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Career Counseling NCE Module

Career Counseling NCE Module Program Transcript DR. ELIZABETH VENTURA: Hi everyone. My name is Dr. Elizabeth Ventura and I'm a core faculty member in the CMHC Program. I am super excited to be a part of your journey studying for the National Counselor Exam. Bringing this workshop series to each of you was a team effort because we understand the inherent anxiety that comes with taking this exam. Having been in your shoes and prepping for the same exam, we know that the more prepared you are and feel, the better the experience. The National Counselor Exam is a 200-item, multiple-choice test. It's comprised of 160 actual score test items and 40 items that NBCC uses as test questions for future exams. For those of you that are not aware, the exam focuses on the following content areas, Human Growth and Development, Social and Cultural Foundations and Counseling, the Helping Relationships, Group Counseling Theories and Process, Career Counseling and Lifestyle Development, Assessment and Counseling, Research, Program Evaluation, and Professional Orientation to Counseling. Additionally, the sections are not represented equally on the exam. The following illustrates an example of question breakdown. So there would be 36 questions on Helping Relationships and only 29 on Professional Ethics. 20 on Career and Lifestyle Development and 20 on Appraisal. 16 for Research and Group, 12 Human Growth and Development, and 11 for Social and Cultural Foundations. Many students that have previously taken the exam reported that multiple study guides and resources are key to successful outcomes. This workshop is just one piece of your study plan. Please use this workshop to guide you in recognizing areas you feel confident in and those that need a bit more attention. Please know we are here to help you and guide you through this process, and we hope you find this information valuable. Let's talk a bit about how this presentation will work. Because there is so much information to cover, I will not be participating in the chat throughout the first 60 to 90 minutes. Please feel free to follow along. Use the chat to ask questions, post comments. And other faculty that are present are going to be able to do their best and address the questions that are being asked. I have specifically carved out 30 minutes at the end. If there's any questions or concerns, we can address collectively as a team. Now that we have the housekeeping out of the way, let's get started.

Career Counseling NCE Module

The career counseling model that we're going to be covering today really begins with the definition of how we understand, as counselors, career counseling. Career counseling really consists of any activities that counselors will perform, coordinated by individuals that have these specific credentials, to work with other individuals or groups about occupations. This includes life and career choices, career decision making, planning, carving out a path for your own personal or professional career, and other career development-related questions or conflicts. Career counseling has its own niche within our profession and it begins as other specializations do, understanding early theorists. In the early 1900s, person- environment fit, or trait factor, was really one of the leading theories that evolved from career counseling. The pioneers, or the founding fathers, in this area of career counseling, include Parsons Williamson and Holland. Hopefully, these names sound familiar to you. Vocational guidance is accomplished, first, by studying an individual, surveying occupations, and finding a match. We know that with career satisfaction, it's important that the individual matches closely with the occupation. Careers are determined by an interaction between our personalities, the environment. And in John Holland's Theory of Career Choice, we want to have a job that feels like us. We want there to be some level of congruence. John Holland's Theory of Career Choice really maintains that in choosing a career, people tend to prefer jobs where they feel they can be around others that are like them. I know this sounds like common sense, but it's very difficult in a job market or an environment, where there might be limited options. There is a sense of searching for environments that let individuals express their own skills and abilities, their own personal values or their attitudes in an environment that feels safe and congruent. Behavior is really determined by an interaction between personality and environment. So when we look at Holland's theory, it's centered on the idea that people fit into one of six personality types. So there is realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. In terms of the NCE exam, it's incredibly important that you remember these are areas that will be on the exam. So we need to know Holland's theory. It's very important to understand the names of the six personality types, and we're going to talk in a minute here about what each of those actually define. So if we start with realistic, according to Holland, the likes of an individual within a realistic personality category are going to want to work with animals, tools, machines. These individuals tend to avoid social activities like teaching, healing, maybe informing or providing information to others. Individuals with this type of personality characteristic are going to have good skills in working with tools. You

Career Counseling NCE Module

might consider somebody who would like to work with plants, machinery, engineering. A sense of value for an individual in this category is going to be on something that they can actually see, touch, and feel. So the subjective experience is going to be avoided. Something that is very abstract is not going to be appreciated. There has to be, really, a tangible, experiential, environment that would help a person here be successful. The individual, themselves, would see that their self- concept or their identity is made up as a practical person, a mechanical person, or a realistic person. When we look at somebody who's investigative, this is an individual that likes to study and solve math or science, generally avoiding leading situations, not considered a salesman, not going to be very persuasive. This is going to be somebody that is good at understanding and solving science and math complex problems that has to do with some more abstract thinking. Also, an individual that's able to conceptualize larger problems to see down the road. This is somebody who values evidence and values science, somebody who is able to be critical, and precise, very scientific, and intellectual. Somebody who is artistic is really going to want to be in a creative environment. They're going to like art, drama, crafts, dancing, music, creative writing, expressive arts. They're going to avoid highly-ordered or repetitive activities. Somebody who's very artistic is likely going to be very unhappy in a desk job. This is somebody who has very good artistic abilities and wants to be able to create. They value the creative arts and find intrinsic motivation towards these areas of performance and work. They see themselves as expressive, very original, and super independent. When we think of somebody who's social, this is an individual that really likes being with and helping people. They're going to like to teach, to nurse, to give first-aid, provide information, avoid using machines, tools, or animals to achieve a goal. This is somebody who's good at teaching. This would be a role of a counselor, somebody who would be in the helping profession or the humanities, somebody who likes to give and process information. This individual will value helping people in solving social problems, and they see themselves as helpful, friendly, and trustworthy. Somebody who's enterprising. This is somebody who likes to lead and persuade. They want to sell things and ideas. They avoid activities that require careful observation and scientific analytical thinking. This may, at first, sound like somebody who's going to be super impulsive, but that's not necessarily what this aligns with. It's more about somebody who would be in the moment.

