CAREER GUIDANCE

Career Vs Job
 Career:

◦ Derived from the French word “carrier” meaning “high road” or

“racehorse”
◦ The course of one’s life
◦ One’s progress through life, especially in a particular pursuit
◦ A life work, profession, occupation
◦ A profession or other calling which one pursues throughout a lifetime
◦ Development of human potentials and meaningful ways of using them
 A career is broader than “job” or “position”

 A career is the course that one’s life takes as determined by the choices and
decisions she makes in her work, in education or training, and lifestyle
 It is what a person is passionate about; pursues it for a long period of time, even a
lifetime
 JOB: what a person does from day to day according to her job position or function
Career Terms Defined
 CAREER (Gibson p.286): the sum total of one’s work experience in a general
occupational category
 CAREER DEVELOPMENT

 The total constellation of psychological, sociological, educational, physical,

economic, and chance factors that combine to shape the career of any
given individual
 Refers to a developmental process, extending over almost the entire life
span, through which persons develop the capacity for and engage in work
as part of their total lifestyle
 Gibson: that aspect of one’s total development that emphasizes learning
about, preparation for, entry into, and progression in the world of work.
Career Development
 Used interchangeably with vocational development or occupational development
 It is a life-long process of developing/refining attitudes, beliefs and values, skills
and abilities, interests, personality traits or behaviors; discovering aptitudes; and
acquiring knowledge about the world of work
Career Terms Defined
  CAREER EDUCATION (Gibson): those planned-for educational experiences that
facilitate a person’s career development and preparation for the world of work
 OCCUPATION: a specific job or work activity; 3-7 different and significant careers
over the span of a person’s life’s work.
Career Guidance
 Those activities that are carried out by counselors in a variety of settings for the
purpose of stimulating and facilitating career development in persons over their
working lifetimes. These activities include assistance in career planning, decision-
making, and adjustment.
 Encompasses all components of services and activities that include career
counseling , career information, testing and assessment, referrals, etc. in
institutions , agencies and organizations
What Career Counseling is NOT
 Giving advice or prescribing a solution

 Giving information or merely providing resource materials for the employee to

read
 Interviewing to get facts about a person
 Persuading or arguing for or attempting to convince a person towards a course of
action
 Leading the employee to a course of action

 Exhorting
Assumptions in Career Counseling
 A person’s career is shaped by the choices and decisions she makes about the
present situation
 People change over time. Interests, values, and needs shift with age and changes
in life’s circumstances
 Most people do not know how to make career decisions even if they are faced
with the need to make them
5 kinds of information needed for career decision-making
 Information about self-interests, personality, strengths and weaknesses, mental
abilities, aptitudes, other abilities and skills, motivation,
personal/work/career/life values
 Information on training and education-what curriculum will provide required
knowledge and skills
 1. Career information- information about a set of tasks describing a career or
occupation; what these tasks require in terms of mental abilities, aptitudes, skills,
interests, and personality
2. Labor market information- i.e. what occupations or careers are currently in
demand and those no demand; employers, industries; levels of profession
3. Projected manpower- requirements for the next 3-5 years, skills and levels
needed
4. Career counseling: focuses on individual career plans based on her current
interests, skills, needs and values
5. Performance appraisal: has a strong organizational focus; it evaluates a person’s
past performance and compares this performance with established company
standards.
Pre-requisites to career counseling
Pre-requisites
1. Personhood and competencies of the counselor
2. Availability of valid and accurate information
3. Openness of the counselee
4. Support of the organization
Personhood of the Counselor
 Positive Self Image

