quantity resistance • Response content resistance • Response style resistance • Logistic management resistance

18. Types of Support • Emotional support • Informational support • Assessment support

19. Skills for Working with Resistant Clients • Using presuppositions • Using embedded questions and directives • Correcting transformational errors • Labeling and reframing • Recognizing and dealing with resistance • Identifying irrational beliefs • Identifying distorted thinking • Using reflective judgment stages • Focusing on excuses

20. Savickas’ Career Style Assessment • Identify life themes (early experiences, role models, books, movies, etc.). • Turn life themes into career goals.

21. Types of Clients Who Benefit from Subjective Interventions • Indecisive clients • “Difficult cases” or clients who have received but not profited from counseling • Mid-career changers • Culturally diverse clients

22. Strengths of Subjective Assessments • Help clients understand themselves at a deep level • Help clients consider the relevance of their life experiences to their career development • Help clients attach a sense of purpose to their activities • Are inexpensive to use • Actively engage clients in the counselingprocess • Results are clearly connected to client responses

23. Strengths of Objective Assessments • Allow client to make comparisons with others • Are outcome-oriented • Do not require as much counselor time as subjective assessments • Provide a useful starting point for subsequent consideration of career options

24. A Framework for Career Counseling • Getting started • Helping clients deal with change • Helping clients engage in self-assessment activities • Helping clients learn more about the world of work • Helping clients expand or narrow choices • Helping clients make plans

25. Phases of the Career Counseling Process (Gysbers, Heppner, & Johnston) • Opening phase • Phase of information-gathering • Working phase • Final phase

26. Phases of the Career Counseling Process (Niles & Harris-Bowlsbey) • Beginning or Initial Phase • establish effective relationship • begin to gather information about the client • define preliminary goals for counseling • Middle or Working Phase • explore concerns and goals in depth • develop and implement a specific plan of action

27. Phases of the Career Counseling Process (Niles & Harris-Bowlsbey), continued • Ending or Termination Phase • Connect the work done in the beginning and middle phases by assessing client’s current status • Relate current status to client’s goals for counseling

28. Premature Closure in Career Counseling (Brown & Brooks) • Clients believe they have achieved their goal. • The career counseling experience does not meet the client’s expectations. • Clients fear what might be uncovered in career counseling. • Clients lack commitment to counseling.

29. Questions to Ask About Termination • Did I • review the content of what happened in counseling? • review the process of what happened in counseling? • reemphasize the client’s strengths that were evident in counseling? • evaluate what went well and what went poorly?

30. Questions to Ask About Termination, continued • Did I • explore things unsaid in counseling? • discuss feelings related to the ending of the counseling relationship? • provide clear and direct structure for the client’s next steps?

31. Career Counseling Groups • Group counseling offers a mode of service delivery that can be used instead of, or in addition to, individual counseling. • Hansen and Cramer describe group counseling as an intervention for 5-15 members, with 5-8 members viewed as optimal.

32. Career Counseling Groups, continued • Structured career counseling groups address a specific issue that is a common concern. • Structured career counseling groups typically meet for 3-7 sessions. • Less structured career counseling groups focus on the intrapersonal and interpersonal concerns that clients have about career development.

33. Career Counseling Groups, continued • Less structured career counseling groups tend to be more affective-oriented than structured groups. • Less structured groups meet over a longer period of time than structured groups.

34. Stages in Group Career Counseling (Pyle) • Opening stage • Investigation stage • Working stage • Decision/Operational stage

35. Why Use Career Groups?(Kivlighan) • Members learn new information about themselves and others. • Members receive social and emotional support from other group members. • Members learn from peers who are in similar situations. • Members can share resources and ideas.

36. Criteria for Successful Groups • Members • are in open communication with each other. • share a common goal. • set norms that direct and guide their activities. • develop a set of roles to play within the group. • develop a network of interpersonal attraction. • work toward satisfaction of individual needs.