Career Counseling NCE Module

Think of somebody who's selling for politics, who's selling for a campaign, who's selling a car, selling a brand, or through business. They're likely going to be in a leadership role because they're going to want to be in charge of the outcome. They would, obviously, see themselves as motivated, as energetic, very ambitious, and super sociable. You might find these people as somewhat social chameleons, but in the sense that they're relatable to multiple audiences. When you think about conventional, conventional is an individual that likes to work with numbers, or records, or machines in a specific, orderly way. This is an individual who really feels uncomfortable with ambiguity and unstructured activities. There's a lot of good that comes out of working with written records and numbers in a way that they can make sense of. There's a sense of an organization, or a system, to the way in which they operate. These individuals might be super predictable. They may like to have patterns of their own behaviors that they like as a routine. They value success in their business but see themselves as orderly, good at following a set plan, and very uncomfortable when that plan deviates. So Holland has a famous diagram that he uses, which is pictured in the slide. This hexagon illustrates the personality categories that we just reviewed. You can see from the diagram, those personality categories that are closest are the ones that are most similar. The ones that are furthest apart on the diagram are the ones that are the most opposite. Realistic and social are, virtually, the opposite of each other. And you can see how far apart they are on the diagram. On the other hand, social and artistic are pretty similar and they're not that far apart. So as you study for the exam, please make note of this diagram, as the hexagon is something that is very synonymous with Holland and it is absolutely something that you want to remember, as it will likely be discussed on the exam. Holland goes on to use other diagrams and other illustrations to be able to help you, as a career counselor, understand his theory and then to take that a step further and to help your client understand the role of career in their life. So Holland felt that individuals are most congruent, or true to themselves, when they are aligned with a career that fits their personality. Then you will find your client will be happy. Consider that an artistic personality, for example, is going to be miserable, as I said before, in an office setting, in a traditional 9:00 to 5:00 role, completing routines that are often mundane. An artistic individual is likely to be super successful, very happy, if they choose the career of a dance teacher in a dancing school, an environment that may be dominated by artistic individuals that

Career Counseling NCE Module

promote creativity, that help an individual express their own abilities, and they find within that profession their own traits are highly valued. So working with individuals from the standpoint of Holland, you're going to want to evaluate which personality structure they have and then from that point, take it to the next level and help an individual find a career that's congruent. Frank Parsons is, who we consider, to be the father of guidance. He developed the idea of matching careers to talent, skills, and personality. People perform best when they're in jobs best suited to their own abilities. So he is regarded as the founder of vocational guidance. That is a very important fact to remember. He developed the talent-matching approach, which was later called the trait-factor theory. It is one of the most famous theories in career counseling. At the center of his theory is the concept of matching. So he theorized that in choosing a vocation, it was really a matter of understanding three related factors, knowledge of work knowledge of self, and ultimately the matching of those two together. Parsons states that occupational decision making occurs when people have achieved an accurate understanding of their individual traits. So we look at aptitudes, interests, and personal ability, understanding the knowledge of jobs in the labor market, and rational and objective judgment about the relationship between their individual traits in the labor market. This three-part theory still governs most current practice on career guidance and it operates under the premise that it's possible to measure both individual talents and the attributes required in a particular job. It also assumes that people may be matched to an occupation that's really a good fit. Parsons suggests that when individuals are in jobs best suited to their abilities, they perform best and are, arguably, the happiest. So a famous book written by Frank Parsons is called "Choosing a Vocation." And in that text, he outlines that personal counseling is fundamental to the career search. I think that this is a really important part to stop and suggest to you that while counselors can do work with clients that are unhappy in their jobs, we are not, by training, a career counselor. Career counselors have specific training that they have underwent in terms of continuing education and specific courses that are separate from community mental health, for example, or clinical mental health addiction counseling, marriage, and family. So there are specializations that this profession has underwent in order to be able to work with client specific in the job process.

Career Counseling NCE Module

Frank Parsons was really one of the first to come along to say that there is a connection between both, that there is an encouragement for clients to undergo personal counseling, as well as the process of career counseling. Personal data, that is given from clients, creates a set of facts about the individual. And we need to look at the individual, as a whole, in order to understand the vocational problem. So there is a level of self-reflection or self- analysis that occurs. This self-examination is done in private under the instruction of a counselor and it also can be done outside of the sessions. So individuals, that may undergo career counseling, may also be asked to be highly reflective outside of the sessions in order to understand periods throughout the day at his or her employment that they may notice a shift in mood. Every aspect of an individual's life that may impact choice of a career really needs to be recorded and understood. The client's own choice and decision- making process shows itself in really the first two stages outlined in Parsons theory. The counselor needs to bear in mind that the choice of a vocation should be made by the client, and the counselor really acts as the guide. And this is really parallel to the process that community mental health counselors go through as they help clients navigate their own personal lives. We don't make choices for our clients, nor do we give advice. So we don't do the same as if we were career counselors. We encourage, and guide, and inform the individual as to information they need to make their best choice. Counselors' analysis of the test that the clients may take is imperative to help the client truly understand the choices before them. So you need to be educated in the assessments that are provided and you also need to be able to explain those assessments to a client in a way that best suits their education level, their level of understanding, and inform them in terms of the next steps to take. If we continue to look at Frank Parsons, an outlook on the vocational field from his standpoint really requires the counselor to be familiar with industrial knowledge that lists classifications of industries and vocations, what are the trends, where are the trainings, what's the apprenticeships, where does there tend to be economic growth? Some of you may wonder what makes this different than a case manager. And so what's important is for you to clarify the roles that exist. For example, as a career counselor, you may not be required, in the environment that you're working, to do a lot of the calling, resume building, case management functions that you might think exists within your role. Many agencies that work with career counselors have individuals that are able to assist with those administrative tasks. Your role is really to help with the process of the career and the vocational journey of the individual with you.

