Career counselling is in essence like other kinds of counselling, such as marriage or clinical counselling. What sets it apart is the counsellor’s effort to help people make sound decisions about choosing, keeping and advancing in a career.
Career counsellors help people explore and choose the work that will make them most effective, and so most satisfied; perform and progress well in it; and, if need be, change role within it or sometimes change career altogether to improve their situation.
Psychologists believe there is a link between a job and the person doing it. The best job performance, and so the greatest job satisfaction, is seen in people whose personality is the closest fit with the demands of their work.
Career assessment:
Assessment tools are used in career counselling to help clients make more realistic decisions about their work. Broadly, they fall into three groups:
- Interest inventories.
- Personality questionnaires.
- Aptitude and ability tests.
Interest inventories measure how interested a person is in different groups of occupations.
One widely used classification of vocational interests identifies six interest groups:
- People with realistic interests
- People with investigative traits
- People with artistic traits
- People with a social orientation and interests
- People with enterprising traits
- And finally, people with conventional traits
Most people in fact have a mix of these orientations, though one shows more strongly than the rest.
Aptitude or ability tests are used to predict how likely a person is to succeed in a group of occupations.
Personality questionnaires rest on the assumption that certain personalities suit certain kinds of work better and adjust to them more easily. For example, extroverts enjoy jobs with more social contact, variety and excitement more than introverts do; while introverts usually prefer fields of study and work that need less social interaction and novelty and are more practical or abstract, and they do better in them.
The career counselling process:
For a career counsellor to offer a professional service, a number of steps are usually needed:
- A full assessment of the person’s mental health.
- A full assessment of their personality style.
- A full assessment of their vocational interests.
- Giving the client full information about the characteristics of the different jobs they are interested in.
- Helping the person reach a realistic assessment of how well their personality fits the job or jobs that suit them best.
- Making the best possible choice, taking account of all the factors that affect career choice and adjustment, such as income, distance, and the job’s future in the light of economic and social change.
Beyond choosing a career, career counsellors can also be very helpful in helping people keep their jobs and progress and advance in them.
Helping people adjust to the tools, processes and demands of their work, and get on better with managers, colleagues, staff and clients or customers, is also part of what career counsellors offer.
Sometimes, because of physical or psychological illness, people may have serious difficulty adjusting at work. Career counsellors can be very helpful in giving these people specialist support.
In some demanding jobs, or jobs whose particular conditions can clash with family needs, career counsellors can also play a very important part in helping the worker and the family adjust to each other.
Adjusting to some of the consequences of demanding work, such as working in high-risk or high-stress environments, can also fall within a career counsellor’s services.
Your career development is a lifelong process which, whether you realise it or not, begins the day you are born.
Many factors shape your career development, including your interests, abilities, values and personality, your background and the environment you live in. Career counselling is the process of helping you know yourself, understand the world of work you are going to enter, and make the best choice of work based on your personality and education.
Career development is more than simply deciding what to study and what job to take after graduating. The truth is that career development is a lifelong process: throughout your life, you and your circumstances change, and with them your work needs and demands, so you will inevitably make repeated, ongoing decisions about your career. Seen this way, work and life are one. So the aim of career counselling is not only to help you make the right career decision for your current needs, but also to help you gain the knowledge and skills to make effective career decisions for the rest of your life.
What can you expect from your counsellor?
- They will help you understand who you are, and what you want from your studies, your work and your life.
- They act as a specialist you can talk to about your thoughts, ideas, feelings and interests in choosing your studies and career, so that they can help you recognise, organise and make use of your feelings and thoughts in these areas.
- They will help you identify the factors that have a positive effect on your career development, and assess your interests, abilities and values in this area.
- They will help you find reliable sources of information about career choice, advancement and development.
- They will help you plan the next steps for your career development and for reaching your life goals.
Who needs career counselling?
Because career development is a continuing, lifelong process, career counselling can be useful to anyone, at any age and in any situation.
Pupils in primary, middle and secondary school, university students at every level and even graduates need these services. Below are some of the main questions or serious conflicts that bring people to a career counsellor:
Exploring career and study choices
- “I don’t know what to do with my life.”
- “I don’t know which subject to go on with.”
- “My career options are limited, but I’m having a hard time choosing between them.”
- “I know which subject I want, but I don’t know what I can do with it after I graduate.”
- “I know what I want to do, but I’m not sure this subject is the best one for it.”
- “I want to know which jobs I can go into with this degree.”
- “I don’t feel I know enough about the different jobs I need to know about.”
Resolving study and career conflicts
- “I like lots of subjects, but I’m not sure which has the better future, so I keep changing course.”
- “I don’t like any of my classes, and none of the subjects really excites me.”
- “I have a lot of work experience, and I want to find a new career path that can use all the skills I have.”
- “I wasn’t accepted onto the course I wanted. What can I do now?”
- “I really love my subject, but it won’t put bread on the table later.”
- “I always thought I could become a —, but once I started the course I realised I don’t like it.”
- “My family want me to become a —, but I’m sure I don’t like it.”
And many more…
What makes a career counsellor?
A career counsellor holds at least a master’s degree in counselling with a career specialism and, after supervised training under a specialist in career counselling, has been licensed by Iran’s Psychology and Counselling Organization.
Dr Bahman Bahmani, PhD in counselling, associate professor and faculty member, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences