Running head: A COGNITIVE INFORMATIONAL PROCESS APPROACH TO CAREER

COUNSELING
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A Cognitive Informational Process Approach to Career Counseling: The Many Major Changes of
a College Student
Myriah Wiltrout
Northern Illinois University

A COGNITIVE INFORMATIONAL PROCESS APPROACH TO CAREER COUNSELING

A Cognitive Informational Process Approach to Career Counseling: The Many Major

Changes of a College Student
This paper is an analysis of three career counseling sessions with a client who is a junior
in college. The clients main goal for participating in these sessions was to get a better
understanding of career options that best fit his personality. During the sessions two major
themes appeared for my client including a need for occupational knowledge and a need for
assistance with decision making. In an effort to achieve what my client was looking for, and
satisfy the two above mentioned needs, I decided to utilize the cognitive information processing
approach (CIP) (Niles and Harris-Bowlsbey, 2009). With the above mentioned needs in mind and
utilizing the CIP approach as a theoretical framework, the sessions were structured around two
career development tools; John Hollands theory of types and person-environment interactions,
and the Self-Directed Search (SDS).
Client Sessions
My client and I had known each other previously to the career counseling sessions. He is
a Community Advisor (CA) in the residence hall I worked in last year, but I do not currently
supervise him. I have had very little interaction with him this year, prior to these sessions. The
first session with my client took place on October 17th at 6:30pm. During this session I learned
that my client is a junior pre physical therapy major, that he enjoys baseball and has been
involved with sports since he was young, and that he enjoys helping others.
I asked my client to tell me some things that were going well in school or work and some
things that were going not as well. My client seemed to be feeling as though many things were
not going well, therefore, I asked him to start with what the positive things. My client said that

A COGNITIVE INFORMATIONAL PROCESS APPROACH TO CAREER COUNSELING

he really liked his CA job and he had really enjoyed his phycology classes in college. He said
that he found those classes very interesting and always did well in them. He stated that he liked
his CA position because he liked to help others. When answering what was not going well, my
client explained his main career concern to me and his reason for volunteering for these sessions.
My client shared with me that he started his college career as a pre physical therapy
major. He made this decision because he had always been involved in sports and he saw the
physical therapists helping athletes that were injured. He liked sports and he liked helping others
so he decided to be a pre physical therapy major. During his freshmen year he was convinced to
change his major because others told him that it would be too difficult. Wanting to stay in the
health care field so he could help people, he changed his major to Health Care Administration.
After completing a full year of this major, he found the classes to be very business oriented and
he became disinterested in this major. Upon entering his junior year in college he decided to go
back to pre-physical therapy, but after a few months in the major, he found that the classes were
too difficult. I asked my client which classes were too difficult and he said he struggled with
chemistry the most. My clients main career concern is that he would like to change his major
again, but now does not know which major to choose or what career path to work towards.
Before ending the first session, I asked if there were other contributing factors to his
career concerns and choices (family, culture, financial, etc.), he stated that he was only concerned
about what it may cost to go to graduate school should he need to. My client was very relaxed,
outspoken and confident in his body language and his speech. My client seemed to have a strong
knowledge of self, but didnt have the occupational knowledge to make an educated career path
decision. Realizing that my client may need to gain some more occupational knowledge, I gave
him the Self-Directed Search to take home. Before he left we discussed the assessment, the

A COGNITIVE INFORMATIONAL PROCESS APPROACH TO CAREER COUNSELING

different Holland types (Niles and Harris-Bowlsbey, 2009) that the SDS utilizes and how to best
navigate both books that come with the assessment.
During the second session with my client on October 25th, we discussed his results from
the SDS. My client expressed that the assessment had gone well, but he felt that some of the job
titles and the Holland codes that were assigned to them were not accurate. I discussed with my
client that if he feels positively about jobs that do not perfectly match his Holland code, he
should not count them out. My clients three letter Holland code is SEI. He also wanted to
consider jobs that used the R category as he likes working with his hands. According to Reardon
and Lenz (1999), it is very important that career counselors listen to what the clients express
interest in and not dismiss this in favor of the counselors interpretations or assessment results.
After my client had finished explaining his thoughts and feelings about the assessment
and his results, I began to present my interpretation and challenge him to see certain patterns in
his results. Although my clients three letter Holland code was SEI, the first two categories, social
and enterprising, were much more prevalent in all of his results, even including his dream jobs at
the beginning of the SDS. I listened to my clients thoughts about the other categories he
identified with and encouraged him not to discount them, but I also challenged him to see that
there was a definite pattern in his results. My client was receptive to my interpretations and
agreed that he did feel strongly about the Social and Enterprising categories because he liked to
help others and had natural leadership qualities.
Next, my client and I took a look at the different career titles that he had selected from the
SDS. My client had many jobs listed, but all of them had at least the E or S Holland code, and
most of them had both. I also pointed this patteren out to my client. I challenged my client to
select only four of the jobs he had listed as possibilities. My client selected school principal,

