Career counselling: A process in process

Career counselling, career guidance, and career interventions are terms in the process of evolution. Historical and contemporary factors in the US experience that have changed and expanded the needs for career counselling and related career interventions are discussed. For many work-adjustment problems, in particular, there is a growing acknowledgement that career and personal counselling must fuse. Where this fusion occurs, on a continuum from choice, indecision, and situational concerns to change, indecisiveness, and personal concerns, is analysed.     

Applying the principles and techniques of solution-focused therapy to career counselling

Career counselling aims to help clients become more effective agents in solving problems in their vocational aspects of life. To achieve this goal, theorists and practitioners are called upon to form useful helping approaches that can help clients in a more efficient and effective manner. This article proposes an alternative model toward this end by considering and adopting principles and techniques from the solution-focused therapy in career counselling practice. After a very brief introduction of the basic features of the solution-focused counselling, the paper reviews some key theoretical principles of the solution-focused therapy, and connects these principles to career counselling context. It then illustrates several solution-focused counselling techniques that are particularly applicable to career counselling intervention.     

The well-being outcomes of career guidance

ABSTRACT

The potential for career guidance to impact on well-being has received insufficient attention in the UK. There are both conceptual and empirical reasons to expect that the impacts may be positive, but a lack of evidence directly testing this proposition. Career guidance has commonalities with therapeutic counselling suggesting analogous effects, and it promotes positive engagement in work and learning, which may be associated with health benefits. There are implications for services in reconciling health and employment objectives. However, the promotion of well-being need not imply quasi-clinical ways of working. A call is made for more research and debate in the career guidance community as to the extent and implications of the potentially important relationship between career guidance and well-being.     

Career guidance and therapeutic counselling: sharing ‘what works’ in practice with young people

Many young people in the UK and across the world, where austerity measures are biting deep, find themselves at a time of crisis and uncertainty in their lives. The assumptions previously held of clear and straightforward career paths are being challenged and ‘career’ has come to mean more than simply ‘work’ or ‘employment’. This has implications for career practice, where career advisers are engaging with a range of complex issues in their guidance interactions with clients. This article draws on research undertaken with therapeutic counsellors into ‘what works’ when counselling young people. It offers career practitioners the opportunity to reflect on four key emerging themes and to consider how the discipline of therapeutic counselling might inform guidance practice.     

Story telling: crafting identities

ABSTRACT

Career guidance clients are seeking to craft new identities that better position them in their careers. The focus of the present article is on narrative career counselling's potential contribution in providing a meaningful and useful experience for career guidance clients. To illustrate the potential of narrative career counselling, the story telling approach is offered as an example to illustrate how identity can be crafted in contextually and culturally sensitive ways.     

The role of vocational identity development and motivational beliefs in undergraduates’ student engagement

The present study examined the role of vocational identity processes and motivational beliefs among 216 undergraduates’ level of student engagement (affective, behavioural and cognitive). Through regression analysis, in-depth career exploration was found to be positively related to the student engagement variables, while career self-doubt emerged as a negative predictor. Identification with commitment was also found to be positively associated with students’ affective and cognitive engagement, but not behavioural engagement. Furthermore, students’ perceived value in academic activities played a critical role in mediating these relationships. Despite the significant associations, other vocational identity processes (in-breadth career exploration, commitment making and career flexibility) and motivational beliefs (competence beliefs and perceived cost) failed to act as predictors and mediators, respectively, as hypothesised. Nonetheless, the current findings demonstrate the importance of vocational identity development in undergraduate students’ learning, and suggest a need for more identity interventions or career counselling services in college and pre-university contexts.     

