1) Career counseling involves helping individuals explore careers and make educational and career decisions by providing career information and assessments to help them understand their interests and values. 2) Several theories aim to explain career decision-making, including trait-and-factor theory matching personalities to careers, developmental theories about evolving interests over life stages, and social-cognitive career theory involving self-efficacy and environmental influences. 3) Common career assessments and information systems like SIGI3, DISCOVER, and Kuder help individuals learn about themselves and potential careers through interest and skills assessments and extensive occupational databases.

1. Career Counseling
Muhammad Musawar Ali
MPHIL, ICAP
Psychmmusawarali@gmail.com
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2. History
• Counseling profession began when Frank Parsons (1909) outlined a
process for choosing a career and initiated the vocational guidance
movement.
• Choosing a career is more than simply deciding what will do to earn a
living.
• Occupations influence a person’s whole way of life, including physical
and mental health.
• There are interconnections between works roles and other life roles
(Imbimbo, 1994).
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3. • Research indicates that individuals who appear most happy in their work are
committed to following their interests.
• Yet despite the evidence of the importance of a person’s work,
systematically exploring and choosing careers often does not happen.
• So, it is important that individual obtain career information early and enter
the job market with knowledge and flexibility in regard to their plans.
• Process of selecting a career is unique to each individual and is influenced
by a variety of factors e.g., personality style, gender, family background,
age etc.
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4. Importance of Career Counseling
• Crites (1981) lists important aspects of career counseling, which
include the following:
1. The need for career counseling is greater than the need for
psychotherapy.
2. Career counseling can be therapeutic.
3. Career counseling is more difficult than psychotherapy.
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5. Career Counseling Associations and
Credentials
• National Career Development Association (NCDA)
• National Employment Counselor Association (NECA)
• Are two counseling associations within the American Counseling
Association (ACA) primarily devoted to career development and
counseling.
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6. Career Counseling
• Career Counseling is a process that will help you to know and
understand yourself and the world of work in order to make career,
educational, and life decisions.
• It really is a lifelong process, meaning that throughout your life you
will change, situations will change, and you will continually have to
make career and life decisions.
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7. • The goal of Career Counseling is not only help you make the decisions
you need to make now, but to give you the knowledge and skills you
need to make future career and life decisions.
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8. Career Information
• Modern term of career information is career data meaning “a
collection of facts about occupational and educational opportunities
(Niles & Harris-Bowlsbey, 2009)”.
• Data become information only when they are “understood by clients
and used to inform decision making, that is to assist them to choose
one alternative over another”.
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9. • A number of computer-based career planning systems (CBCPSs)
and computer-assisted career guidance systems (CACGS) offer
career information and help individuals sort through their values and
interests or find job information.
• One of the beauties of computer-based and computer-assisted career
planning and guidance systems is their accessibility.
• They are available in many settings and with diverse people across
cultures and life span.
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10. • Some of the top programs include:
1. SIGI3 (System of Interactive Guidance and Information, with “3”
indicating a refinement of the system)
2. DISCOVER
3. The Kuder Career Planning System
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11. SIGI3
• Contains five components:
1. Self-assessment (Values)
2. Identification of Occupational Alternatives (Locate)
3. Review of Occupational Information (Compare)
4. Review of Information on Preparation Programs (Planning)
5. Making Tentative Occupational Choices (Strategy)
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12. • By using SIGI3, researchers are able to clarify their values, locate and
identify occupational options, compare choices, learn planning skills
and develop rational career decision-making skills.
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13. DISCOVER
• Contains nine component
1. Beginning the Career Journey
2. Learning about the World of Work
3. Learning about Yourself
4. Finding Occupations
5. Learning about Occupations
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14. 6. Making Educational Choices
7. Planning Next Steps
8. Planning your Career
9. Making Transitions
• Most users of DISCOVER proceed through the module in a sequential
order, but the modules may be accessed on demand depending on
need.
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15. The Kuder Career Planning System
• The Kuder Career Planning System offers comprehensive solutions for
career planners at all stages of career development.
• It includes:
1. The Kuder Online Career Portfolio
2. Research-Based Assessments.
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16. • The Online Career Portfolio provides lifelong career planning that
allows individuals to store personal and academic information, search
and save educational and occupational data, build resumes and assess
assessment progress and results from any internet connection.
• The Research-Based Assessments, which are available in either
English or Spanish, help system users discover their interests, skills
and work values and how those characteristics relate to the world of
work.
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17. Career Development Theories
• Try to explain why individuals choose careers and also deal with the
career adjustment people make over time.
1. Trait-and-Factor Theory
2. Developmental Theories
3. Social-Cognitive Career Theory
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18. Trait and Factor Theory
• Frank Parsons (regarded as the founder of the vocational guidance
movement) developed the talent-matching approach: matching
careers to talents, skills and personality.
• Which was later developed into the Trait and Factor Theory
of Occupational Choice. At the center of Parsons' theory is the concept
of matching.
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19. • Parsons states that occupational decision making occurs when people
have achieved:
1. An accurate understanding of their individual traits (aptitudes,
interests, personal abilities)
2. A knowledge of jobs and the labor market
3. Rational and objective judgement about the relationship between
their individual traits, and the labor market.
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20. • An individual’s personality is the primary consideration in their choice
of vocation.
• People form stereotypes about jobs and careers which guide them in
their choices.
• People daydream about a possible career before they attempt it.
• People are not as happy with their career if they have not chosen one
that is congruent with their personality type.
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21. • Holland identified six different personality types: Realistic,
Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional
(RIASEC).
• All six personality types differ in interests, vocational preferences,
goals, beliefs, values and skills.
• A match between personality type, and the environment which
supports that type, leads to greater career satisfaction
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22. Developmental Theories
• Share the assumption that factors related to career choice are also
related to stages of personal and psychological development.
• Donald Super’s Life-Span, Life-Space Theory of Career
Development: highlights the importance of self-concept
• People develop a self concept through which they test out occupations
that will allow them to be their ideal self.
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23. • People change over time and with experience and so too do their
abilities, interests and values.
• Vocational development unfolds in five stages each of which contain a
developmental tasks to be completed i.e., growth, exploration,
establishment, maintenance and decline in their career life.
• Career Maturity or Adaptability: When a person is able or willing
to engage in the developmental tasks that are appropriate to the age
and career level in which he or she finds himself or herself.
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24. Super’s Rainbow theory
• Six Life Roles: Homemaker, Worker, Citizen, Leisurite, Student and
Child.
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26. Social-Cognitive Career Theory
• First published in 1994, stems from the work of Albert Bandura.
• SCCT theory posits that the interaction between people and
environment is highly dynamic and ever changing. People influence,
and are influenced by, the environment.
• Career related behavior is influenced by: A person’s behavior in
general, beliefs about self-efficacy, beliefs pertaining to outcomes and
goals, and genetically determined characteristics.
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27. • People’s interests lie in their belief that they can do these things well.
• Self efficacy development is influenced by gender, race, physical
health, disabilities and environmental variability.
• Other factors influence career choice: Discrimination, economic
variables, and the culture of the person doing the hiring as well as
chance happenings.
• People who have high self-efficacy and high ability perform higher in
educational and career endeavors then those who do not.
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