The World Wide Web as a Career Resource

By Neil Baldwin

Summary

A career counsellor emphasizes client ownership of the career counselling process by requiring participation, whatever the age or life stage of the client. Information gathering is a large part of this participation and, increasingly, Internet technology plays an everyday role in the process. This article describes three ways in which a practitioner gets clients on board to use the World-Wide-Web as a career resource in order to help them get a clear picture of their options and to generate new alternatives.

I have been doing career counselling for just under 10 years. Most of this time has been spent working with a broad cross-section of students and the general public at a community college. Since 1996, I have continued my general public career counselling in a private practice. I have always seen my role as one of resource and consultant, providing the skills and information that will both empower and enable clients to make effective choices about their career and education.

It is invariably a reflection of my particular style and personality, but I also see career decision-making as a highly information-based process. It is a simplification but, just like choosing a car, a house, or any other major purchase one must live with for a while, the likelihood of making the “right” choice tends to rise in proportion to the amount of consideration and research that goes into making it.

Research makes up the majority of my clients’ career counselling process. Research gets them facts about career fields they are considering. Research, without fail, also leads them to alternatives they had not previously considered. I like getting clients to research because it fosters their ownership of the process. Clients like to research because that is when they start to see their options open up.

This brings us to the Internet and its most used component, the World-Wide-Web. For those who have not yet ventured past the on-ramp of this ubiquitous information superhighway, the Internet is a source for (among other things) all types of career resources: occupational information, labour market trends, employment statistics, company information, colleges, universities, education and training, job listings, government programs, and the list goes on and on. The World-Wide-Web is a graphically-oriented way of presenting and accessing all this information.

While we all know many useful print publications for career and educational research, the Web adds an entirely new dimension of scope, currency, and ability to search. While some might say that enough exists in print for competent career research, the fact is that the Web, and the whole Internet in general, can no longer be overlooked as a source of up-to-date career resources. What’s more, in contrast to just two years ago, there is now an abundance of Canadian career content on the Web. As career counsellors, we have a duty not only to know about all this, but also to use it and to advocate its use.

As a practitioner, what do I do in this respect? While I cannot require it, I appeal to every client—adult or adolescent, career changer or career shifter, computer-brain or computer-illiterate—to use the Web as part of their career exploration process. I do this because, most immediately, it will make their research more effective and expand their career options. I also make this appeal because people need Internet computer skills. They need these skills to find work and they need these skills to do the work they eventually find.

How do I get clients, especially the computer-phobic variety, to actually buy into this? The answer lies in three techniques I learned working in retail while I was at the University of Toronto working on my counselling degree.

First, emphasize what they get not how to get it. As much as I personally love details, technical minutiae and other fine points of computers that drive my wife to rent Jane Austen movies, I restrain my enthusiasm for such things with clients. I try to sell my clients on using the Web by SHOWING them what it can offer. I try to entice them by showing some select web pages from Canada WorkInfoNet (http://www.workinfonet.ca/), Job Futures (http://www.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/JobFutures/english/index.htm), the National Job Bank (http://jb-ge.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/), and any other useful pages that have a clean, uncluttered layout that is less likely to confuse or overwhelm. I just tell them that all they have to do is “point and click”… no computer expertise required!

Second, make it difficult to say “no”. If my client has a computer but is not “on the Net”, I give specific recommendations on a modem, if required, and an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that I know to have a straightforward, self-installing package. If my client’s computer is too old, or they don’t have one at all—and budget, religion, or other considerations preclude a purchase—I offer a printed list of local free (e.g., public library) and fee-by-the-hour (e.g., business centres) access points. Further, I designed a tip sheet with my “Top 7” picks of “Canadian Internet starting points for career exploration, educational planning, and job finding”. Don’t give clients long lists of sites. It looks onerous and some will inevitably be “out of order” (what experienced surfers know as Error 404). All they need is a few good starting points, preferably Canadian ones, that have links to further career resource web sites.

Finally, model the behaviour. I don’t just mean demonstrating the Web when it comes to the research portion of clients’ career counselling experience. Rather, relate your use of the Web as a career resource on an ongoing basis. When clients step into my consulting office they often find me “surfing” or with a web page (hopefully career-oriented!) on the screen. Part of my chit-chat in the first few minutes of each session often includes something I came across on the Internet. Whenever possible, use the Web to help answer clients’ questions. I recall working with a young adult interested in police work. We looked through career monographs in my office and then went online to the RCMP site where we found detailed information (and even pictures) on recruiting and police careers. That client already had some familiarity with the web but those ten minutes hooked him on research as an effortless way to open his eyes to opportunities and alternatives.

Overall, the key to participation is to keep it simple. The World-Wide-Web is vast and complex but one doesn’t have to know all about it to use it. It is much like computer software: 10 years ago it had limited functions so we read the manual and learned the whole program; now it is elaborately featured so we just use the help feature on a “need to know” basis. Treat the Web the same way.

Printed career resources have a place. They are quick, ready reference, always there when you need them. While the Web will never supplant that, it does supplement it. And just like browsing through printed career information, surfing the Web opens mental doors and expands career horizons.

Over the last couple of years, I have given demonstrations of using the net as a career resource to audiences of professionals (e.g., NATCON, CCIA, OSCA) and the general public (e.g., libraries, career centres). On every occasion, some people have made an express point of thanking me, amazed at the newfound breadth of information literally at their fingertips. So get up to speed yourself and then get your clients on board as you dazzle them with what the Web can do. You won’t just be helping their career planning process, you will be giving them valuable life skills.

(Web addresses are accurate as of Sep/98.)

About the Writer

Neil Baldwin, C.C.C. is a member of the Canadian Career Information Association (CCIA) and Principal of Royston Baldwin & Associates, a career counselling private practice in Burlington, Ontario. His email address is baldwin@inforamp.net

Updated from the original article which appeared in the publication: “Technology & Career and Employment Counselling: A Compendium of Thoughts…” (The Counselling Foundation of Canada, 1998). To receive your free copy of this publication, please call Contact Point at (416) 205-9543, or e-mail us at admin@contactpoint.ca.