UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS

GRADUATE SCHOOL

GC 821 CAREER COUNSELING

1st SEMESTER, AY 2019-2020
LECTURE NOTES: Week 1
INSTRUCTOR: Asst. Prof. Marissa S. Nicasio, PhD

Overview and Key Concepts

Career – multiple life-roles people play and the importance of work in people’s lives
• Super (1976) – the course of events constituting a life
• Sears (1982) – totality of work one does in a lifetime
• Herr, et.al. (2004) – total constellation of roles played over the course of a lifetime

Career Development – lifelong psychological and behavioral processes as well as contextual influences
shaping one’s career over the lifespan.
- Involves creation of a career pattern, decision-making style, integration of life roles, values
expression, and life-role self-concepts (Herr, et.al., 2004)

Career Development Interventions – lifelong psychological and behavioral processes as well as

contextual influences shaping one’s career over the lifespan.
- Involves creation of a career pattern, decision-making style, integration of life roles, values
expression, and life-role self-concepts (Herr, et.al., 2004)
Activities as interventions:
o Individual and group career counseling
o Career development programs
o Career education
o Computer information delivery systems
Skills targeted by interventions
o Developing self-awareness and occupational awareness
o Decision-making skills
o Acquiring job-search skills
o Adjusting to occupational choices after they have been implemented
o Coping with job stress

Career Counseling – involves a formal relationship in which a professional counselor assists a client or a
group of clients to cope more effectively with career concerns (ex. making a career choice, coping with
career transitions)
- The career counseling process involves:
o Establishing rapport with clients
o Assess the client’s career concerns
o Establish goals for the career counseling relationship
o Intervene in ways that help clients cope more effectively with career concerns
o Evaluate client’s progress
o Terminate career counseling
Career Education – the systematic attempt to influence the career development of students and adults
through various types of educational strategies, including providing occupational information, infusing
career-related concepts into the academic curriculum, offering various worksite-based experiences, and
offering career planning courses (Isaacson & Brown, 2000)

Career Development Program – a systematic program of counselor-coordinated information and

experiences designed to facilitate individual career development (Herr & Cramer, 1996)

History of Career Counseling

1. Job Placement Services (1890-1919)

o Shift from agriculture to industrial and manufacturing processes which brought people
to relocate
o Focus was to help people identify appropriate occupational options and make
vocational choices
o Frank Parsons (founder of career counseling) formulated a career counseling model
called “true reasoning” to help young people find new jobs (also known as the Parsonian
approach)
o Parsonian approach consisted of three steps:
▪ Develop a clear understanding of yourself, aptitudes, abilities, interests,
resources, limitations, and other qualities
▪ Develop knowledge of the requirements and conditions of success, advantages
and disadvantages, compensation, opportunities, and prospects in different
lines of work
▪ Use “true reasoning” on the relations of these two groups of facts
o At this stage, there was also an increase in the use of psychological tests in career
counseling, which made the approach more ‘scientific’ in facilitating self-awareness
o In 1913, the National Vocational Guidance Association (NVGA, currently NCDA) was
established as part of the interventions to address the needs of the time
2. Educational Guidance in the Schools (1920-1939)
o Emerged from the humanitarian, progressive, social reformers in schools
o An influx of students both as a result of increased literacy to cope with job demands and
as a result of high number of pregnancies after WW1
o The Minnesota Employment Stabilization Research Institute was established to create a
more stable labor force and foster economic recovery from the Great Depression
o The first edition of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles was published in 1939 where
18,000 occupations were titled, coded, and defined
3. Colleges and Universities and the Training of Counselors (1940-1959)
o Two major events led to shifting focus of societal resources on colleges and the training
of professional counselors: WW2 and USSR’s successful launching of rockets to space
o End of WW2 resulted in lack of jobs for returnee armed services veterans and
subsequent displacement of current workers; counseling needs of personnel who were
disabled during the war
o USSR’s space mission led to the National Defense Education Act (NDEA, 1957) which
included providing training for counselors to identify and encourage science and math
majors for college education
 o In 1942, Carl Rogers published Counseling and Psychotherapy, which shifted focus of
career counseling into an increased understanding of self-acceptance and self-
understanding as goals for vocational counseling
o In 1951, the American Personnel Guidance Association (currently ACA) was established
as a direct result of the growth of vocational guidance
o In the same year, Donald Super launched the Career Pattern Study, one of the first
longitudinal studies of career development and showed that career development is an
on-going process in a person’s life.
4. Meaningful Work and Organizational Career Development (1960-1979)
o The was a period of idealism and hope so many young people wanted jobs that were
meaningful and would allow them to change the world for the better, contrary to the
available jobs that were overly conforming and have depersonalizing conditions
o There was also tremendous growth in the area of theory generation, particularly with
behavioral, developmental, and psychoanalytic theories of career development
o Career assessment instruments also grew dramatically and use of computer-assisted
career guidance and delivery-information systems emerged
5. Independent Practice and Outplacement (1980-1989)
o Characterized by declining economic system from an industrial age to an information
and technology age which resulted loss of jobs and marginalization of organized labor
o The emergence of private practice career counselor was the direct result of the
beginnings of a national acceptance of career counseling as an important service to
address occupational transition and proliferation of mental health private practices.
o NVGA established standards for the profession and credentials to identify competencies
necessary to perform the task of career-vocational guidance
o Outplacement counseling also emerged when companies started to downsize to
decrease staffing costs and increase profit margins
o In 1984, NVGA was renamed into the National Career Development Association (NCDA)
6. Current Trends (1990 - present)
o Career counseling found itself in a variety of new directions: upward (outplacement f
senior executives), downward (poor and homeless), outward (schools and agencies),
and inward (multicultural)
▪ Upward – successful retirement planning
▪ Downward – poor and homeless required to go back to work
▪ Outward – school to work opportunities
▪ Inward – work with diverse populations
o Career treatment outcome studies also moved beyond traditional college student
samples to include more diverse population

