Individual Case Study: Career Exploration

Angela Zuniga

Attallah College of Education, Chapman University

CSP617: Career Counseling and Development

Dr. Sarah Golden

August 10, 2021

 Individual Case Study: Career Exploration

Upon reflecting on which type of client I wanted to take on for this project, I reflected on

my experience in practicum last semester. Last semester, I interned at Western High School in

Anaheim, California. Specifically, last year I was working closely with seniors who were at risk

of not graduating. In working with these students, many students emphasized how lost and

confused they were in their transition after high school. They were unsure of what pathway they

wanted to pursue, and it was hard for me to help them since I didn't have all the resources I have

now. However, now knowing about personality/career assessments, career exploration websites,

college exploration websites, etc., I am very excited to begin working with students. Due to this

experience last year, I decided to help a high school senior with this assignment.

To ensure privacy, the name of the participant and any identifying details have been

changed. I met with my client, Mark, over Zoom a series of times. The first time we met was

when I had my initial interview with him, where I learned about him, his background, and his

interests. Mark is a 17-year-old self-identified male high school senior. He has been on his

school's wrestling team for the last three years and will continue wrestling his final year of high

school. In addition to wrestling, he was in a program called Link Crew during his junior year.

Mark was a "Link Crew Leader," a mentor for incoming freshmen to Western High School.

Apart from these two school extracurricular activities, he enjoys going to the gym daily and

watching videos about cars. Mark describes his strengths as energetic, athletic, nice, and friendly.

In contrast, Mark describes his weaknesses as lacking concentration in school, being easily

distracted, and struggling with procrastination. It should be noted that it was hard for Mark to

think of his strengths and weaknesses. He needed several minutes of reflection to come up with

the descriptions mentioned above. When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up in
elementary school, he could not think of an answer. He said that he never had a career in mind

and had never put much thought into his future career during elementary school.

I then proceeded to ask him if he has a career in mind currently. I mentioned that he does

not need to feel stressed if he doesn't have one in mind. I did not want to make him feel like he

needed to provide me with a direct answer. He stated that he has recently been thinking about the

engineering field. I asked him what drew him to engineering, and he said he believes he would

enjoy the engineering field since he both enjoys and excels in mathematics and science.

However, he stated that he wasn't 100% set on engineering and would like to explore other

careers. I then asked him if he has ever taken a career or personality assessment. He said he took

a personality assessment during his 9th-grade year; however, he does not remember his results.

Therefore, I decided to have him take one personality assessment and one career assessment.

Upon reflection of my initial interview with Mark, I acknowledged how hard it was for him to

recognize his strengths, weaknesses, and skills. Therefore, I found it essential to provide him

with an opportunity to take an assessment that would provide him with a "type" so that he began

to have a general idea of what kind of personality he identifies with best. For this reason, I

decided it would be a good start for him to take the Holland Code Quiz. The Holland Code Quiz

was constructed using an established theory of personality as a foundation. The Theory used in

this assessment was Holland's Theory. Holland's Theory emphasizes the importance of a person's

personality characteristics in determining the right career choice for an individual (Capuzzi &

Stauffer, 2019). Therefore, the Holland code quiz considers a person's personality and

characteristics when determining the list of careers given to an individual.

I emailed Mark the quiz and requested that he let me know when he had completed it so

that we could meet once again. This quiz is very quick to take, only lasting about five minutes
long. Upon completing the assessment, Mark and I met once again and reviewed his results. His

results gave him his Holland Code "IRS." I then explained to him what each Holland Code letter

meant, emphasizing the letters in his code. Although the Holland quiz did a great job of

introducing Mark to personality assessments and personality types, I felt that it wasn't the

greatest at introducing him to new careers. Therefore, I introduced him to a career assessment

that I believed would be great for him.

I chose an assessment that breaks down careers by many different factors so that Mark

would get a good understanding of many different careers. I found the O*Net Interest Profiler

assessment to be a great fit. This assessment focuses on the individual's interests and not as much

on their skills. Mark seemed to have been depending a lot on his strengths in school when

choosing a career path. However, I want to make sure that he also chooses a career that he is

interested in. In addition to focusing on interests, this assessment gives greater descriptions of the

careers. It also includes the needed knowledge, skills, abilities, personality traits, technology

usage, and education required for the career. Lastly, it also gives a job outlook. When reviewing

Mark's results of this assessment, we were able to dive deeper into the careers, and Mark was

better able to understand what type of career he was learning about. He thoroughly enjoyed

learning about the skills needed for careers so that he could assess his skills and determine

whether the jobs would be a good fit. I mentioned engineering and let him know that I know it

can be scary to let go of a career pathway he was already beginning to commit to, but exploring

other careers is important so that he makes the right decision. After hearing that, he seemed more

relaxed and willing to explore new careers.

