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EDUC 321: CAREER GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING – CAREER PLANNING AND COUNSELING COMPETENCIES

Goals of career counseling

General goal: To assist the individual in the development, planning and implementation of a personal life-career, with
focus on his/her personal aspirations and qualities vis-a-vis the nature and requirements of the worker role in the
selected area and how the latter interacts with other life roles.

Intermediate goals

1. To help prioritize among several equally attractive courses of action.

2. To clarify what one can actually pursue when he/she has no choice
3. To help modify options when course/occupation desired by an individual requires aptitudes or abilities he/she
does not have.
4. To help decide on course of action when the family objects vehemently to a client's selected course or
occupation.
5. To encourage or motivate a client who is demotivated.
6. To eliminate fears that obstruct one from pursuing his/her desired course/occupation.
7. To modify personality characteristics.
8. To help eliminate indecisiveness.
9. To help rectify wrong information on which decisions have been made.
10. To help select appropriate training/educational activities/programs for the occupation/career desired.
11. To select the best training/educational institutions affordable to the client.
12. To identify institutions that grant scholarships or fellowships to pursue studies.
13. To help identify work settings that may promise the best fit between the client and the work.
14. To help make decisions for promotions or lateral transfer within the work setting.
15. To facilitate decision-making for leaving a job or retirement.
16. To help make transitions to a new job, new work setting or retirement.

Career guidance services

1. Information Service
 It provides information to help the client get to know more about the world of work and the factors that
impinge upon it.
 Includes career week, job fairs, seminars and workshops.
 Also includes printed materials- career brochures, newspaper, website to open, postings on job openings
corporate practices.

2. Individual Inventory Service

• involves helping the client get to know more about himself/herself through varied assessment instruments-
psychological tests, rating scales, health records, academic history, socio gram reports, socio economic data
interview, observation and others.

Counselling – Service that helps the client make a personal order plan and a plan of action by discussing the relationship
between discoveries about the world of work and self vis-á-vis personal aspirations and circumstances.

Placement

1. This service facilities the entry into the proper setting, with due considerations of the outcomes of counselling.
2. Proper setting can include the selection of appropriate training or educational institution.
3. It involves the selection and entry into a postgraduate course or institution.
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4. It includes the selection and employment in the work setting most compatible to the individual and his/her
traits, aspirations, etc.

Career counseling competencies and performance indicators

1. Knowledge of career development theory

Every career counselor must have a thorough knowledge of career development theories that would guide
his/her own practice.
1. What to focus on at every developmental stage throughout the life span
2. What factors must be considered
3. Strategies/ techniques to be used for information and counseling delivery
4. Role relationships that could affect or be affected by careers

2. Individual/group assessment
Every counselor must have the ability to select, administer and interpret individual and group assessment
instruments to facilitate self-awareness, self-acceptance, understanding and decision-making vis-a-vis
occupations, work settings and expectations.
1. Assessing personal characteristics.
2. Assessing leisure preferences, learning and thinking styles, life roles, self-concept, career maturity,
vocational identity, career indecision, work environment preference, and other related life
style/development issues.
3. Assessing the conditions of the work environment.
4. Evaluating and selecting valid and reliable instruments appropriate to the client’s age, gender, sexual
orientations, language, academic level, race, ethnicity and physical and mental capabilities.
5. Evaluating and selecting computer-delivered assessment measures and using them effectively and
appropriately.
6. Differentiating and selecting assessment tools and techniques appropriate for group and individual
administration.
7. Administering, scoring, interpreting and communicating findings from career assessment instruments
appropriately to concerned parties.
8. Assisting client and client designated significant others to interpret data from assessment instruments.
9. Reporting assessment results in accurate, integrated written form.

3. Information/resources
Every counselor must know how to develop and maintain an information/resource base essential for
understanding the world of work and the job outlook.
1. Collecting and arranging information from education and training institutions.
2. Gathering and organizing information about different occupations and professions.
3. Sourcing and synthesizing employment trends, labor market information, salaries, opportunities, future
outlooks related to broad occupational fields and individual occupations.
4. Identifying resources and skills that clients utilize in life career planning and management.
5. Publicizing community/professional resources available to assist clients in career planning and job
research.
6. Defining the changing roles of men and women and the implication that this has for education,
occupation and careers, family and leisure.
7. Tracking the changing trends in occupational fields and employment possibilities.
8. Utilizing and teaching the utilization of computer-based career information and on-line employment
offerings and applications.