Career Counseling NCE Module

In looking at the overall process of working with an individual, you want to take a very broad-minded attitude and approach, also looking at logical and clear reasoning at this stage of where the individual is in terms of their journey. For example, it may be absolutely relevant for a client who is artistic to work as a dance instructor, but financially, the individual may not be able to survive if they only take that approach. So it may bring them happiness and overall job satisfaction to work in a dance studio. At the same time, what is the level of despair or stress that will be brought on by limited income? So Parson advocates for a balance of looking at what is logical and reasonable and also with what is going to build up the best experience for the individual. The counselor helps the client to fit into the chosen work and then reflect back on the decision. So it's a very reflective process as the individual goes along in their vocational journey. Much of person's work still guides career counselors today, though it's not without criticism. Matching assumes a degree of stability within the labor market. And I think many of us can attest to the fact that over the past 10 years, there's been a considerable amount of fluctuation within the job market and unemployment rates. So this has created a sense of volatility that individuals have to be prepared for. And there's been an ebb and flow that has traditionally occurred throughout the course of life with employment; however, given the environment and the area in which you are working, that will dictate, to some extent, the outcome for the client. As we move on to Krumboltz, this is an individual that believed unplanned events lead to good careers. So if we think about fate, this might be a quick way for you to remember Krumboltz. He really believed that indecision is desirable and sensible. It allows the opportunity for clients to benefit from unplanned events. He coined this planned happenstance. This emerging theory specifically addresses the need for people to deal with change in a rapidly changing environment. Managing life transition is seen as an essential career management skill. Krumboltz theory offers insight on how to deal with a limited degree of control that we have over career experiences. So for example, if you have an individual that may come to you who was recently let go of their employment for financial reasons or cutbacks, Krumboltz would encourage the career counselor to help the client see that it's for a reason, something better may come along, that this has happened to allow for there to be change that the client may otherwise never have taken.

Career Counseling NCE Module

The core of this theory is the fact that these unpredictable things that happen, these social factors, actually are chance life events that can promote more success and have the potential for a stronger or more important influence on the client's life. So the counselor's role is to help the client approach these chance circumstances very positively. It would take a considerable amount of reframing for individuals that feel an incredible amount of despair for the situation they find themselves in. Counselors will help clients foster a curiosity to see what's next, persistence to deal with obstacles, or roadblocks, that are in their way, a sense of flexibility to address the variety of circumstances that are a result of the chance event that occurred, and an optimism to maximize the benefits of these unplanned events. So for example, some individuals may say that if you've lost your job, an optimistic approach to that may be you get some well-deserved time off that you may not have taken, you get to spend time with family and friends, this may be an opportunity to travel. And some of these ways to reframe events that happened almost allow the client to be more resilient and empowered than to feel as if they're a victim to the circumstances that have happened. People with these qualities are more likely to capitalize on chance events and make opportunities. These factors help to turn chance encounters into career opportunities. You encourage the client to take the chance to go out and network, advance education, find an area of development that they may, otherwise, not have taken. To provide a level of ongoing self-assessment, to look at feedback from others and how to improve for the next journey using networks, like LinkedIn, as we know now with social media, achieving some level of a work-life balance. So the reflectiveness looks at what was missing before. What was missing within your self-care, within a wellness aspect of your life, that you now can take the time to infuse so that when you encounter the next journey, you can already have these as part of your life? It also is an opportunity for individuals to financially plan and how to look at periods of unemployment as periods of growth. So when we move on from Krumboltz and we look at Donald Super, he is another very famous career theorist that influenced the idea of developing a sense of self and realizing that one changes over time. This matters in career planning because we plan for an individual who's 30 that may not have the same level of interests when they're 50. One of Donald Super's greatest contributions to career development is the emphasis on the development of self-concept, that we look at career development under his theory as something lifelong. He developed theories and worked with Eli Ginzberg in order to advance his theory, which had weakness in the eyes of Super. He wanted Ginzberg's theory to expand more into the

Career Counseling NCE Module

developmental stages. So Ginzberg outlined three areas of development and Super extended it to five, which included sub-stages that I'm going to talk about here in a minute. Super argues that occupational preferences and competencies, along with an individual's life situations, all change with time and experience. He developed the concept of vocational maturity, which may or may not correspond to chronological age. So people cycle through each of these stages as they go through career transitions, and we need to be able to move with clients and move with these changes. So I have outlined here five stages of career development. When you look at the stages, growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and decline, some of you may remember that this seems a little similar to Erik Erickson's Psychosocial Stages of Development. There's less stages here, but what's important to remember is that similar to his stages, there is chronological numbers attached and there's characteristics within each. So, in terms of growth, this is for an individual birth through early adolescence that is developing their self-concept, what their attitudes and interests are, their needs, and their general world of work. Exploration is trying out various classes, work hobbies, and looking at choice and skill development. So often around 15, 16, adolescents are getting work permits, they're trying out part-time jobs, they're still in school, they're developing interests, and they're funneling their activities towards something that matters to them. Establishment is this entry-level skill building and stabilization period that's developing work experience. And according to Super, it's really not until the mid- 40s that there's a sense of maintenance. So there is a 20-year span of this continual adjustment process to improve the position. And it seems as if once you peek at success, it's time for the decline. So it's interesting, right? Because you seem to figure out what you want to be, gain some experience in what you want to be, you be that person, and then you're done. So retirement at 65 encourages the individual to reduce this output and prepare for retirement. What we often find, though, is that if individuals leave the workforce earlier than anticipated or earlier than they anticipated, this can somewhat correspond to Erickson stages, where there's a lack of purpose. And individuals may feel as if they don't know who they are anymore when they're not defined by their career. And this can significantly contribute to issues of depression and despair because what somebody spent 30 or 40 years doing and defining themselves by, is now finished.