A COGNITIVE INFORMATIONAL PROCESS APPROACH TO CAREER COUNSELING

school psychologist, athletic director, and mental health counselor. I brought it to my clients
attention that many of these career choices involved the social and enterprising category and that
it also matched what he had told me in the first session about wanting to work in a field where he
could help others. I also brought it to my clients attention that in our first session he stated that
he really enjoyed his phycology classes and that this interest corresponded with some of his
current career selections.
At this point I brought to my clients attention that none of those jobs were specifically
within the health care field. When asked if this was a concern for him or if he was worried about
going in such a different direction, he said no, he was not worried about switching any longer.
When asked if he was worried that some of these jobs may require a masters degree, he said no
he was not concerned about that either. He was excited about the results he had gotten from the
assessment. At the end of the session I asked my client to research the four careers he had
selected. My client and I then accessed the O*NET website and I explained to him how to best
utilize it. I gave my client a list of specific information he should make sure to learn about the
careers, such as: job duties, educational requirements, future outlook, and income.
The third and last session with my client took place on November 3rd. My client returned
and informed me that he had changed his list of careers from the previous session, and
researched those three careers instead. His three careers were Education Administrator PostSecondary, Physical Education Instructor, and School Psychologist. School Psychologist had
remained the same and the Education Administrator job title was a similar career path to his
previously chosen Athletic Director path. My client and I went over all of the different
information that he obtained about each career.

A COGNITIVE INFORMATIONAL PROCESS APPROACH TO CAREER COUNSELING

I then asked my client to prioritize his list of three careers and rank them one, two and
three, with one being the job he was most interested in and three being the job he was least
interested in. My client listed Physical Education Instructor as number one, School Psychologist
as number two and Education Administrator as number three. I pointed out to my client that all
of these choices had education as a common theme and that two of them had athletics as a
common theme. I asked my client how he felt about these themes, especially since education was
not something that we had talked much about in his previous sessions. My client shared that he
felt very strongly about the athletics portion and that he felt good with education being the
second theme. My client explained that as a child, being a school principle had been a dream of
his and now he saw education as a career field in which he could help others.
Finally, my client and I took the rest of our third session to discuss decision making and
goal setting. I explained to my client the steps of decision making that are outlined by the CIP
approach (Niles & Harris-Bowlsbey, 2013). I explained to my client that throughout our sessions
we had already gone through four of the five steps involved with decision making. I explained
each step and related it back to what my client and I had done together. I then explained that the
last step was execution, or taking action, and that to accomplish this we would need to identify
the specific steps that my client was going to take next.
I asked my client to write down one short term goal. His short term goal was to do more
research on his number one occupation (Physical Education Instructor), in order to see if he truly
wanted to switch his major to this. I then asked my client to write down three steps he will take
to achieve this goal. He wrote that he would speak with a friend of his family who worked in the
field, he would do more research on the O*NET website, and he was going to talk to an

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academic advisor from the college of education. I also asked my client to give himself an
achievable deadline for this goal.
Next, I asked my client to choose a long term goal. My client wrote that he wanted to
change his major to pursue a career as a Physical Education Instructor if all went well with the
short term goal. His steps to complete that were to meet with an academic advisor, pick classes
for next semester, and fill out paperwork to declare a new major. My client also set a deadline for
this goal. Lastly, I asked my client to write down a backup plan in case one of his goals could not
be achieved. He decided his backup plan would be to do the same steps listed for the first goal,
but he would be researching his second career choice instead, School Psychologist. At the end of
the last session my client stated that he felt the sessions had been very helpful and he felt
confident in the direction he was now heading.
Analysis of Work
Occupational Knowledge
I decided to use the cognitive information processing approach (CIP) to frame the
sessions that I had with my client. I chose this approach because I felt that it best fit the outcome
that my client asked for as well as the needs of my client, which was to gain occupational
knowledge and make a new career path decision. Key CIP concepts include the following: (a)
problem, (b) problem solving, (c) decision making, (d) the Pyramid of Information Processing
Domains, and (e) the Communication, Analysis, Synthesis, Valuing, Execution (CASVE) Cycle
(Samson & Lenz, 1999). The CIP uses a direct step by step plan that ties together occupational
knowledge and decision making. My client directly stated that they wanted more occupational

