Running head: CASE CONSULTATION

Case Consultation
Mike Farrell
SAA 6630
November 14, 2014
Dr. Gilliam
Wright State University

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2
Case Consultation

Session One
My client is a 33 year old Caucasian female who grew up in the rural town of Powell,
Ohio. She is single, has no children, and has worked as a school bus driver for the last five years
in an affluent suburb outside Columbus, OH. She also works at a local restaurant where she has
been a server for the past ten years. Her highest level of education obtained is a high school
diploma although she did have to complete commercial driver license classes to be permitted to
operate a school bus. This required both classroom academics as well as outside the classroom
demonstrations of the mastery of certain driving skills. Prior to bus driving she earned a living
working as a caterer for a friends company.
Like the client, the highest degree by both of her parents is a high school diploma. Her
dad is a farmer who took over the family business from his dad and her mother is a career
secretary for the same school district that she drives the bus for. She has one older brother who is
a mechanical engineer with a bachelors degree and a sister who is a teacher and has a masters
degree in education.
This client did not seek me out requesting career assistance. Rather, I approached her to
inquire if she would be interested in learning more about her interests as they would relate to
occupations and to find out what she values the most in work. At the very least, she would find
out if her current job technically matches up to what she would be interested in according to the
assessment. She readily accepted the offer and even expressed a curiosity in the results for other
reasons. She shared that while she believes that she has a career that is decent paying and fairly
secure she has given some thought to pursuing a trade or another skill that she could acquire for

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either a little extra money on the side or just to learn something new. She saw this as an
opportunity to possibly get a little clarity on what she would like to learn.
When asked about any potential jobs that she was considering, or characteristics of them,
the client struggled to form an answer at first. She replied that she was unsure and that she did
not know what it was she was looking for. Her ideas had never been more than fleeting thoughts.
I restated the question in a different manner by asking her to think about what she found
enjoyable in her jobs, past and present, and what she likes to do during her free time and to then
take those interests and to think about how they might translate into other jobs. After some
consideration, she was able to come up with several possible careers. She discussed loving to
cook and that given her past experience as a caterer it is possible that she would enjoy being a
chef at a restaurant. Similarly, she might like to be a restaurant manager or perhaps a little more
broadly a job somewhere else in the hospitality field such as at hotel. She talked about the
possibility of working as a travel agent due to her love of traveling abroad and she stated that
working as an event planner would be quite fun especially for weddings. Finally, she thought
that being a personal fitness trainer would be something that she would find very satisfying and
rewarding since she is very big on physical fitness and works out often and participates in many
physical activities.
We moved on to discuss what skills would be needed for her to obtain those jobs. She
believed that she already possesses many of the raw skills needed. For example, her cooking and
catering experiences would pave the way for being a chef. Her planning abilities are a solid
foundation for an event planner. Her own personal fitness and knowledge is an excellent base to
be a trainer. She acknowledged, however, that she would need formal training and schooling to
have the qualifications and broader occupational knowledge needed for those positions. She

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stated that she does not know exactly what the needed training and education would consist of,
or where to look for that information, but she admitted that she had not tried to find out either.
We talked about potential barriers that could prevent her from obtaining this training if
she discovered what it would take. While she did not identify many the three that she did were
potentially major ones. First, she is currently working two jobs that require a lot of her time. She
would have to find a way to fit everything in or give something up. Second, she was concerned
about not being in a formal academic environment for a significant amount of time and was
unsure if she would be able to start from scratch successfully. Third, and perhaps most
significant, is a lack of motivation, not due to laziness but because she is fairly content in her
present occupation.
Session Two
For the second session it was decided that the client would take the assessments
before anything else was discussed. I did not want any possibility of the results being skewed or
contaminated in any way by the client being forward thinking about what she wanted the results
to turn out. Due to time constraints, the client would be taking two assessments during this
session and then would be given an interpretation of her results and have additional resources
identified by myself. In the future, I believe it would have been beneficial to break off the
assessments into their own session followed by a discussion about the assessments themselves or
maybe even throw in an additional one if appropriate. I felt rushed to fit everything into two
sessions and to keep them at a responsible time limit.
The first assessment, known as the Self-Directed Search (SDS), is supposed to determine
the personal traits and work interests of the client in the end form of what is known as a Holland
Code. The Holland Code was the creation of the theorist John Holland, and is the focus of this

