Major Milestones Career Counseling

¶ … milestones in my career as well as identify principle actions and advice that assisted me in moving forward in my career. People often are not aware of the difficulties that entail being a career counselor. It requires a myriad of skills of which take time to learn and master. The first major milestone I discuss is the utilization of the Myers-Briggs Test. This test not only helped me identify options for people career-wise, but also categorize them in a way that was easy to discuss and examine.

My next major milestone involved the four phases of assessment. It takes time to evaluate and understand where the client is intellectually and emotionally. By assessing things like education level, preferences, it makes it easier to understand where that person can take their career in relation to their current skills or plans for future skill development. Everything takes time to fully grasp and these phases make it easier to make the process faster and easier to perform.

The third and final major milestone involves understanding a person's background and his or her interactions so he or she understand what may be preventing them from getting the results they want and/or the career they want. If someone experience personal stress at home or at work, in school, it can severely affect their career choices and career options. By understanding this, it helped me grow because I was able to show concern and awareness for what really prevents someone from pursuing their desired career.

Information Being a career counselor involves being able to understand what works best for someone else in regards to their career. It is not an easy task because everyone is different and some require more help than others. However, being a career counselor is a rewarding experience because everyone needs at one point or another guidance in choosing a career. Careers, employment in general are one of the most important aspect to living a healthy, adult life. A quarter of an adult's life is spent working.

So why not make it enjoyable? That is where a career counselor can help someone make the right choices to make sure the career chosen becomes an enjoyable experience and not just another paycheck. The first major milestone in my career is when I recognized how important vocational instruments are. While people can use screening tools online to help them making decisions in regards to their careers, nothing can compare to when someone else evaluates that individual.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was created by two women, Katherine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers. It is a multiple choice test that people take in order to see if they fit into one of sixteen personality types. One day I was helping someone identify their personality type using the Myers-Briggs test. That person tested as an INTJ and when I assessed him, he seemed like an INTJ. So then we looked at career options for INTJs since he appeared to dislike authority, routine, and detail-oriented tasks.

I suggested to him he try to see if a career in journalism would suit him as the job offers variety, he gets to write, and he decides when he wants to go on assignments and so forth, independent of anyone telling him what to do. This was not only helpful for him, but he felt he had a clearer direction in which way he wanted to go with his career.

When it comes to assessment of an individual, as discussed in the Zunker book, there are four phases for assessment. The first is focus on the client's life structure, the second involves measuring a client's perception of the work role, the third entails measuring abilities and interests, and the fourth phase is evaluation of life themes and self-concepts via cards and adjective checklists (Zunker, 2015). By incorporating the Myers-Briggs test into the assessment, it allows an easier way to determine options for the individual.

Another major milestone was the importance of self-concept in vocational development. Following Gottfredson's 1981 theory, I learned to identify the occupational preferences of an individual based on any accompanying mental and physical growth the person experienced. This is because the intellectual level and socioeconomic background greatly influence's a person's self-concept within a dominant society (GOTTFREDSON & GOTTFREDSON, 2009). Women for example move more towards careers that involve nurturing because that is what unfortunately society assigns to the gender of women.

There are always exceptions, but nursing for example is predominantly female career field. The third and final major milestone was understanding how to search for causes of client.