Key Questions in Career Counseling

Techniques To Deliver Effective Career Counseling Services

Janice M. Guerriero, Robert G. Allen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780805830002
• eBook ISBN: 9781317778219
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book's purpose is to provide a tool for career services personnel to deliver more effective, consistent career counseling. Its primary objective is to present a career counseling process model, including sequential stages and steps, along with a method (the Key Questions Technique) for successfully implementing the model. It is intended to serve as the bridge between the theoretical and the applied worlds of career counseling, and it is hoped that this book will increase the standards of professionalism and objectivity for the many diverse practitioners who currently conduct career counseling in the workplace.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Who Needs a Book on Techniques for Delivering Effective Career Counseling Services?

This book was written for people whose job responsibilities include, or will soon include, career advising, employee development, performance improvement, organizational planning, and outplacement. Examples of people with these responsibilities are:

• Managers and supervisors responsible for employee development, coaching, and performance evaluations.
• Human resources staff, especially those in planning, staffing, recruiting, and developing functions.
• Trainers and learning organization staff.
• Internal career advisors, coaches, and consultants.
• Adjunct consultants in career centers.
• Employee assistance program (EAP) staff.
• Outplacement consultants.
• School, college, and agency guidance counselors and placement personnel.
• Independent career counselors.

What Factors Are Driving the Need for Effective Career Counseling Services in the Workplace?

Factors leading to the need for competent career counseling services include these trends:

• Years of recessionary economy, devastating competition, massive downsizing, and increasing unemployment have created an unprecedented need for people to manage their own careers.
• Changing trade laws, deregulation, and global expansion have changed the types of jobs now needed to drive the marketplace.
• Rapidly changing technologies mean acquiring new skill sets faster than ever before.
• The increase in single-parent families and dual-career couples has created a demand for nontraditional work hours and work styles. The need for balancing family and work demands is greater than ever before.
• Baby boomers are the largest group of workers ever to reach retirement age in the same generation.

What Are the Consequences of These Factors on the Demand for Career Counseling Services?

Brown¹ capably discussed a variety of trends in career development. Some of his predictions that will impact career counselors and job seekers alike are:

• Technology has escalated career concerns. Workers must consider additional skills training and continuing education if they want to stay competitive in the marketplace.
• Job stress and lengthy unemployment are having an increasing impact on mental health. More workers are seeking both career counseling and personal counseling in an effort to regain control over their lives.
• More forms, settings, and types of career counseling services are beginning to emerge.
• Credentialing for career counselors is becoming more available. Graduate programs, certification, state licensing, and in-house training are aimed at professionalizing the practice of career counseling.
• Career counseling is becoming more like strategic planning. Those who are trying to meet the needs of a workforce in transition must quickly facilitate the identification of the career problem and then work with the client to develop the ability to be a better lifelong career planner.
• As baby boomers approach retirement age, they will seek creative ways to keep working. Career counselors will be needed to help this generation continue working after the traditional retirement age.
• Diversity issues will continue to dominate, as subgroups identify their own special career issues and solutions.
• Workers must adjust to technology and methodology or else productivity and quality will be adversely affected. Incentives in the form of career ladders and lattices will be available; career counselors will be needed to help guide workers through these choices.
• Career decision-making models will be a main feature of career counseling programs; workers who are risk-averse will not survive unless they learn effective ways of making the necessary changes.

What Is the Status of Career Counseling Services in the Workplace?

Quality of life and the balance between career and home life will dominate workers’ priorities during the next decade. Many workers, such as those with entrepreneurial ambitions, will drop out of the traditional workforce. Young people coming into the workforce will be from a new generation with new value systems. Longevity and loyalty will be replaced by flex-time, job sharing, home offícing, contract employees, and the “virtual” office. All types of workers are likely to need the services of a career counselor to prepare them for these new realities.

Industries with the most job consistency and longevity, such as heavy manufacturing and engineering, have traditionally had the least need for career services. With the advancement of robotics and functional specialization, these industries are now seeking a new breed of manager: the technical team leader with people management skills. These developments reinforce the need for career counseling services in “mid-technology” occupations.

Some industries are growing in a healthy way and seek to develop their existing workforce. Examples are hotel and food industries and consumer products. Career counseling will be needed to guide employees toward a good fit between their aptitudes and newly developed jobs.

High-tech organizations typically recruit or promote talent as fast as their technology expands. High-tech industries are underserved by career counselors because recruiters tend to be the point of contact in these fast-moving organizations.

Schools and universities, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies all have placement needs, depending on funding levels, projected service needs, and available talent. Because the hiring process is slow and frequently stalled, career counseling becomes even more important to workers wishing to advance.

What Are the Development Needs of Career Counseling Practitioners?

