Conference Sketch

By David McKay

Career Style Assessment and Counselling: Principles and Practices

“Isn’t career counselling just giving a bunch of tests to tell people what career they should enter?”– student to a professor

On Friday May 12th 2006, Paul Hartung, from Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine explained to nearly sixty career advisors how we can make career exploration a little bit more creative than the above quotation would imply. We met at the University of Toronto – St George Campus for a day long intensive Learning Institute which featured a lively lecture, a demonstration of the technique, opportunities for networking with other practitioners, and a buffet luncheon served in the university Career Resource Centre.

A few of us looked forward to applying the insights of narrative therapy to career counselling; the event was promoted as a “narrative method to foster career choice”. Paul Hartung addressed this in a question from the floor. While he comes from the same broadly constructivist framework as narrative therapy he is using narrative in a somewhat different way than the narrative therapists.

His method is a treatment for the test anomie that happens when a client returns from a battery of tests disempowered instead of energized. On the surface this is a set of six questions, but they are open ended. Clients are encouraged to explore the stories of their lives and see in them directions for career and life. It is unlikely a client will have a sudden revelation. Rather, she will become aware of values, work-life preferences, and problem-solving strategies. This will help to identify what she wants in her job situation and in turn – enable her to deal more effectively with all those test results.

I spent the following twenty days asking, answering and reflecting on these questions in my private journals. While there were no huge surprises, I received quiet confirmations of what I already knew about myself. The process also facilitated a shift in emphasis in my own career objectives which may lead to asking more pointed questions when I’m next interviewed for a job.

I won’t use this method regularly or often. Most of my clients look for rapid reemployment and career exploration seems like a luxury. Yet I see using aspects of this process here and there, possibly coupled with Nelson Bolle’s success stories approach. Over two-thirds of the workshop’s participants were from university based career centres and I can readily see this approach proving helpful with the what-do-I-do-with-my-degree questions.

Review written by David McKay. David is a reflective practitioner with a living interest in constructivist approaches to counselling and training gained through earlier encounters with this method in his previous career as a credit counsellor. He now works as an employment counsellor with an unemployed help centre and takes courses part-time to deepen his understanding and skills in career development practice. David can be reached for comment at dwmckay@sympatico.ca.