Critical moments in career construction counseling

An important research need concerns identifying and describing factors that promote reflexivity and change in life-design career interventions. Career construction counseling, a primary life-design intervention, uses narrative methods in an interpersonal process of helping people design a work life through reflexive action. Using Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR), the present study examined what prompts reflexivity and change in career construction counseling. A single case analysis method involving a 24-year old Caucasian woman examined one client's experience of processes that prompted change and reflection about her current career transition. Post-counseling IPR with the client of her videotaped career construction counseling session indicated five major themes: (a) role models prompt identity reflection, (b) early recollections foster cohesion, (c) follow-up questions add depth to the story, (d) counselor as audience provides clarity and validation, and (e) career construction interview questions illuminate perspective and need for action. Results support prior research indicating the usefulness of career construction counseling for promoting reflexive action in life design.     

Career construction counseling: A thematic analysis of outcomes for four clients

Thematic analysis was used in this study of career construction counseling with four diverse, purposively-selected participants. After the intervention, the participants who sought and received career construction counseling were interviewed to determine their experience of the intervention. The results showed the value of career construction counseling in bringing about change in the participants' career-life stories.     

Effectiveness of the career interest profile

This study examined the effectiveness of group‐based career counseling using the Career Interest Profile (CIP). The study used an experimental design involving 2 groups of Italian university students: an experimental group (42 participants) who received narrative career counseling and a control group (47 participants) who did not. Results indicated more specific life and occupational goals after the intervention among members of the experimental group in addition to a decrease in career decision‐making difficulties and an increase in career decision‐making self‐efficacy, thus suggesting the value of group‐based career counseling on the basis of the principles embodied in the CIP.     

Integrating motivational interviewing in career counseling: A case study

Motivational interviewing (MI) is receiving increasing attention in the field of career counseling. However, none of the previous studies have concretely presented how this method could and why it should be integrated in career counseling. Through the use of a single case study design, this paper illustrates how a brief MI (BMI) intervention can be integrated into career counseling interventions to help resolve career dilemmas. An analysis of the interactions between the client and his counselor using the Motivational Interviewing Skills Code 2.1 illustrates why this method can be useful for career counseling. Immediate and long-term effects of the global career counseling intervention on the client's career decision-making difficulties, as well as the specific impacts of the BMI intervention, are assessed. This case study shows that the BMI approach can be integrated in a career counseling intervention to help career counseling clients overcome career dilemmas and increase their readiness to make career choices.     

Career counseling meets motivational interviewing: A sequential analysis of dynamic counselor–client interactions

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a client-centered communication style with the aim to resolve client ambivalence within a change-related counseling. Its potential benefit for career counseling has been discussed by several scholars but no empirical research has investigated MI in this context so far. The current study used process measures from MI to investigate dynamic interactions within a career counseling intervention. Overall, we analyzed two videotaped sessions of 14 unique counselor–client dyads. Verbal behavior of counselors and clients were coded with two observational coding schemes from MI (one for counselors and one for clients, respectively). Behavior profiles of counselors were compared with benchmarks of good MI. Furthermore, client verbal ambivalence was compared between sessions. Finally, we conducted lag sequential analyses to analyze temporal dynamics between counselor behavior and immediate client verbal responses across N = 6883 behavioral events. Our results showed, first, behavior profiles of career counselors did significantly differ from recommended counseling benchmarks of good MI practice. Second, as assumed on the basis of past studies, client ambivalence decreased across sessions. Third, MI consistent counselor behaviors showed a positive sequential association with client positive career talk, whereas MI inconsistent counselor behaviors showed the reverse pattern. Our results suggest that counseling behaviors recommended from MI are facilitating career interventions. We discuss how trainings in MI could amend career counseling interventions and provide ethical implications when integrating MI into career counseling programs.     

Constructionist career counseling of undergraduate students: An experimental evaluation

This study used a pretest–posttest control group design to examine the effectiveness of a six-session constructionist career counseling intervention (Savickas, 2011). It was hypothesized that relative to pre-intervention scores, the participants would demonstrate decreases in their indecision, anxiety, uncertainty, and insecurity about their career choices. Participants consisted of 50 undergraduates ranging in age from 19 to 25. They completed the Undergraduate Career Choice Survey (UCCS) and then were evenly divided into an intervention group and a control group. The intervention group received six sessions of constructionist career counseling. Each session was approximately 45 min with a total of 4 h, 30 min approximately for the six sessions. Both groups then took the UCCS again. Analyses of the data using t-tests revealed significant reductions in indecision, anxiety, uncertainty, and insecurity for the intervention group but not for the control group. The intervention group took the UCCS again eight weeks later. An ANOVA indicated that the reductions in indecision, anxiety, uncertainty, and insecurity were slightly yet significantly greater. Limitations and directions for further research were pointed out.     