Anyone with responsibility for delivering career counseling services should be trained to use a process or sequential model containing the stages of career counseling. Academically trained career counselors might use such a model, but most career counselors trained on the job do not. There are large numbers of career counselors who have no process-oriented training. They rely on exercises, problem solving, and job-search coaching more than on assessment, planning, and client self-management.

What Are Some of the Benefits of Learning and Applying a Career Counseling Process Model?

There are numerous advantages in using a process model:

• Managers will have a uniform model to ensure consistent service delivery and client satisfaction.
• Practitioners will have a sequential model for accomplishing the tasks of career counseling.
• Practitioners and clients will be able to proceed more effectively through the counseling process by using uniform tools and resources.
• Clients will become more self-reliant by using the stages and steps of the model to manage their careers.

How Can This Book Help Career Counseling Practitioners to Develop a Higher Skill Level?

Here are some of the ways in which this book can develop career counselors’ capabilities:

• Readers will learn a logical, step-by-step model for conducting career counseling.
• The model shows the sequence of steps to use in order to help clients develop and implement strategic career action plans.
• The model shows how to move through the beginning, middle, and end of the career counseling stages and how to achieve closure.
• Readers will receive tools to help evaluate their effectiveness as career counselors.

The model is activated by the use of key questions asked during each of its stages and steps. Once these key questions are learned, career counselors will be much more effective and empowering with their clients.

How Will the Model and Key Questions Be Demonstrated in the Book?

To demonstrate how to use the model and the key questions technique, vignettes have been placed throughout the book. The vignettes are brief stories in which the key questions are applied to whatever stage and steps are presented in the chapter. The vignettes track the progress of a fictitious client “Mary H.” Mary’s career counseling episodes appear in chapters 4 through 9, from the foundation stage through the follow-through stage of the career counseling model.

How Can the Learning in This Book Be Reinforced?

At the end of each chapter is a section called learning reinforcement. Each learning reinforcement has three parts: terms and definitions, review questions, and additional resources. The terms and definitions and review questions will help career counselors recall the most important new learning in each chapter. The additional resources provide a guide to further reading and research on the chapter topics.

What Career Counseling Tools Are Available in the Book?

The appendices contain the tools mentioned in each chapter, such as the career counseling process model, the career counseling process handout, exercises, inventories, questionnaires, career data forms, and publisher sources.

¹Brown, D. (1990). “Issues and trends in career development: Theory and practice.” In D. Brown & L. Brooks (Eds.), Career choice and development (2nd ed., pp. 506–517). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Chapter 2

The Career Counseling Process Model

Effective career counseling depends on a number of factors, including the use of a process that helps a client address his or her particular career needs. It is important that the counselor understands what the process is, how it can be used, and what is particularly unique about the specific stages and steps of the process.

As the process is explained, many key questions are introduced. These questions serve as a bridge between the process model and the daily work of counseling clients.

There are several terms that should be understood in order to better follow the various stages of the process.

What Is a Process? A process is a number of sequential steps that need to be taken in order to complete a given task or to produce a result. It might be helpful to view a process as a way of achieving an output or creating a product. In career counseling, a series of steps are taken with the objective of creating a strategic career action plan.

The first step in the career counseling process requires inputs, such as interview responses, records, and work history.

The next step in the process is called the transformational step, an action that converts the information. In career counseling, this is normally the interpretation of the information that has been collected.

The third step in the process is the output, or the results of the transformation of the raw materials. In career counseling, this product is an action plan that the candidate implements to reach his or her specific career goal.

What Is a Model? A model is an explanation of how something is supposed to work. It is a picture of how various elements fit ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• About the Authors
• Preface
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Chapter 2. The Career Counseling Process Model
• Chapter 3. The Key Questions Technique
• Chapter 4. The Foundation Stage
• Chapter 5. The Assessment Stage
• Chapter 6. The Feedback Stage
• Chapter 7. The Goal-Setting Stage
• Chapter 8. The Resistance Resolution Stage
• Chapter 9. The Follow-Through Stage
• Chapter 10. Effective Career Counseling
• Appendix A: Career Counseling Process Model Checklist
• Appendix B: Career Counseling Process Handout
• Appendix C: Career Assessment Materials and Publishers
• Appendix D: Career Data Profile
• Appendix E: Clarification Tools: Fish Bone Diagram and Force Field Analysis
• Appendix F: Strategic Career Action Plan
• Appendix G: Resistance Resolution Decision Tree
• Appendix H: Change Techniques: Catastrophizing and Chunking
• Appendix I: Intervention Tools: Emotional Roller Coaster, Periods of Transition in Job Change, Stages of Change Model, and Cost Payoff Matrix
• Appendix J: Tools to Address Capabilities: Strengths and Personal Descriptors, Managing Self/Others, CCIO Model, and Analysis of Job
• Appendix K: Tools to Affirm the Plan: Triggers That Disrupt a Career Routine and Linking Individual Needs With Organizational Needs
• Index