Career Counseling NCE Module

And so there tends to be a period of sadness that some people experience when they end or leave the workforce because they have lost that sense of purpose, they have not fostered the work-life balance that seems to go hand-in-hand. So there's developmental tasks that have fallen into each stage. When we look at the life stage and then the ages that correspond, as the chart indicates, they're very, very different depending on where an individual is, which is why Super really does incorporate the developmental stages because somebody early in their career development is not going to be in the same life stage to have the life experience that would match. Let's pick one to look at. And we look at establishment. So early on in development, somebody is just getting started in the field and they're settling down in a suitable position. They may be marrying, they may be having children, they may be building retirement. And they're developing these skills that are going to make them relevant and continually promoted within the field. As it becomes later in their life or early adulthood-- I'm sorry, late adulthood. What you're going to find is now the individual is phasing out somewhat of the need to consistently perform and is now starting to incorporate hobbies or carving out the time to do things that one has always wanted to do. So as you see through the life stages, depending on where an individual is, the employment opportunities that are available, financial structure, familial components, all of these things contribute to developing the career path that the individual will ultimately take. So when you think about the exam, what's going to be important for you to understand is the stages that the individual may go through as they progress under his theory and how that looks different when you think about Parsons approach, for example. So in making a vocational choice, individuals are expressing this self-concept, or this understanding of self, which does evolve over time. There is a level of career satisfaction, through work roles, in which they express themselves and further implement their self-concept. How much clients present that they're experiencing career dissatisfaction is really relevant to where they might be in the place of life. So for example, you may have a client that comes to you that expresses they're incredibly dissatisfied in their employment, but they've just had a baby and they are not going to be able to leave. And so how career counselors make sense of the dissonance that's experienced by the client is an important process within the career counseling profession. One of the other hallmark traits of Super's theory is the rainbow. So if you remember, now, we have several diagrams and several illustrations that's going

Career Counseling NCE Module

to be important for you to remember. I remember when I took the NCE exam, the career rainbow was very popular on my exam and there were several questions related to it. So this represents, really, the development pertaining to an individual and an organization structure, for example. So you have the ages, the life stages, and where an individual may be as the colors underneath. So it's a visual. It's important for you to know, necessarily, which band signifies age and that it falls directly under the life stage and what, in general, the career rainbow actually represents. So if we move on and we can look at Ann Roe. Roe's theory can be separated into two key areas, theoretical aspects of personality and classification of occupations. Inspired by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Roe incorporates the psychological needs that develop out of parent-child interactions and how these affect personality development. So for those of you that have an interest in attachment theory, attachment disorder, a more humanistic approach to counseling theory, this might be of interest to you. Roe classified this parent-child interaction into three categories or levels. There's emotional concentration on a child, which looks over-protective, over-demanding, somewhat of a helicopter parent, avoidance of the child or neglectful rejecting, emotionally detached, and the last is acceptance of the child, which looks casual or very loving. Roe's interest in parent-child interactions led to the development of the parent- child relations questionnaire. So based on the results from this, Roe believed that children went on to develop an orientation either towards or not towards people, which ultimately affects their career choice. One of the limitations for Roe's theory is that it's very difficult for there to be some level of certainty around parent-child interactions because it's going to be very subjective. There's differences in parenting styles between parents over time, and so the comparative data or longitudinal studies is almost really impossible to examine. We go from, maybe, a two-parent working home now to historically, 60, 50 years ago, a one-parent home environment and one person in the workforce. So it's very difficult to do comparative research on her theory. Roe even openly acknowledges the criticisms and expressed concerns that the classification system really didn't adequately address experiences of women and minorities. And so it really remains the only theory that helps explain the impact of early attachment on career choice, but in and of itself, it's not a strong theory to build upon career choice and guidance.

Career Counseling NCE Module

So let's move in, a little bit now, to some phases of career counseling. There's part one, which addresses the client's goal or the initial problem identification. So what is the working relationship that you and the client will have together? And you would begin, as the career counselor, to define the roles. You develop an understanding of the client's characteristics and their environment, and you want to make somewhat of a diagnosis of the problem this doesn't necessarily mean DSM diagnosis per se, although that may co-occur, you want to diagnose the problem as the client presents it. For example, that could look like-- you see there was a sense of dissonance between the client's role in their employment and the stage of life that they are in. And you're moving towards a resolution of the problem, making an intervention, evaluating the impact of the intervention, and terminating the intervention if it's successful or unsuccessful. Factors inhibiting a client's capability of being successful look like any level of disabling emotions, which is why we go back to the idea of it being important to have clients both involved in career counseling and individual counseling. Any dysfunctional career thoughts, where the expectations of an individual may be way higher than their ability and how this has created a sense of dissonance? What is the stability of the client's goals, or instability, looking at if an individual chooses to be in a profession long term, but that profession is not sustainable? Oil and gas industries have, relatively speaking, ebb and flowed. And so when you look at, for example, a client's individual goal of maintaining that level of employment and financial gain from being in the oil and gas industry, that goal instability is high if there's incredible regulations that are going to be placed on oil and gas companies that limit their ability to provide for somebody financially. So you want to look at how stable the market is for what the individual is looking to do. Tension or urgency to make a decision. Where is the level of motivation? Is there a high level of impulsivity? Is there a sense of urgency that's affected by other factors? Self-concept. The role of family or family pressure, family stress, other relationships, and the overall quality of life. So the career counseling process has five stages. The first, really, you look at establishing this counselor-client relationship, which looks no different than if it was traditional counseling, diagnosing or framing the problem, goal setting, providing an intervention. So within that providing an intervention, you're going to gather information. What are the skills that the individual has, what are the multicultural considerations we need to understand? Where is the class in terms of decision making and how do they make decisions?