Comparison of two group counseling approaches to enhancing confidence in planning careers by undecided Taiwanese college women

This is a report of research comparing two approaches to enhance the career confidence of undecided female college students. 30 women who requested enrollment in career counseling were assigned to two counseling groups (a cognitive reconstructing intervention group and a career decision-making skills training group) and one no-treatment control group based on time of request. After participating in the two career counseling groups for eight sessions in a month, the female college students rated their mean confidence as increased over that of the no-treatment group. Analysis indicated that the indecisive female college students benefitted from career group counseling with an emphasis on self-efficacy and that the cognitive reconstructing intervention was more effective.     

Evaluation of a Career Development Skills Intervention With Adolescents Living in an Inner City

The authors evaluated the effectiveness of an intervention with adolescents living in an inner city that was based on the Integrative Contextual Model of Career Development (Lapan, 2004). Adolescent participants reported greater efficacy and positive self‐attributions and greater skills in person‐environment fit; social, prosocial, and work readiness; the garnering of emotional and instrumental support; and self‐regulated learning. Adolescents who participated in a more traditional career counseling model only reported greater emotional support than did adolescents not receiving career counseling.     

A Process and Outcome Study Examining Career Indecision and Indecisiveness

Despite the abundance of research on undecided and indecisive students, there is a lack of literature on the actual change process of counseling these individuals. No published studies have applied advances in single-subject methodology to career research. This study uses both process and outcome measures to investigate the counseling process with an undecided and indecisive college student to examine (a) what specific events were the most significant in each session, (b) counselor intentions in the “best” versus “worst” sessions, (c) role of the working alliance with career clients, and (d) differential counseling outcomes. Participants were two female counselors, one male undecided student, and one male indecisive student. Results (a) support previous speculation about the differential utility of interventions for undecided and indecisive clients, (b) suggest that the relationship may be important to clients in career counseling, and (c) raise questions about previously assumed intervention strategies for career clients.     

Diverse middle school students’ future career autobiographies and socioeconomic status factors: A content analysis

The future career autobiography (FCA) is a narrative, discovery-based career intervention designed to assess individuals’ career hopes and dreams. In total, 134 low-income, ethnically and racially diverse middle school students participated in an FCA intervention through a yearlong grant-funded career development initiative. Using content analysis, we analyzed participants’ FCAs for socioeconomic status factors and lifestyle indicators. We found that participants articulated occupational and lifestyle factors more than education and income, and that there were differences based on biological sex, race, and ethnicity. We present pertinent results and discuss implications for counseling practice and future research.     

Modéliser l’évaluation des processus de changement en counseling d’orientation : une perspective constructiviste et intégrative

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to design models that are used to assess the effects of career counseling. The article is part of the constructivist perspective in the emerging new paradigm of counseling psychology in the 21st century. Dialogue is seen as the strategic point in the change process of intervention practices. Through an analytical synthesis of different theoretical and empirical work on dialogue and an exploratory study of its reflexive dimension, the article points out the contribution of constructivist approaches while suggesting a constructionist and integrative perspective. It thus opens a discussion on the relevance of an interdisciplinary approach for dialogic and reflexive phenomena involved in the self-transformation process.     

Planned Happenstance: Constructing Unexpected Career Opportunities

Chance plays an important role in everyone's career, but career counseling is still perceived as a process designed to eliminate chance from career decision making. Traditional career counseling interventions are no longer sufficient to prepare clients to respond to career uncertainties. Work world shifts challenge career counselors to adopt a counseling intervention that views unplanned events as both inevitable and desirable. Counselors need to teach clients to engage in exploratory activities to increase the probability that the clients will discover unexpected career opportunities. Unplanned events can become opportunities for learning.     

Integrating Career and Mental Health Counseling: Necessity and Strategies

Individuals seeking counseling might not recognize the interconnectedness of health, mental health, work, and life concerns. Counselors, however, need to be mindful that a person's wellness is interwoven with their work, life roles, and health. Research supports the interrelationship of career development and mental health as well as the effectiveness of an integrated approach to mental health and career counseling. An integrated approach from an ecological counseling perspective is proposed for conceptualizing client issues and intervention strategies.     

Narrative innovation in life design counseling: The case of Ryan

The main aim of this research is to study the patterns of narrative change in a case of life design counseling (LDC). The innovative moments coding system (IMCS) was used to conduct an intensive analysis of the career counseling sessions. This coding system is grounded in a narrative conception of the self, and suggests that narrative change results from the elaboration and development of narrative exceptions to a client's core problematic self-narrative. The results supports the adequacy of the IMCS to the study of change in career counseling and reveal that the intervention promotes a pattern of change characterized by three types of innovative moments: action, reflection, and protest. The results are discussed taking into account their implications for career counseling theory, research and practice.     