◦ “can do” attitude

◦ Good self-confidence
 Attitudes

◦ Congruence: genuineness, honesty and sincerity

◦ Positive Regard: involves acceptance of and caring for the counselee as a
worthwhile person
◦ Empathy: being sensitively understanding of how the situation looks to the
other person from the counselee’s viewpoint and experience
Positive Regard (6 levels of listening)
1. Ignoring: we pay no attention to the person or what he is saying
2. Pretended listening: we look at the person and act as though we are listening but
our attention is elsewhere
3. Denying what was heard: we reject the feelings and thoughts of the other person
4. Selective listening: we listen to what we like to hear and ignore what we don’t
like
5. Attentive listening: we listen with attention, using our ears only, but do not look
at the deeper issues and feelings of the other person
6. Empathic listening: we listen with ears, eyes and heart
Stages of Career Counseling
1. Self-expression
2. Self-understanding
3. Decision
◦ Identifying options/alternative courses of action
◦ Getting accurate and reliable information about each option
◦ Weighing the consequences of each option
4. Develop a career goal and a plan of action to implement the career goal
5. Follow-up on the plan of action and extent of implementation
Career counseling techniques
1. Encourage self-expression
 Acceptance
 Attentive listening
 Clarification
 Emphatic listening skills which include restatement, paraphrasing, reflection of
feelings, summarizing
 Silence
2. Develop self-understanding
 Confrontation
 General leads
 Giving information
 Interpretation
 Probing
3. Facilitate decision-making
 Assurance
 Encouragement
 Giving advise, but only as an option
 Positive reinforcement
 Reassurance

ATTENDING BEHAVIORS (CARKHUFF)

Steps in Conducting an Effective Career Counseling Session

 VARIABLES OF CAREER DEVELOPMENT
1. Intellectual Ability
a. measured ability scores typically correlate more highly with success in
training than with success in work performance.
2. Aptitudes
a. Special aptitudes typically correlate more highly with success in training
than with success in work performance.
3. Influence of Schooling
a. parental attitudes are an extremely influential variable in a student’s
desire to attend college.
i. 2 major barriers for further education in family:
 1. Family’s inability to finance extensive schooling
2. Psychological rather than economic and rests on the
valuing of schooling by family at different socio-economic
levels. High income in later life was powerfully affected by
the “quality” of the college attended. “Academic press”
refers to the influence of faculty members on the career
development of their students
4. Family
a. certain groups of occupations (physical sciences, social sciences, and
medicine) are “inherited”. It is more of NURTURE than NATURE (Anne
Roe)
5. Personality
a. Differences in personality structure cause individuals to develop certain
needs which they seek to satisfy through occupational choices.
b. Holland: choice of an occupation is an expression of personality and that
members of an occupation share similar personality characteristics
c. 6 types of orientation (RIASEC- Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social,
Enterprising, Conventional)
d. Modeling is influential in career development
6. Self-Concept and Self-esteem
a. It is possible to view career development as attempts by
individuals to enhance or defend their self-concept
b. Adolescents’ vocational decisions become highly ego-involved
c. Role performance: the effectiveness with which an individual
performs a given role
d. Interpersonal Adjustment: the ability to perform roles recognized
to be appropriate situationally and socially
e. Super: persons choose an occupation that they perceive as
congruent with their self-concept
f. Korman: only persons with high self-esteem choose occupations
that are congruent with self-concept
7. Values
a. What individuals value in work itself as well as the rewards it offers is
presumably internalized in their vocational development and influences
their choices of occupations
8. Interests
a. Individuals’ responses on a vocational interest inventory express their
acceptance of a particular view or concept of themselves in relation to
occupational stereotypes
b. Strong:
c. b/w 15 & 20 y/o: interests change considerably
d. 20-25 y/o: more stable
e. 25-55 y/o: change very little
f. Significant relationship between personality to interests
g. Ability without interest is more likely to succeed than interest without
ability
9. Aspirations and Realism
a. Most persons have insufficient information about different jobs,
courses of study and other activities
b. Prevalence of glamorized stereotypes regarding certain vocations
c. Expressed interests are frequently the outcome of an awareness
of social desirability
d. Super: counselors should always assess the vocational maturity of
the child while appraising his/her development and vocational
prospects

9. Stereotypes and Expectations

10. Gender Differences
11. Environmental Influences

 The economic and occupational level of the home influences the

vocational goals of youth; their aspirations tend to be at the same
level as those of their parents
 Low economic level: emphasize aspects of work
 High economic level: stress satisfaction intrinsic to work
 Social Factors (Lipsett)
 Social class membership
 Home influences
 School
 Community
 Pressure groups
 Role perception