Pupils as consumers: Perceptions of guidance and counselling in a scottish school

Pupils' perceptions' of the effectiveness of counselling services were investigated within a school with a high degree of commitment to guidance and counselling. Pupils were asked to read eight problems: four were school-based, and four were personal/familial problems. Half the sample were given a list of possible sources of assistance (including counselling staff); half were unprompted On personal and familial problems, the unprompted group were as likely to cite counsellors as being sources of assistance as were the group prompted with the names of counselling staff. This was taken as an indication that counselling staff were spontaneously seen as sources of help on these matters. In addition, respondents completed semantic-differential protocols, analyses of which indicated that counselling staff were seen in more pastoral terms than were other teaching staff. These results are discussed within a perspective that sees the school's guidance and counselling system as interacting with its general ethos.     

Face-to-face and at a distance: The mediation of guidance and counselling through the new technologies

The hitherto widely-held assumption that the counselling interaction should be conducted face-to-face, while other activities within the overall guidance process could be supported by computer, is re-examined. Recent computer-mediated information and communications technologies are reviewed, and their implications for guidance and counselling as a whole are explored. While fears are still current that human relations will be mechanised through the use of the information and communications technologies, it is contended that human relations will be changed but not necessarily diminished. Comparisons are drawn with the ways in which open and distance learning have brought a re-examination of what is understood to be a 'real' teaching interaction. It is suggested that practitioners in the fields of guidance and counselling must similarly be prepared to manage radical change.     

L’approche existentielle dans l’accompagnement de personnes au chômage en perte de repères : les processus de construction du sens de la vie et du travail (études de cas)

The guidance design for unemployed people in changing career must increasingly take into account their existential concerns about career meaning. The literature about life and work meaning has highlighted the multifactorial complexity of meaning definition and determinants of meaning. This fact does not facilitate their use in counselling design. Bernaud et al. (2020) “Guidance for life and work meaning” device takes into account this problem; it offers many thinking prospects that organize meaning questioning in order to help people who loosed professional and personal markers. By analyzing an application of this device with the multiple cases method, our article examines how a meaning guidance helps unemployed people in giving a new direction of their career. The study of five cases with chronologic analysis unities shows how various meaning dimensions help people to clarify, to enrich and to transform their initial problematic during accompaniment and how they progress with different rhythms to major personal and vocational decisions.     

Career development and counselling needs of LGBTQ high school students

There is a dearth of research concerning the career development and counselling issues that are relevant for high school students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ). As such, little is known to understand LGBTQ students when it comes to their career-related struggles and needs. This article attempts to examine the career development needs of LGBTQ high school students, addressing and analysing career problems from the unique circumstances of this student population. To do so, it provides an overview of the various career-related issues afflicting LGBTQ high school students. It then proposes a series of career guidance and counselling intervention considerations that are tailored to address the specific career needs and challenges of the LGBTQ high school students.     

The experience of outsourcing transfer: implications for guidance and counselling

Outsourcing can involve the forced transfer of employees to another organisation. During or after the transfer they may find their jobs have changed or go through a process of downsizing. They also often have to maintain a relationship with their previous employer as they continue to work on joint projects. In this paper we review relevant research literature and identify important psychological and organisational processes involved in this process, which are of specific interest to guidance and counselling. We also present data from a longitudinal research study in which employees undergoing an outsourcing transfer discussed their experiences. A number of these employees required career counselling and some were undergoing psychological counselling to reduce depression and anxiety. In conclusion, we summarise important issues to be considered by the counsellor when advising individuals going through this process.     

Online counselling in secondary schools: would students seek help by this medium?

Students in secondary schools experience problems that can impact on their well-being and educational outcomes. Although face-to-face counselling is available in most Australian secondary schools, many students, particularly boys, do not seek appropriate help. Research suggests that online counselling can be effective and increase engagement. This study of 215 secondary school students sought to assess students' intention to use online counselling if it was made available in schools. The results found no gender difference in the likely intentions to seek online help though year level was significant and students experiencing psychological distress had a preference for online counselling. If students did use online counselling it was more likely they would discuss sensitive topics rather than for career issues. Implications for school counselling are discussed.     