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case consultation, who believed that a persons traits and interests would dictate the type of
occupation and environment a person would find satisfaction working in. According to Holland,
there are six types of traits that distinguish people. These traits are; realistic (R), investigative (I),
artistic (A), social (S), enterprising (E), and conventional (C). The SDS will result in a score for
each trait and the top three, from highest to lowest, will be put together to form the Holland Code
of the client. From these codes it is also possible to tell whether the interests of the client are so
varied that it is possibly causing inner turmoil, if they are differentiated enough that they have
clear interests, and if the scores correlate best to the environment they are in to find satisfaction.
The other assessment being given is the Work Values Inventory that was adapter for use
from theorist Donald Super. This Inventory is used to determine what aspects of a job the client
finds the most important when determining job satisfaction. In other words, what do they value
most in their jobs? These values can then be used by the client to determine if a certain job is
likely to meet their criteria for what is going to satisfy them.
The directions of the SDS were read to her completely prior to starting. It is worth noting
that the client was vocally and visibly excited to get started and to learn her results. The
assessment took her approximately 10 minutes to complete. It was evident that she was taking
her time and treating this seriously. After a five minute break she took the Work Values
Inventory which she finished in decidedly less time and seemed not as interested in the activity.
The results were tallied while the client took a short break and then shared with her. The
SDS resulted in a Holland Code of conventional (31), social (19), and investigative (13). It
indicated that she would do well in a job that involved clerical abilities and precision and that she
enjoys activities that are both structured and orderly. She expressed surprise that this was the top
trait, over social, after reading all of the descriptions. However, she came to the conclusion that it

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made sense given how organized and neat she is in everything that she does. She was not taken
by surprise with her three lowest; artistic (10), enterprising (6), Realistic (3), even though a
couple have her identified ideal jobs, such as travel agent, would have fallen under the
enterprising trait. When reading the descriptions of those traits she knew that she was not any of
them, or at least not predominately. Her scores do indicate that there may be some inner discord
though as none of the three are touching each other in Hollands hexagon of traits. This does
mean that her interests are rather varied and that she may have trouble expressing all of them in a
job. Having three scores that are differentiated from three indicate that she knows what her
interests are. Finally, her scores would seem to indicate that she does not currently work in an
environment that would lead to satisfaction according to Holland at first glance but when
considering the daily routine of bus routes and the social atmosphere of having children around it
may be a better fit than is apparent.
The results of her Work Values Inventory came as no surprise to the client. Her top three
consisted of way of life, supervisory relations, and security. She believed her current job meets
those characteristics. Her bottom three values were aesthetics, prestige, and management. Again,
she identified those things as not being important to her and that they are definitely not a part of
her current full-time job.
Overall, the client was pleased with the results and enjoyed learning more about herself.
The next step was to direct her to the resources that she could use to discover more occupations
that fit her code, other than the ones we went over in the book, and how to go more in depth into
specific occupations. I first pointed out the back cover of the SDS assessment. On there are many
great resources for her to take a look at. Specifically, I pointed out the O-Net and Occupational
Outlook Handbook. We pulled up O-Net on a laptop and I demonstrated how to search for

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occupations that match her code and how to search for variations within her code because the
jobs share similar traits. She was particularly interested in the spa manager description. We also
jumped over to the Occupational Outlook Handbook on the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics
website where we could look investigate occupations and how to acquire them. She was thankful
for having a place to start now when looking into beginning a new trade.
We ended the session with determining some long and short-term goals. I made sure to
allow her time to think the goals through on her own with little interference. The client needed to
decide for herself what would be best for her. It was good to see that she was motivated to
complete the task. She settled on three goals that would build on each other over the next several
months. In the short-term, her first goal was to settle on three occupations that she would
investigate further. Her second short term goal was to then investigate those three more in depth,
to include finding out what educational institutions offer the needed training and when, with the
end result of selecting one. Finally, her long-term goal is to enroll in one class that pertains to
that chosen occupation next summer, while she doesnt have a bus route, to determine if she is
truly interested.
I found this exercise to be a very valuable experience. Even though the client was not
looking for help I believe that she still got a lot out of it and I drew a lot of satisfaction from this
exercise. I am sure that would only be stronger in a real case with a real client that is looking for
direction. I am extremely hopeful that my client will follow up with her goals. While she has a
secure job for now there are no guarantees that it will last and it is important to plan for the
future and have as many marketable skills as possible.