Career Counseling NCE Module

Guided fantasy is an intervention that can seem similar to almost the miracle question. If you would wake up tomorrow and were in your dream job, what would that look like? And improving the perspective on timing. And the conclusion of that, there's an overall evaluation and a self-reflective process prior to termination. Helping clients to determine which career to pursue is not an easy thing to do, especially when somebody can be indecisive or they're at the beginning of their career and they're considering where their talents are and what they are prepared to do, versus somebody who might be at a mid-career change and may have to go through new educational opportunities in order to make a career change. Indecision is a barrier, too many or too few options are barriers, financial restrictions, and lack of information about career options all affect the ability for an individual to make an informed choice. So to reiterate, the career counselor's role is to provide information and administer inventories that inform the process. And we help clients determine which steps to take based on what we knew to be missing. Counseling for job finding, helping clients implement their career decisions by finding jobs. There are so many mediums now that individuals use to career search. We have applications online, there's postings for you to post your resume, for employers to post search ads. There's job seekers, their LinkedIn, there's Facebook, various mediums of social media. There's monster.com, there's Indeed. There's all kinds of options for clients now to be able to do job searches. The problem, though, comes in matching the individual's characteristics, and traits, and needs with what is available. How do we help clients develop skills to interview effectively, provide assistance in areas of building self-worth or self- efficacy? If you have a client that was maybe let go from a previous job, how do you help them explain to the next employer why that happened? How do you help them build confidence around entering in a new position when they may have been satisfied at their old position and felt that they had mastered those skills or concepts? Providing feedback regarding an individual's personality is very critical at this point in the process. If you're working with a client who appears very standoffish, somebody who is not very relatable, somebody who struggles to find connection with humor, somebody who uses sarcasm inappropriately, these are personality and character traits that you, as the career counselor, may need to point out.

Career Counseling NCE Module

You would encourage motivation in the process, you would be a cheerleader for somebody, you would help them by holding them accountable. We've seen a surge in life coaches and this role somewhat takes on the motivating role in helping clients to feel more satisfied in their work-life balance and helping clients see that they're capable. Counselors help clients gain a sense of accomplishment and contentment with matching careers that are in line with somebody's personality, personality style and trait, development, to bring an overall sense of congruence. Seeking counseling for clients that are struggling with their career is often a result of people being dissatisfied. So there is importance of addressing the dissatisfied client and so far as, does it reach the level of depression? There's some work that career counselors can do on understanding depression, but this is why, really, Parsons advocated for there to be personal counseling because, with the issues like depression, it can adversely affect the career search. There's a potential lack of coping skills for very distressful situations that come out of a work environment. If we think about first responders or individuals that would have experienced a crisis or trauma, there's going to be a need for coping skills to address the distressful situations that occur on a daily basis. And in leaving some of those areas of employment, how the individuals, then, realign with new roles that don't necessarily contain those distressful situations. You might think that well, they may be happier having gone to a new role where there's not as much stress; however, for some people, there is a conditioning that happens over time and they become conditioned on experiencing that level of stress. And so what happens is, when they go into a new role that has less stress, they don't know how to adapt to the quote, unquote "mundane" aspect of that employment. So there is an adjustment process that would occur there. If we look at military, soldiers that come back from war, active duty, deployment, all experience, to some extent, a void, not necessarily because of the transition, per se, but because of the lack of applied skill that they may have in civilian life. So while a soldier may have been responsible for a unit of men overseas, and they return home from being deployed, and they come and work in civilian life, he or she may not be able to adapt to having very little responsibility in a traditional work environment. I've seen many men and women within the military that have struggled with understanding their own role now that they are not held in a position of responsibility. And it can be a very difficult transition and one that often leads to severe depression and anxiety. So there needs to be an encouragement on skill- building, an assessment of what skills are needed, and the ability for the client to

Career Counseling NCE Module

accept that there is going to be a growing edge between where they are and where they want to be in terms of enhancing their overall improvement. So there are several assessments that career counselors can use in terms of being able to help assist a client in their new role. This process involves reviewing, explaining, discussing, the results and being able to clarify those depending on the questions that the client may have. It's also very important for the career counselor to understand that they need to be able to explain these assessments to clients in a way in which they can understand. Career counselors need to take into consideration the maturity level, the congruence, vocational overall need, and the personality structure that the client may have when they discuss the results and when they choose the assessments. One famous assessment is the Strong Interest Inventory. This certainly is an assessment that you will have to understand from more of a surface level for the exam. But the Strong is one of the most widely used and respected career planning tools. It has 291 items that looks at interest patterns and compares them to satisfy professionals in various occupations. It provides really a personalized profile for a client to understand their own interests. The Meyers-Briggs is another very well-known instrument that is used to assess personality. So by assessing an individual's personality, you can find out more about their career options by matching their personality type with their career path. It's used to help individuals learn more about who they are, their values and interests. So for people who already feel like they have a handle on that, it takes that information and it directs them into an area that is most congruent. So the Meyers-Briggs helps to improve work and personal relationships by putting people in the place that they will be most productive. It also can help to outline or establish those individuals that may be good leaders and individuals that have certain interpersonal communication patterns or preferences. Technology has advanced so much that many of these interests inventories or assessments are available online. So computer-assisted-guidance systems are really used, fairly often, to help simulate some level of career planning. It can be used in universities, you can pay to do these online. There's, obviously, some that you don't have to use with the help of a career counselor. You can use them more as an individual, as an interest inventory. I'm sure many of you have taken the little quizzes online that say what you would be best suited for. Hopefully, it says counseling. But you can find these online to help inform what your personality traits are and what would you be best suited to do. But the ones that are very psychometrically tested, are ones that use--