Randomized trial of a calling-infused career workshop incorporating counselor self-disclosure

A randomized controlled trial was used to test (1) the efficacy of a two-session career development workshop for college student participants; (2) the effect of counselor self-disclosure on outcomes; and (3) the effect of infusing calling and vocation concepts on outcomes. Both standard (person-environment fit) and calling/vocation-infused interventions improved career decision self-efficacy relative to a wait-list control. Counselor self-disclosure also increased participant career decision self-efficacy in both conditions and increased appraisals of meaning in life for participants in calling/vocation-infused workshops. Incorporating considerations of calling and vocation neither detracted from nor added to workshop effectiveness. Career development workshops were supported, as was the use of moderate counselor self-disclosure. Suggestions for career counseling practice and intervention research are discussed.     

Creative writing for life design: Reflexivity,metaphor and change processes through narrative

To survive and thrive on the labor market of the 21st century, individuals must construct their identities in a process of meaning making, where identity is co-constructed in the form of a narrative. In order to better understand the nature and elements involved in this career-identity change process the Interpersonal Process Recall interview (IPR) method was used to examine the results of a two-day Career Writing (Lengelle, 2014) intervention. The exploration regarding what prompted changes and how reflexivity was developed, was done by having each of two participants bring in pieces written during the course and having the interviewer ask what thoughts and feelings were remembered at the time of writing. The IPR process revealed that Career Writing enables participants to first enter into feelings, then make sense of those by finding the ‘right’ words to describe them, and experience (by thinking and feeling) that their ‘new story’ makes sense on a gut level and provides meaning. This process is made possible by an internal and an external dialogue where various I-positions (voices within the self) speak and where metaphors and analogies concretely facilitate meaning making.     

Fostering networking behavior,career planning and optimism,and subjective career success: An intervention study

The present study evaluated personal resource-oriented interventions supporting the career development of young academics, working at German universities within the STEM fields. The study sought to foster subjective career success by improving networking behavior, career planning, and career optimism. The study involved a quasi-experimental pre-post intervention with two intervention and two control groups (N = 81 research associates). Participants of the first intervention group received networking training; participants of the second intervention group received the same networking training plus individual career coaching. Participants of both intervention groups were female. Participants of the control groups (i.e., male vs. female group) did not participate in any intervention. As expected, path analyses, based on mean differences from pre-test to post-test, revealed an increase in career planning and career optimism within the networking plus career coaching intervention group, that was indirectly positively related to changes in subjective career success. Contrary to our expectations, the networking group training alone and in combination with the career coaching showed no effectiveness in fostering networking behavior. Results are discussed in the context of career counseling and intervention effectiveness studies.     

Career and personal counseling: Comparing process and outcome

Increasingly, there is a call to support the integration of career and personal counseling. However, few empirical studies have examined the overlap between these 2 domains. This study examined how career and personal counseling compared on both process and outcome measures. The participants included real clients who sought career and personal counseling at 3 college counseling centers in the U.S. The findings indicated that except in the area of expectations about counseling, there were no significant differences between career counseling and personal counseling. The implications for counseling practice and training are discussed.     

Finding order and direction from chaos: a comparison of chaos career counseling and trait matching counseling

Chaos career counseling, based on the Chaos Theory of Careers (R. G. L. Pryor & J. E. H. Bright, 2003a, 2003b), was compared with trait matching career counseling and a wait list control. Sixty university students who attended the Careers Research and Assessment Service seeking career advice were randomly assigned to the chaos intervention, the trait matching intervention, or a wait list control group. Both chaos and trait matching counseling had a positive impact; however, chaos counseling had a more lasting effect. Overall, results support using the chaos counseling approach as a valid alternative to trait matching approaches. Implications for counseling practice as well as future research are discussed.     

Using career counselling with group life design principles to improve the employability of disadvantaged young adults

This article explores the effects of group life design counselling on unemployed young adults’ career adaptability skills. Purposive and criterion sampling were used to select 62 participants involved in a skills programme (mean age = 24.86 years, SD = 6.38 years). A quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test comparison group-design, embedded in an intervention framework, was used to gather data. Intervention occurred in the quasi-experimental group. Paired t-tests were used to compare the difference between the pre- and post-test scores obtained on the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS). The scores on career concern and career control, as well as the total score on the CAAS, of the quasi-experimental group increased after the intervention. The results suggest that group career counselling interventions with life design principles enhanced the career adaptability in participants as a core element of employability. Future research should focus on more longitudinal research and tracing the long-term progress of participants to establish the value of the approach for diverse clients in (individual and) group contexts.