NAME: OKWOR CECILIA AMARACHI

STUDENT REG. NO. 21J01DCPS008

DEPTMENT: COUNSELLING PSYCHOLOGY
COURSE TITTLE: CAREER COUNSELLING
COURSE CODE: PSY 407
LECTURER: REV. DR. J. MBUGWA
ASSIGNMENT ONE

Introduction
Career counselling has come a long way since its origin in 19 th century. In our fast-evolving
world, career counselling is needed more than ever to help people manage their own career
paths and transitions.
The question we can ask, can career counselling be as a profession? Is career counselling a
secure job? What is the future of career counselling? would I be able to grow as a career
counsellor professional? All these questions come into our minds when we talk about
pursuing the profession of career counselling in our contemporary world.
However, the scenario has been changing rightly now. The world of work is growing very
fast and jobs like career counselling that was not very popular ten or fifteen years ago have
emerged. Therefore, the future of career counselling is bright enough to grow as a profession.
According to Cognizant’s report, there is a growth of 32% of the jobs in the market than last
years rate of 19%. Among the popular job categories, career counselling is one of the
professions with the highest year-over-year growth. It has encountered a seven-fold jump in
job postings and has been.
The aim of this assignment is to discuss the current trends or tendencies within career
counselling and the delivery of counselling services to clients in various settings including
those in schools and the community.
Responsibilities of a career counsellor
With the emergency of numerous technologies and industries, there is a rapid growth of new
job industries and job roles that did not even exist before. Students have plenty of career
options to choose from. However, with the rise in career options, their confusion has also
been increasing.
It has become quite different for students to find the right career fit and explore new avenues.
Here, the role of career counsellors takes into consideration.
They say when there is a problem, there is a solution too. career counsellors are the
professionals who provide solutions and guide people to find the correct career path.
The role of a career counsellor can be described as:
i. Guide students to determine their interests and abilities
ii. Counsel individual learners for developing their skills

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 iii. Guide students on how to overcome issues related to their academic scores
iv. Help students craft a long-term plan to fulfil their career objectives
v. Plan and conduct career services programs and events, and more.
Therefore, career counsellors serve as teachers, confidants, and advisors. They understand the
interests, abilities of their clients, and guide them accordingly to choose the best-career.
However, the journey of career counsellors had been like a rollercoaster ride. They had gone
through different professional phrases. We can see the revolutionary changes in the career
counselling profession here:
Past and present of career counselling
The future of career counselling can be understood by its pat and present state. In the early
days, the majority of the students take up science in school followed by engineering in
college and later on apply for Masters. They were unaware of their personalities, interests,
and desires in life. They were often advised by their parents, siblings, or neighbours. Only a
few people used to contact career counsellors.
As a result, counsellors used to have career counselling as one part of their job profile. They
were not completely into the career counselling profession because there was
 no recognition
 lack of awareness ‘
 the dearth of validation etc.
Career counselling profiles had no such importance and parents were not ready to counsel
their children. that is why people were not sure whether they should go for the career
counselling profession or not.
However, in the current time, the situation of the career counselling industry has been
revolutionized. Students have plenty of career opportunities. Parents understand the
importance of career counselling and want their children to be counselled.
Therefore, career counsellors have become established professionals with an existing client
base. They have been hired by local school districts, private schools, career counselling
agencies, etc.
Now, there are online programs available for career counsellors to improve their skills. They
can complete these programs themselves to advanced counselling skills.
Not just in general, the career counsellors now work as specialists in the following filed:
 parent counselling
 business and economics
 profile building
 alternative career
 school education
 study Abroad
 engineering and technology

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Future of Career Counselling
Considering the current trends or scenario, it is obvious that the future of career counselling is
going to be very bright. It is an ever-expanding profession. From school students to senior
professionals, career counselling has become the key to plan the career paths well. The career
counselling has increased drastically. The career counselling profession has become a
progressive full of opportunities.

The importance of career counselling in today’s time

In today’s extremely tough competitive contemporary world people are continuously losing
hope to survive on this planet, due to various reasons like large population, tough
competitions, and various difficulties that children in schools and communities are facing but
gradually students are realizing that they want to pursue a career in which they are passionate
about. But in reality, most of the students unable to identify this passion and for that the most
reliable way to find out their career passion, Career counselling holds huge significance in the
student’s life which can simply turn around the scenario upside down for them.
Why do we need a counsellor?
Once the famous German-born scientist Albert Einstein said that, Everybody is a genius but
if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, people will believe that the fish is quite
stupid. The fish’s best ability is to swim in the water. The value here is that each person or a
child possesses a unique character and to pull out that unique character the concerned person
needs a mentor or a counsellor. These days life is becoming full of challenges and with so
much career opportunities students are getting confused and puzzled up in making the right
decision and therefore career counsellor with is or her counselling, advice, analysis, research
can play a major role in making the right decision for students.
Who needs career counselling and why it is extremely important?
As human beings, each and everyone needs guidance so that he or she can improve
performances. Now few points through which career counselling can help in making careers:
Picking up the right career.
Career counsellor’s expert can analyse your interest personality character through which the
person can evaluate himself/herself with the best possible career options which suit the
person.
Sharing a friendly bond with the counsellor
Counsellor not only guides clients but they will also be like their best friend he/she can share
everything with them so that they can understand them from the heart as well.
Deciding time table and career strategy
Career counselling not only helps in making one a great personality but it will also help the
person to make one a more organized and a better person by various modern methods.
Helps in gaining right skill
Career counselling helps the client to gain focus which can truly reflect in one’s deeds and
work.