Career Counseling NCE Module

choices, discover are two of the most famous ones that can be on college campuses, that can be in career counseling offices. And based on these results, they provide alternatives and occupational suggestions much like the paper/pencil assessments we just discussed. The more famous ones, choices, discover, et cetera, those are expensive. And so they're often not able to be used by the layperson because the interpretation also is something useful with a career counselor to explore together. Overall, you can go to a library, you can go to career counseling centers on college campuses. And some of these areas do have specific occupational guidance, career-driven assessments that can be available online. When system users have explored, discover and SIGI is really the information on making career decisions. So these systems, together, provide career planning on how to write a resume, how to build a professional network, even helpful cues and tips on interviewing. There are limitations, as there are with all computer- generated assessments and that's the ability for them to be user-friendly. You're taking an individual that may or may not be technologically savvy. How to interpret the results that are given, what's the educational information of the user? Accessing these requires both the computer and the affiliation with an institution that is licensed to administer them, which is why I said earlier not the layperson can just take these online. There's vocational bureaus that are offered through many states that provide some level of occupational or vocational guidance or rehabilitation. In the state that I live, in Pennsylvania, there's a program called OVR, which is occupational vocational rehabilitation, that offers these types of testing at their site. And individuals can go and use this technology in order to be able to help determine the next step for career planning. The research does indicate that the most effective way to go about career service in planning is by the counselor-client relationship. So if you think about traditional counseling, there's many self-help books, there's lots of online resources and blogs that individuals can read, there's many workbooks that clients can go to the bookstore and pick up and use. And that is certainly helpful. But the connection between client-counselor is what really, at times, facilitates change. And so, if we take that same approach to career counseling, the same would be true. We can use computer-generated technology, we can take online surveys and questionnaires, we can read books about career and job satisfaction, but when it gets down to it, it really can be about the counselor-client relationship. There's a sense of confidence that an individual feels when working with a career

Career Counseling NCE Module

counselor. Knowing that somebody else knows more about resources that might be available can be comforting. There's also the aspect of validation. That is very important when working with another individual. Sometimes people entering in new careers or following down new paths, just needing a life change or life transition, often times need validation. Am I doing the right thing? Is this the right path for me? Do I have the right skill set? Am I capable of doing this? So with all that being said, you're not going to necessarily get that authentically if it doesn't come from that one-to-one relationship with a counselor. Career counseling clients devote considerable attention to non-career concerns and sessions and this can be distracting for career counselors. So the role of a career counselor helps to redirect clients to focus on issues related to dissatisfaction and not necessarily mental health-related issues that would be better served by a mental health counselor. We, as career counselors, look at what is impeding the work-life balance and giving information on how to set limits during the session so that the client understands that you're not invalidating their experience and you're not disinterested in their experience, but you're setting boundaries so that their needs, regarding career, get met. Again, the process of career counseling is very much an exploratory process, where you're going back and understanding career development, and choice, and education. And so, it will be infused with traditional counseling interventions and theories because you can't understand an individual and their life progression without having that basic understanding of counseling. But there is a difference between providing career counseling, and information, and providing mental health counseling. And so we have to be sure, as career counselors, there's a clear distinction between both. There seems to be a close relationship between the process of psychotherapy and career counseling. We know that career counselors need to work closely with mental health therapists and so often, there is a very unified approach that both counselors take to be able to address the client holistically. What is the working alliance, making sure of client-signed release, being able to have one individual's information inform the other because they often do go hand in hand. We can ensure, then, as a career counselor that the mental health component is being addressed appropriately and is handled by the mental health counselor so that we feel, as a career counselor, alleviated from having concerns that the depression that a client may be experiencing is going unaddressed. The counselor is working within their area of competence, which is imperative with our code of ethics and that we understand there is a collaboration that we are all

Career Counseling NCE Module

working towards finding the most successful area for the client to have a better quality of life. If we take the existing view of career counseling and expand it into a modern-day approach, what we see is students often conclude that career counseling is a sequence of interventions that resembles counseling. Counseling information comes from one set of individuals, career information comes from another set individuals, and there are two very distinctly different processes. Counselors gather information and administer a test, they interpret the tests, and then it's done. And this really couldn't be further from the truth. Counselors are in charge of the process, they're authoritative and directive. The client's passive and is really just receiving information. Career counseling becomes something that's done to clients rather than something the counselor and client participate in collaboratively. So Crites' view believed that the need for career counseling is greater than the need for psychotherapy. Crites conceptualized that career maturity is based on Super's theory of career development. When we go back to consider these theorists, we really want to remember that there's general factors that relate to realistic career choice in content and process. So individuals with more maturity are going to make more congruent career choices. And career counseling can be therapeutic. It can follow a similar pattern in psychotherapy. It's more effective than psychotherapy, is more difficult than psychotherapy. So it's almost this dialectic between-- at times, career counseling can be more effective than psychotherapy because it really addresses the core aspects of why an individual feels incongruent. At the same time, it can be more difficult than psychotherapy because unless some aspects of an individual's inner psyche are worked through, it's going to be very difficult to help somebody find the path to their successful career. So Crites really was able to bring together some of the theorists and follow along with Super's theory of that career development and life stages, looking a career choice and content, being able to infuse maturity in order to make the overall best career choice. When we think about the career counselor in modern day, what we know is that there's global unemployment, corporate downsizing, joblessness, high unemployment rates, competition within the global marketplace, work-less factories, technological advancements. And how do we address these issues with clients that face valuable threats to their personal, professional development and livelihood?

Career Counseling NCE Module

The requirements of today's workplace need individuals that are technologically savvy. There's an engagement in true lifelong learning, there is the interaction with other individuals and with others in diversity, there's tolerating ambiguity and job security. There is a level of being vigilant about maintaining a high level of self and occupational awareness to be able to maintain yourself as marketable, and there is the question around promoting or abandoning the work-life balance. Do individuals get promoted more that have a work-life balance, or is it promoted by industries overtly but quietly discouraged? So is the overall emphasis on, still, the individual that works 60 plus hours a week, or is there truly a movement towards the individual that is able to establish some balance? There are certain characteristics of career development that do foster self- affirmation. So providing counselor-based career assistance in terms of supporting clients really does attend to addressing overall life-related issues. We empower clients to clarify their self-concepts and help co-construct with them their views of their lives. We exhibit understanding that every counselor relationship is cross-cultural and I think, overall, to really summarize this slide, how do career counselors develop within their clients this sense of self-affirmation. It's infusing validation, understanding where an individual is in their life with their personality development and their personality structure, where they are in terms of obligations and responsibilities, and taking all of those aspects together and building the relationship towards success in the work environment. So there is an ebb and flow, an understanding that this may have to happen right now considering where an individual is in their life. However, there's goals towards more intrinsic value that career counselors can work towards to take the client there with some future hope, some installation of hope. So you may not be completely happy where you are right in this moment, but right in this moment, you're able to provide financially for your family. That does make you happy. And we're going to keep in mind that this goal, within this five-year plan, is to move you to a place of establishment so that you can start to take advantage of the financial benefit that you've sacrificed for. So you may not like going to work every single day in this specific role, but it's giving you the opportunity to be able to provide for your family and to eventually take advantage of the things that you do enjoy. And so, that is where we can help a client understand that they're self-affirming the process that they're going through, that it's not a means to an end, that there's value that they can find within what they do. So we provide emotional support, informational support, and assessment support all along the way. When we work with resistant clients, this takes a little bit of a