Upon briefly reviewing a couple of careers, I asked him to choose one he was most

interested in. He chose the job "Exercise Physiologist." He stated that this interested him because
he enjoys exercising. I asked if he could meet me over Zoom again in two days with the

following information about the career: everyday tasks for an exercise physiologist, job outlook,

education needed/education pathway for the career, setting/environment(s) of the profession, and

median salary based on the city Mark lives in. He agreed to meet me again and agreed to

research this information. I want to point out that I gave Mark this "homework" to learn more

about this specific career and know what information is important to research if he chooses to

explore more jobs in the future. After explaining the "homework" I had for Mark, I also

mentioned engineering. I didn't want to shut down the option of pursuing engineering altogether.

Therefore, I let him know that it would also be beneficial if he did the same research for an

engineering career. He said he also believed it was a good idea. However, I warned him that

engineering contained many different jobs and paths, so we would have to choose just one.

Therefore, we looked through his assessment results from both assessments to find the best

fitting one. From the Holland Code Quiz, we found many options. Those listed were Industrial

Engineer, Biomedical Engineer, Biochemical Engineer, Chemical Engineer, Computer Hardware

Engineer, Environmental Engineer, Industrial Engineering Technician, Mechanical Engineer, and

Nuclear Engineer. Therefore, he had many different choices to choose from. However, I pointed

out to Mark that since his highest-scoring "type" was Investigative, he should probably choose

one with a code that starts with "I" since it matches him best. However, all of the engineering

jobs began with the code letter "I," so then we moved onto his second-highest-ranking type,

which was Realistic, "R." Therefore, we looked for engineering jobs that started with "IR." That

still did not narrow it down; it still left us with all of the engineering jobs. We decided to move

on to his O*Net Interest Profiler results and found Agriculture Engineer and Fire Prevention and

Protection Engineer. However, Mark was very disinterested in those two options, so he chose one
of the options from the Holland Code Quiz. He ended up going with Mechanical Engineering.

Although this was not an option given on his O*Net Interest Profiler results, I introduced him to

the search engine on the O*Net website. Therefore, all he had to do was search "Mechanical

Engineer" in the search engine. Mark stated that he believed he would like Mechanical

Engineering because he likes learning about cars, and "Mechanical" sounded like "Mechanic."

Now that Mark knew which two careers he was planning to research, I let him go, and we set up

a time to meet in two days.

The next time Mark and I met over Zoom, he was very excited to tell me what he had

learned. He said both careers were exciting but he liked the job of Mechanical Engineering much

more. He stated that the knowledge and personality needed for the career were perfect for him.

He said he researched what schools had the program required for the job, and he was thrilled

with the results. He said both the University of California, Riverside (UCR), and the University

of California, Irvine (UCI) have a mechanical engineering program. He had already been

considering both of these schools, so he was excited to find this out. The salaries were also

satisfying to him, and he is excited to have finally found a specific type of engineering job that

he now knows about and is interested in. In the section "Knowledge," it stated that Physics is

needed for Mechanical Engineering. Mark noted that he already took biology and chemistry but

had not intended on taking Physics. Last year during registration, he chose not to have a science

class during his senior year, but he now regrets that decision. We talked about how it would be

good to have a physics class on his transcript when he applies to the programs. Therefore, he

plans to speak to his school counselor to ask if she can add a physics class to his schedule. In

addition, he intends to apply to both UCR and UCI since they both have his program. The last bit

of advice that I left him with was to research both schools to determine which one he preferred.
In conclusion, Mark was a delightful student to work with. I hope that this experience has

benefitted him. This assignment made me excited to work with students in the future on their

career development. Knowing the career theories was very helpful in guiding my process with

Mark. I am grateful to now have this knowledge and information to share with my future

students.
 References

Capuzzi, D., & Stauffer, M. D. (2019). Career counseling : Foundations, perspectives, and

applications.Routledge.