A COGNITIVE INFORMATIONAL PROCESS APPROACH TO CAREER COUNSELING

knowledge and I interpreted from our sessions that my client would also need assistance making
a decision once he had gained further knowledge.
According to Sampson and Lenz (1999), the CIP approach defines a career problem as a
gap between where the client is, and where the client wants to be. My clients career problem
was that he was in a major that he did not enjoy and wanted to change his major to something
else. My client was able to well articulate his interests, values, and skills, but was unaware of
different occupations that would align with these. Sampson and Lenz (1999) explain that the base
of The Pyramid of Information Processing Domains, is divided into self-knowledge, and options
knowledge. My client was well versed in self-knowledge, but was lacking options knowledge.
Therefore, the way to fill the gap that was causing my clients career concern was to increase my
clients options knowledge. This need made the CIP theory more applicable to aiding my client
than a different career counseling theory that would have focused on self-knowledge.
Utilizing the CIP theory, and understanding that my client needed options knowledge,
guided me to use the Self-Directed Search (SDS) assessment with my client. The SDS was used
in order to satisfy the clients need of option knowledge, in the form of occupational knowledge.
This assessment and the O*NET website supplied my client with the occupational knowledge
that he desired. The SDS also taught my client that there were many career options that fit his
personality and his desire to help people, other than health care positions.
The SDS is, as Reardon and Lenz (1999) state, the principal embodiment of Hollands
theory with respect to career assessment. According to Gottfredson & Johnstun (2009), one of
the intended implications of the Self-Directed Search was that clients would be able to use it on
their own without a career counselor. Although, the SDS can be confusing to navigate if one does
not understand the theory behind it. For this reason, I explained Hollands theory of types and

A COGNITIVE INFORMATIONAL PROCESS APPROACH TO CAREER COUNSELING

person-environment interactions to my client. This theory organizes work environments into six
different categories including: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and
Conventional (Gottfredson & Johnstun, 2009). These Categories are used in the SDS to organize
ones personal characteristics, to match up with job environments that may be suitable for them.
It was helpful for my client to be able to take his advanced self-knowledge, apply it to Hollands
theory, and use the information he gathered to fill in his gap of occupational knowledge. This
new found knowledge put my client on the right path towards making a career decision.
My client also found the SDS to be very consistent throughout the assessment. Reardon
and Lenz (1999) address the importance of the daydream section of the SDS and that counselors
should not ignore a clients expressed aspirations. A study was conducted by Miller, Springer,
Tobacyk, and Wells in 2004 to measure the congruency between occupational daydreams and
SDS scores. The study found that the Holland codes for students day dream occupations often
were congruent with the Holland codes for their SDS scores. Furthermore, this study also found
that daydream occupations are a better predictor of future occupations than the SDS scores
themselves. All of my clients daydream occupations fell into the S and E categories, and
therefore were congruent with his SDS categories. My client even identified that his childhood
daydream occupation (school principal) was an explanation for why his top three career path
decisions were related to education. My client found the SDS results to be consistent with his
expressed aspirations. The consistency in this assessment, and my clients daydream occupations
were a large factor in my clients decision making process.

