Career counselling and career coaching are similar in nature to traditional counselling. However, the main target is usually on issues like career exploration, career change, personal career development and other career related issues. Typically, when people come for career counselling, they know exactly what they need to urge out of the method but are unsure about how it’ll work. In the UK, career counselling would usually be mentioned as careers advice or guidance.

Career counselling is that the process of helping the candidates to pick a course of study which will help them to urge into job or make them employable. A career counsellor helps the candidates to urge into the career that suited to their aptitude, personality, interest and skills. So, it’s the method of creating an efficient correlation between the interior psychology of a candidate with the external factors of employability and courses. Career counsellors work with people from various walks of life, like adolescents seeking to explore career options, or experienced professionals contemplating a career change. Career counsellors typically have a background in vocational psychology or industrial/organizational psychology.

The approach of career counselling varies but will generally include the completion of 1 or more assessments. These assessments typically include cognitive ability tests, and personality assessments. the 2 most ordinarily used assessments are the Strong Interest Inventory and therefore the MBTI.

Challenges of career counselling /guidance

One of the major challenges associated with career counselling is encouraging participants to engage with it. For example, in the UK 70% of people under 14 say they have had no careers advice while 45% of people over 14 have had no or very poor/limited advice. Another issue is the spread of careers advice opportunities. For example, 40% of doctors in training found it difficult to get appropriate careers advice. 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.

Furthermore it is recognized that the giving of career advice is something that is widely spread through a range of formal and informal roles. In addition to career counselors it is also common for teachers, managers, trainers and HR specialists to give formal support in career choices.

Similarly it is also common for people to seek informal support from friends and family around their career choices and to bypass career professionals altogether. Today increasingly people rely on career web portals to seek advice on resume writing and handling interviews; as also to research on various professions and companies. It has even become possible to take vocational assessments online.

A history of career counselling/guidance

Frank Parson’s Choosing a Vocation (1909) was perhaps the first major work which is concerned with careers guidance.

Challenges of career counselling /guidance

There are lots of career guidance and counselling centres all over the world. They give services of guidance and counselling on higher studies, possibilities, chances and nature of courses and institutes.

Challenges of career counselling /guidance

An objective form of career counselling is through an aptitude test, or a career test. Career testing is now usually done online and provides insightful and objective information about which jobs may be suitable for the test taker based on combination of their interests, values and skills. Career tests usually provide a list of recommended jobs that match the test takers attributes with those of people with similar personalities who enjoy/are successful at their jobs