Career counseling
There is no agreed definition of the role of a career or employment counsellor worldwide, mainly due to conceptual, cultural and linguistic differences.
[2][3] However, the terminology of 'career counseling' typically denotes a professional intervention which is conducted either one-on-one or in a small group.
This frequently leads writers and commentators to combine multiple terms e.g. career guidance and counselling to be inclusive.
Through their expertise in career development and labor markets, they can put a person's qualifications, experience, strengths and weakness in a broad perspective while also considering their desired salary, personal hobbies and interests, location, job market and educational possibilities.
It is due to these various benefits of career counseling that policy makers in many countries publicly fund guidance services.
For example, the European Union understands career guidance and counseling as an instrument to effectively combat social exclusion and increase citizens' employability.
In a related issue some client groups tend to reject the interventions made by professional career counselors preferring to rely on the advice of peers or superiors within their own profession.
Jackson et al. found that 44% of doctors in training felt that senior members of their own profession were best placed to give careers advice.
[9] Furthermore, it is recognised that the giving of career advice is something that is widely spread through a range of formal and informal roles.
In the 2010s, increasingly people rely on career web portals to seek advice on resume writing and handling interviews and to do research on various professions and companies.
Parsons was strongly rooted in the American progressive social reform movement, but as the field developed it moved away from this origin and became increasingly understood as a branch of counseling psychology.
While until the 1970s a strongly normative approach was characteristic for theories (e.g. of Donald E. Super's life-span approach[10]) and for the practice of career counseling (e.g. concept of matching), new models have their starting point in the individual needs and transferable skills of the clients while managing biographical breaks and discontinuities.
The constructivist/social constructionist paradigms are applied as narrative career counseling[14][15] that emphasizes personal stories and the meaning individuals generate in relation to their education and work.
Postmodern career counseling is a reflective process of assisting clients in creating self through writing and revising biographical narratives taking place in a context of multiple choice from a diversity of options and constraints.
[17] Recently this approach is widely applied in Australia such as in Athlete Career and Education (ACE) program by the Australian Sports Commission and Scope for artists by Ausdance.
Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) has been proposed by Robert Lent, Steven Brown and Gail Hackett.
The theory takes Albert Bandura's work on self-efficacy and expands it to interest development, choice making, and performance.
There are career guidance and counseling centers all over the world that give advice on higher studies, possibilities, chances and nature of courses and institutes.
There are also services providing online counseling to people about their career or conducting psychometric tests to determine the person's aptitude and interests.
According to Jung most people fall in the middle of each scale, but the MBTI ignores this and puts everyone in a type category.
However, the peak body the Career Industry Council of Australia (CICA)[28] sets standards for its members.
In India, career counselling is a vast area of professional service, driven by factors like the huge talent availability in the country and the huge higher-education network (comprising graduate, post- graduate and multiple professional courses).
Leading bodies in India that drive policy-level initiatives for students and working professionals include: among others.
Career counselors performing in any of these roles are expected to behave professionally, e.g. by following ethical standards in their practice.
Models which are reflected in the NPR include: "Professional orientation" (Russian: профориентация, romanized: proforientatsiya), as inherited from Soviet times, remains a widespread concept in the formerly Soviet republics – seen as an important and scientifically based approach to meeting the needs and aspirations of students and of the economy.