Career Counseling NCE Module

turn. There can be some struggles when you are presented with a client that feels incredibly resistant to the process. You first want to really recognize that you're dealing with the resistance. I know I have listed a few down, but these are all things that are very important to remember and I would say starting with really recognizing that that's happening. And I would even go so far as to acknowledge that it's happening in the moment. Labeling what you see and helping to reframe the negativity to more of a positive experience. So you may have somebody coming in who is very negative about being let go of their position. They may be very bitter and very frustrated, not understanding the decision of the company to let them go. At the same time, you can use some reframing to help them see the benefits of what they can now use their time for. Being able to point out some irrational beliefs. You want to pay close attention to the all or nothing thoughts that you may hear. This will never get better, I'll never find a job, it will always be like this, I've let everybody down. Those types of irrational beliefs and that distorted thinking that we know from our counselor training, is very important in terms of career counseling because all of that negativity can then breed a lack of motivation, can build a roadblock, can put barriers up that become self-fulfilling processes. It can influence the interview process that can then be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you a very negative person going into an interview, it's going to prevent them from getting the job, which will then further the belief that they'll never be employed. So you want to point that out so that they can see how the process affects the overall benefit. Wanting to focus on excuses. Well, I could have applied for it, but I had to clean the house instead. I could have been job searching, but now that I'm home, everybody thinks I have to do all of their jobs too. And so, you want to focus on what the excuses are because often, career counselors will point out that excuses are fear. So clients make excuses about why they're not making progress because they're afraid of the new employment opportunities, they're afraid of rejection, they're afraid of letting somebody else down, they're afraid of getting their hopes up. And so you name the fear so that you can address the fear. There are two different types of career assessments. There are subjective assessments and objective assessments. Just like you've learned in the past with assessments that are used in counseling for personality development, subjective assessments are intended to take into account the perception of the individual, what has been your success and how a client would describe to you that success pattern.

Career Counseling NCE Module

An objective assessment is going to look at what's their pay, what's their pay history, their hierarchical position, anything that you can see that's not related to the client's interpretation. So the self-reference subjective career assessments are useful and measured, really, in terms of satisfaction or job satisfaction. When you look at an individual who would say to you, I'm super successful, I've done really, really well, everybody seems to like me, I feel like I'm a strong leader, and they've never gotten a promotion. Why is there a dissonance? It may not necessarily be because they're in denial and lying to you. It could be that the company, financially, isn't able to promote. And so, for an individual who feels that they are not being appreciated, that can have a negative effect on their level of job satisfaction. So if they do, inherently, have all of those skills and are able to be connected to others in the work environment, maybe they need to be in another agency or company that is able to promote their skill set and help validate their experience. What we know to be true, in general, is that objective success, or even lack thereof, drives subjective assessment. So for an individual that has pay increases, has been promoted, has very good performance evaluations or reviews, likely will drive the subjective assessment in either direction. These subjective assessments are helpful because we get insight into the client's self-perception. Clients see the relevance of their life experiences to their own career development. We attach a sense of purpose to the activities and we engage them in this process where the results are clearly connected to the client's responses. So often when we discuss with clients these subjective assessments, we say back to them what they may already know but they hear it through a different lens. The strengths of objective assessments is that we can help clients that make comparisons with others. They are outcome-oriented, don't require as much counselor time as subjective assessments. They provide a useful starting point for consideration of other career options. So if we say other clients in your situation are making this amount of money and we might need to consider other avenues for you to pursue so that you can be validated and compensated for the skill set that you have. So an overall framework for understanding career counseling in terms of how to move forward after we get started, is to deal with change, helping clients engage in self-assessment, subjective or objective, how we help clients learn more about the world of work and where it is today, helping clients expand or narrow choices, and helping clients make plans.

Career Counseling NCE Module

So I want to offer an example. I have an individual that I've seen in my private practice who is struggling right now with her next steps in terms of career choices. She finds herself incredibly artistic, dancing, expressive arts, very talented, yet she was a business major in college. And largely majored in business because her parents were both engineers and they very much wanted her to pursue a similar path and a compromise in her mind was to go into majoring in business. She is incredibly unhappy and is not able to really focus on any other aspect of her life because she can't find happiness in what she's doing. Her grades, the first year, were failing. She's a very smart young woman, but she's not able to invest in the program because she doesn't have an interest in it. She's very afraid of pursuing her own interests because she doesn't know that, financially, she could support herself. And so she has an inherent dissonance between where she is in life and where she wants to be. And what infuses this, is also the expectation of not letting down her parents. She wants them to be very proud of her and she wants them to accept her for what she's chosen to do in line with their expectation. And so this is a very complex problem because not only is it psychotherapy related, she has an incredible amount of despair, she's very capable of doing something amazing with her life, and she's very smart. But she's failed her first year of school. She has her parents very upset with her for failing. They don't believe that she should pursue her artistic abilities. They're paying for school, so she feels very obligated to stay within the major she chose in order to make them happy. And so this entire experience is unfolding for her and she's starting her second year and doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know if she should continue, she doesn't know if she should try and obtain financial aid so that she can pay for her own education, so she can make her own choices and feel empowered. She doesn't know how to pursue art and be financially capable of sustaining her life. And so, this is a perfect example of an individual that would need the benefits of career counseling and also psychotherapy. And so not only do you address and diagnose the problem as we discussed earlier, but you take this client and you self-assess where there has been instances of validation and success in the past, and how to see herself fitting in the world of work as she progresses through college and the years after that, how to expand or narrow her choices in what she wants to do, and then help her make plans that fit both her own interests and personality in the place and life that she is. That's on one end of it, while the psychotherapy part of it is going to really address the people-pleasing, the inherent sense of failure of lack of self-worth and self-esteem of not being enough, and then how that infuses how she