Decision Making

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Decision Making is a key section to the CIP theory. Once a client has utilized the pyramid
of information processing and obtained the knowledge they need to make a decision, then the
next section of the CIP approach, or the CASVE cycle of decision making skills, can be
implemented. The CASVE cycle includes, communication, analysis, synthesis, valuing, and
execution as the process for making an informed decision (Niles & Harris-Bowlsbey, 2013). In
the first two sessions I helped my client two work through the pyramid of information processing
and then to go through the first three steps of the CASVE cycle.
According to Sampson and Lenz (1999), one of the main objectives of the CIP approach
is to teach clients decision making skills. During my third session with my client I explained the
steps of decision making that he had already accomplished, and then explained the last two steps
of the CASVE cycle. From the sessions with my client I interpreted that he made decisions based
off of what others told him and his interests, but did not do any other research or analysis.
Therefore, it was important to use the CIP approach so that my client could learn and develop
decision making skills that he could use on his own in the future. I chose to explain the steps of
decision making after my client was more than halfway through the cycle in order to increase his
self-efficacy, or his belief of his own ability to take action and perform effectively (Lent &
Brown, 1996). I did this by showing him that he had already accomplished most of the decision
making cycle, and therefore he was more than capable of completing the last two steps.
The CIP approach is also useful when a decision needs to be made in a short amount of
time. My client needed to make a career path decision quickly because the end of the semester
was only about a month away, and he would need to select different classes to fit his new major.
Hirschi and Lage (2008) used the CIP approach as the theoretical background and model for the
treatment (career workshop) in their study done to evaluate career choice readiness of students.

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The students being studied were in a Swiss education system, which according to Hirschi and
Lage (2008), requires their students to make difficult career decisions in a short amount of time.
The study was successful and the students that experienced the workshop showed substantial
signs of improvement when it came to career decidedness, career planning, vocational identity,
and career exploration (Hirschi & Liage, 2008). The CIP approach was also helped my client to
make an informed decision quickly.
Recommendations for Professional Development
The sessions as a whole went well. My client informed me that he was satisfied with the
sessions and that he was confident with the decision he had made throughout the sessions. This
project was a vast learning experience for me as the counselor. When it comes to the NCDA
career counselor competencies, I feel I did well with individual counseling skills, and career
development theory, but I could use more knowledge and practice with information and
resources, programing, and research.
I felt very confident with the individual counseling skills competency. I was able to build
a productive relationship with my client and was able to work with him to identify his personal
goals. I was also able to get to know my client and identify his personal characteristic, his
attitudes about work, and other social or environmental factors that contributed to my clients
career development. I also made sure to challenge my client to take action to solve his career
problems. Although I was not confident utilizing career development theory at first, by the end of
my experience I learned a lot about theory and was able to directly relate theory to the work I did
with my client. It took me until after the first two sessions to really embrace a career
development theory that I felt would best serve my clients needs. Once I chose the CIP theory as

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my theoretical frame for my work, everything became much easier and clearer. During the third
session I was able to refer to the theory and utilize it to teach my client decision making skills.
I feel that I could improve with the information and resources competency as well as the
programing competency. I know little about employment trends or the labor market. I also am
unfamiliar with career information delivery systems and computer-assisted career guidance
systems. I do have a basic knowledge of the changes in the labor market based on multicultural
changes in America, but not an extended knowledge. I also have had little experience with
programing. I have presented a basic workshop for career services, but this program was more
informational and less developmental. I also have some experience with organizing, creating and
financing programs, but not with programs specifically related to career development.
I enjoyed this project and felt that I was helpful to my client. I began this course because
I was interested in the career counselor position and wanted to learn more about it. I was able to
learn a great deal that I did not previously know about career development history, statistics and
theory. I was then able to take that knowledge and actually practice career counseling skills. I
am still interested in possibly becoming a career counselor and found this course and this project
to be a very informative and useful experience.

References

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Gottfredson, G. D., & Johnstun, M. L. (2009). John Hollands contributions: A theory-ridden

approach to career assistance. Career Development Quarterly, 58(2), 99-107.
Hirschi, A., & Lage, D. (2008). Increasing the career choice readiness of young adolescents: An
evaluation study. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 8(2),
95-110.
Lent, R. W., & Brown, S. D. (1996). Social cognitive approach to career development: An
overview. The Career Development Quarterly, 44(4), 310-321.
Miller, M. J., Springer, T. P., Tobacyk, J., & Wells, D. (2004). Congruency between occupational
daydreams and SDS scores among college students. College Student Journal, 38(1), 5760.
Niles, S., & Harris-Bowlsbey, J. (2013). Career development interventions in the 21st century (4th
ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Reardon, R. C., & Lenz, J. G. (1999). Hollands theory and career assessment. Journal of
Vocational Behavior, 55(1), 102-13.
Samson Jr., J. P., & Lenz, J. G. (1999). A cognitive information processing approach to
employment problem solving and decision making. Career Development Quarterly,
48(1), 3-18