Ethical and Legal Considerations

1. Ethical Dilemma vs. Moral Temptation

o Ethical dilemma – occurs when there are competing “rights” or there is a struggle to
determine the “least bad”
o Moral temptation – struggle between right and wrong
2. Relevant Ethical Codes for Career Practitioners
o American Counseling Association
o American Psychological Association
 o National Career Development Association
o American School Counseling Association
3. Using ACA Principles to Resolve Ethical Decisions (Van Hoose, 1986)
o Autonomy – inherent dignity and freedom of a person to make a choice
o Nonmaleficence – first, do no harm
o Beneficence – responsibility to do good within the limits of competence
o Justice – obligation to act fairly and nondiscriminatory
o Fidelity – faithfulness to promises made and to the truth
4. Additional Principles (Beauchamp and Childress, 2001)
o Veracity – tell the truth and do not deceive
o Privacy – allow individuals to limit access to information about themselves
o Confidentiality – allow individuals to control access to information they have shared
5. Ethical Standards and Ethical Practice for Career Counselors
o Offer only services you are competent to offer
o Respect and value individual differences among clients and potential clients
o Treat information received from and about clients as owned by the client and held in
trust by the counselor
o Do not engage in any professional relationship in which objectivity and ability to work
with client may be impaired
o Assume professional responsibility for clients, and if unable to assist, help the client
obtain alternative services
o Recognize you have obligations to other members of the profession and to society and
act in responsible ways by considering the effects of your behavior on others
6. Using an Ethical Decision-Making Model
a. Identify the problem and stakeholders
o A great deal of information comes from the client and the counselor’s assessment of the
client.
o In the event that important information is not available, explore avenues to obtain
information without compromising client confidentiality.
o Stakeholders are people that are likely to be helped or harmed by the counselor’s
actions.
o Welfare of the client is always priority, but welfare of all stakeholders should also be
considered.
b. Apply the code of ethics applicable
c. Determine the core issue of the dilemma. Consult other professionals or literature.
o Central issues refer to issues on competence, confidentiality, informed consent, and
multiple relationships.
o Research provides perspectives of experts that helps the counselor become aware of
previously unconsidered aspects of the situation.
o Literature are more specific than professional guidelines as it usually discusses nuances
of cases related to an ethical case.
d. Generate potential courses of action
o Brainstorm potential courses of actions available. Evaluate and eliminate later on.
o “What would this action say about me as a person as well as a counselor?” (Hill, 2004)
e. Consider the potential consequences of all options.
o Examine competing values and blind spots.
o List down costs and benefits of options available.
f. Choose and implement course of action
o Client is the first person to be considered.
o Prepare formal documentation for all steps.
g. Evaluate decision
o Offers opportunity to acknowledge positive ways and shortcomings to inform the next
dilemma that comes along.
o Also increases ethical sensitivity.