Career Counseling NCE Module

presents herself in interviews or career planning or job searching. So the multi- dimensional problems that clients come in with are going to cross both boundaries. The phases of career counseling go through those incredibly similar to regular clinical mental health counseling, or addiction counseling, marriage and family counseling, et cetera. There's the opening part of the session and of the overall counseling process. There's phases that the individual is going to go through that include information gathering and the working phase of doing the work that looks like some confrontation, reframing, perspective taking, experiential work within the session, and then the final phase of realizing there's termination. As I just mentioned, in the beginning of the initial phase, obviously, the most important is the relationship and beginning to gather the information about the client and defining the goals and the diagnosis. When you get into the working phase, that's really where there's the opportunity for confrontation. We know this from group counseling. There's this development of a specific plan of action and you might know that in traditional counseling as treatment planning, goal setting. And then, in the end, there's the connecting of the work. What is the work that we did in the beginning, where are we now, how did we get here? Did we address what was the initial problem? Relating current status to the client's goals for overall counseling. When there's premature closure it can usually happen because goals were reached sooner than you may have anticipated. The career counseling experience doesn't meet with the client wants. It's not working for them is what you'll often hear people say. Clients fear what might be uncovered in career counseling or don't feel motivated, there's too much anxiety and it prevents them from feeling successful. And the shame of having to report that they may not have done the homework, et cetera, creates avoidant behaviors. So one of the ways to address that, as I said earlier, is to acknowledge it in the beginning. When you review termination with a client, there are specific checks that you might want to remember to go through and when this has been discussed on the exam, you'll see this as something that might be very obvious on the surface, but when you compare this to traditional counseling you are going to see some differences. What was the content of what happened and what was the process? Did you reemphasize the strengths that you witnessed? Did you evaluate what went well and what went poorly? Did you explore things that may have gone unsaid? The last step is one of the most important in terms of termination. And that is, did you provide clear and direct structure for what the client's next steps are? Often,

Career Counseling NCE Module

this gets omitted in traditional counseling because we may not get the opportunity for direct closure. Clients may just stop coming, they may move away. You may have issues that prevent you from returning back to therapy as illness or et cetera. Clients may not want to go through these clear next steps without you, so there may be a reluctance for termination. In career counseling, it looks a lot like, here's what we said we were going to do, here's how you're going to go about doing it, and these are the next steps that you're going to take. And this prescriptive process is goal and job-profession oriented. And so that's how some of the last phases of termination can be carried out. We've figured out now what we need to do, here's what you need to do, and here is the instructions on how to do that. Career counseling can happen in groups as well. And within group counseling, there is a mode of service that's delivered. Instead of using very personalized, individual work, you can use the group setting to have a sense of collaboration. Similar to individual counseling, you're going to use five to eight members and provide some interventions within the setting that can help replicate real-world experiences. So groups often include a lot of experiential activities that look like disagreements in the workplace. How would you handle it? Role-playing interviews, role-playing a disgruntled employee, role-playing a manager that is unable to provide positive feedback. And allow the group, together, to process how one might handle that and see various other reactions from people within the group. Sometimes they can be specific to a certain topic that's, maybe, a general common concern. So individuals may be in a group together that have identified a difficulty in leadership or setting up boundaries, saying no, being overly pleasing. These groups are best when they're structured. So you want to predetermine the number of sessions and the length of time. And, obviously, in these types of groups, you'd see the most benefit if you were picking the individuals that were attending the group so that they had some cohesion from the beginning. Even though the less structured in terms of process is best in career counseling groups, they are better structured for activities than therapy process groups. When there is more allowance for individuals to delve into topics that deviate from the one at hand, it can create boundary issues. Getting off track and disengaging from the group can be avoided. And so, the more you have the ability to guide the group, be more of an active leader, the more benefit that the group members will gain from the experience.

Career Counseling NCE Module

The stages of this group process look almost identical to the stages of a therapy process group. And so, those traits of each of these stages are going to replicate those in group therapy. So in the opening stage, people are getting to know each other. In the investigative stage, more information is shared, boundaries are going to be set. The working stage could have a little back and forth, some confrontation, some of the actual work is going to be done. And the decision or the operational stage is going to be the outcome, or the termination, or the final stage. Career groups are really beneficial if used in conjunction with individual career counseling. So members certainly learn new information about themselves and how to interact with others. They can receive social and emotional support. They learn from peers who are in similar situations and they share resources and ideas. They usually share a common goal. They set norms that direct and guide their activities. There's roles and rules that are going to be similar to therapy groups. They develop this interpersonal network, and there's a tendency towards getting their own needs satisfied by feeling that they're connecting with other people and getting that positive affirmation that they're looking for. So at this point, we've concluded with the content of career counseling. And there are several slides that are following with a career counseling quiz. These quiz questions are worded very similarly and are taken from NCE review material, so they are going to replicate the questions you would be asked on the actual exam. So what we'll do at this point is we'll take a few moments for you to be able to go through and answer the next questions. There's a set of answer choices that will follow. And at the very end, you'll find the correct answer choices listed. So if you want to take out a piece of paper and mark down the choice that you think best fits, then at the very end you'll see the correct answers listed. And if you have any questions, we can post those in the faculty chat and go through one by one. So thank you, everybody, for your time. And take some time and read through the questions that are going to follow and good luck.