Interviewee perceptions of an organisational careers guidance scheme

A study was carried out during the early stages of the introduction of a career development scheme in a large government department. Information relating to aspects of various careers counselling issues was gathered from staff who had received such counselling and from personnel staff responsible for its provision. The study shows, amongst other things, that the interviewers were perceived to use some counselling skills, that the interviewers claimed they experienced few problems of role conflict, but that the staff tended to identify the interviewers with management. The findings are discussed relation to the appropriateness of interviewing style and to the broader context of how individuals might influence their career development within the opportunities provided by the organisation.     

Results of a Citation Analysis of the Career Counselling Field from an African Perspective

The study examined research and trends in career counselling published in selected professional sources during the period 1980–2010. Citation analysis was used in this study to investigate documents which were indexed in the Web of Science related to career counselling. Career counselling and related keywords were used jointly in the search for documents. There were a total of 730 documents judged to be relevant to the field of career counselling and were citation analysed. The number of citations related to the career counselling field has been increasing continuously since 2000. Research publications on career counselling are projected to increase for both South African authors and the authors of other African countries.     

Adventure based counselling,individual counselling and object relations: a critical evaluation of a qualitative study

Adventure based counselling is a short-term experiential psychotherapeutic approach, which utilises adventurous activities and being in natural environmental in order to facilitate therapeutic change in clients. The present paper critically appraises the results of a qualitative study that investigated how clients with self-reported anxiety and depression experienced participating in an innovative counselling intervention with combined individual counselling with such an adventurous outdoor transaction. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, as described by Smith and Osborn (2008), was used in order record and analyse the experiences of four male and six female students who were treated at the Teesside's University Counselling Service. Interviewees perceived the counselling sessions as offering a safe therapeutic space within which they could unveil their anxieties and achieve inner healing, whereas the outdoor transaction as providing an experiential venue for achieving personal change. Interviewees felt that without the outdoor transaction the therapeutic significance of the counselling process would not have reached its full potential. Likewise, without the individual counselling, the outdoor transaction would just have an entertaining event and not a venue for personal change. These findings are discussed in relation to object relations theory.     

Competency development and career success: The mediating role of employability

The present study aims to unravel the relationship between competency development, employability and career success. To do so, we tested a model wherein associations between employee participation in competency development initiatives, perceived support for competency development, self-perceived employability, and two indicators of subjective career success (i.e. career satisfaction and perceived marketability) have been specified. A survey was conducted among a sample of 561 employees of a large financial services organization. The results support the idea that employee participation in competency development initiatives as well as perceived support for competency development is positively associated with workers' perceptions of employability. Moreover, self-perceived employability appeared to be positively related with career satisfaction and perceived marketability. A full mediation effect was found for the relationship between participation in competency development initiatives and both career satisfaction and perceived marketability, while a partial mediation effect was found in case perceived support for competency development was the predictor variable. The implications of our findings for understanding the process through which individuals and organizations can affect subjective career success are discussed.     

Career development of youth: a nationwide study

The primary objective of the study described here was to assess and summarize core aspects of the career development of American youth. A nationally representative sample of approximately 32,000 8th, 9th, and 11th graders in 200 schools participated in the study in the spring of 1973. This article focuses on the study's more salient findings and presents results in terms of what students say, do, and know about career development. A major finding is the sharp contrast between students' need for help with career planning and the help they have been receiving. In general, results support the current emphasis on career guidance and career education.     

Guidance in the United Kingdom: past, present and future

The turn of the century is an apposite time to review the development of guidance in the United Kingdom. The concept of guidance, in the terms in which it is now understood, is very much a 20th-century notion. It draws on two distinct but related traditions: the development of the practice of career guidance; and the development of guidance as an educational concept. The history of these two developments, and the relationship between them, are briefly outlined. Some of the conceptual issues they raise are examined, including the important but somewhat problematic interface with counselling. Challenges for guidance in the new millennium are discussed, in relation both to policy and practice and to theory and research.     

Computer-based career planning for adults

The Career Information and Planning System is described. Designed for officers of the United States Army, it is a computer-based counselling and guidance system which aims to enhance the career planning skills of adults.