THEORIES OF CAREER DEVELOPMENT

 Theory is a way of organizing and systematizing what is known about a
phenomenon..
 Theory serves as a model that is used in order to know what to look for,
what to expect, and where to go.
A. TRAIT-FACTOR THEORY
i. Assessing an individual’s traits through objective measures and then
matching these traits to those typically required for successful
performance in a given career area
ii. 3 steps in career decision-making (Parsons)
1. A clear and objective understanding of one’s self, including
abilities, interests, attitudes, etc.
2. A knowledge of the requirements and characteristics of
specific careers
3. A recognition and application of the relationships between 1
and 2 for successful career planning
 B. DEVELOPMENTAL THEORIES
 Career development is a process that takes place over an individual’s life
span.
 Ginzberg, Ginsburg, Axelrad and Herma: fantasy choices, tentative, and
realistic choices
GINZBERG
 Vocational choice and development is lifelong and open-ended
 Constraints: family income and situation, importance of early school years in
influencing later career planning
“Accident Theory”
 (accident of birth that establishes family, race, nationality, social class) holds that
individuals make decisions about the future accidentally and that it is not possible
to evaluate the decisive factors in their choices
“Impulsive Theory”:
 explains the individual’s behavior and occupational choice in terms of
unconscious forces.

3 Phases of Occupational Decision Making

1. Period of Fantasy Choice: coincides with latency period (b/w 6-11)
2. Period of Tentative Choice: with early and late adolescence
4 stages:
  Interest Stage: preadolescents make choices primarily in relation to their
interests
 Capacity Stage: individuals become more aware of the necessity for introducing
realistic elements into their considerations
 Value Stage: characterized by adolescents’ attempts to find a place for
themselves in society
 Transition Stage: approaches the end of high school and look forward to work or
additional education

3 Phases of Occupational Decision Making

1. Period of Fantasy Choice: coincides with latency period (b/w 6-11)
2. Period of Tentative Choice: with early and late adolescence
4 stages:
 Interest Stage: preadolescents make choices primarily in relation to their
interests.
 Capacity Stage: individuals become more aware of the necessity for
introducing realistic elements into their considerations.
 Value Stage: characterized by adolescents’ attempts to find a place for
themselves in society.
 Transition Stage: approaches the end of high school and look forward to
work or additional education.
3. Period of Realistic Choices: with early adulthood
3 stages:
 Exploration: individuals try to acquire the experience they need to resolve
their occupational choice
 Crystallization: individuals are able to assess the multitude of factors
influencing the occupational choice they have had under consideration and
finally able to commit themselves
 Specification: alternatives are reviewed with respect to a field of
specialization and to particular career objectives
Period of Realistic Choice Cont…
4 fundamental Considerations:
1. Occupational choice is a process that takes place over a minimum of 6 or 7
years, and typically, over 10 years or more
2. Because each decision-making during adolescence is related to one’s
experience up to that point, and in turn has an influence on the future, the
process of decision making is basically irreversible
3. The crystallization of occupational choice inevitably has the quality of a
compromise.
BLAU, GUSTAD, JESSAR, PARNES AND WILCOCK
 Occupational choice as a process of compromise, continually modified,
between preferences for and expectations of being able to get into various
occupations
 characteristic demands of occupation:
a. Demand
b. Technical (functional) qualifications
c. Personal (nonfunctional)
d. Rewards
SUPER
10 Propositions:
1. People differ in abilities, interests, personalities
2. Because of the above, they are qualified for many occupations
3. Each occupation requires a characteristic pattern with tolerances wide enough
to allow some variety of individuals in each occupation
4.Vocational preferences change with time and experience, although self-concepts
are generally fairly stable from late adolescence until late maturity.
5. The process may be summed up in a series of life stages characterized as those
of growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and decline, and these stages
may in turn be subdivided into: (a) fantasy, tentative, and realistic phases of the
exploratory stage, and (b) trial and stable phases of the establishment stages
6. The nature of career pattern is determined by the individual’s parental
socioeconomic level, mental ability, personality, and opportunities
7. Development is guided by the maturation of ability, interest, reality testing, and
the self-concept
8. The process of vocational development is essentially that of developing and
implementing a self-concept: it is a compromise process in which the self-concept
is a product of the interaction of inherited aptitudes, neural and endocrine make-
up, opportunity to play various roles, and evaluations of the extent to which
results of role playing meet with the approval of superiors and fellows
 Self-concept is developed by observations and impressions of oneself,
called self-precepts, which are related, organized, and meaningfully
interpreted
 Self-concept system: the “constellation”, more or less well organized, of all
the self-precepts
 Self-report: assessment of self-concepts

Stages of Adolescence and Adulthood

o Exploration: purposeful activity directed toward
gaining information about oneself or one’s
environment in order to arrive at a decision
 Stages: Tentative, Transition, Trial (little
Commitment)
o Establishment
 Stages: Trial (Commitment), Stabilization,
Advancement