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Helps in learning technology
In this techno-savvy world, career counselling has expanded its length and breadth so that it
can reach to a mass audience so that they can also improve the country’s future as well.
Career counsellor can also interest via various means of communications so that student can
easily learn and interest with them.
Various other skills that can be learned via career counselling are:
1. through different career counselling sessions students can develop a problem-solving
attitude which can be helpful in resolving their career queries.

2. According to various reports it is said that a student can learn a lot more through
communication skills therefore the student can enhance his or her communication
skills.

3. Student can research on himself/herself with the help of a counsellor to explore new
opportunities according to the latest trends.

4. Career counsellor always helps the concerned student about having patience and also
help them to learn about listening skills.
For example, a cricket needs a coach to guide him, a student needs a teach to teach him
similarly a person who is unbale to decide about his or her career needs a counsellor for
counselling.

The Issues in Career Counselling

There are number of problems in career counselling in our world today. They are:
i. The self-concept or career identity is the basis for career choice, but people believe all
kinds of things about themselves and the world that do not have to be true at all. Many
clients have prejudices. They exclude all kinds of areas of interest in advance.
Without having any experience, they are convinced that something is not for them.
thus, they will never gain any experience in those areas. Large parts of the world
remain closed to them.

ii. Especially with young people, self-concept and career identity are strongly influenced
by family and friends. Their choices are not really their own choices, even when they
think they are.

iii. In many countries, schools try to teach career competencies to students and try to
develop their career identities. But these students are not yet ready for that, because
they do not yet have the necessary brain structures and experiences.

iv. Career counsellors do not always succeed in adequately answering their client’s
questions. The guidance offered is often not sufficient to adequately solve client’s
problems.

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 v. The career profession holds a crucial position in helping solve the huge problems that
the future world of work will bring. But we are insufficiently equipped to cope with
many current and future career problems.
The underlying problem
The underlying problem is that career science and practice are persistently dominated by an
old paradigms. Paraphrasing Person’s words from 1909: what we need for career decision-
making is to know ourselves, to know one’s possibilities and to think in a good way. thus, an
‘I’ somewhere in our head collects and processes data, and decides. This way of receiving
may be traced back far in history to, for example, Plato and Descartes, who asserted the
existence of a conscious, rational mind that was separate from the body, and that should lead
the person. Now, many scholars consider this dualistic idea as an enduring illusion and as an
obstacle toward scientific and practical progress in the social sciences and professions, (e.g.,
Capra, 1997; Damasio, 1994).
Of course, many career scholars have pointed to the urgent need for a new paradigm. But it
seems difficult to create one. When one considers more or less recent innovations like the
narrative approach or Cognitive Information Processing Theory, the career filed seems to be
struck in the old paradigm.
A reason for this might be that important findings of several sciences are not sufficiently
incorporated in career theory and practice. One example is free will. Of course, philosophers
have questioned this concept for a long time already. More recently, neuroscientific and
psychological research findings have cast further doubts about the existence of a conscious,
free will (e.g., Wegner, 2002). Without going as far as negating the existence of free will, it at
least appears to be dependent on all kinds of unconscious, involuntary processes. Closely
related are findings about the role of conscious thinking. Research demonstrates that a person
making decisions is often better off thinking not too much and allowing ample space for non-
conscious processes.
The question is how these kinds of findings may be incorporated in career counselling theory
and practice. In a general sense, systems theories offers a way out of flawed, dualistic views
(Capra, 1997). For the Vondracek, Ford and Porfeli (2014) that a systems theory approach is
most promising. In my opinion, however, their elaborations stay too much within Person’s
Control Theory propose a specific, cybernetic systems theory, the Perceptual Control
(Powers, 2005), as an alternative.

The delivery of career counselling services to clients in various settings including those
in schools and community
In view of the apparent ignorance of many young people about career prospects, and in view
of personality maladjustment among school children, career counselling offers and
counsellors shall be appointed in post-primary institutions (1998, p. 41).
It was following this that universities in different countries began to introduce programs in
career counselling at the undergraduate levels. Clearly, the main aim of introducing career
counselling programs in higher institutions in schools is that of training professional
vocational and career counsellors who would in turn guide secondary school pupils and
communities at large on the choice of life-long careers.

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Paragraph 81 of the newly reviewed National Policy on Education in Nigeria, (2013) went a
step further and considered offering Career Counselling to University students, viz:
Provide high quality Career Counselling and lifelong learning programs that prepare students
with the knowledge and skills for self-reliance and the world of work (2013, p. 35).
The said policy also lays emphasis on the need for continuous training of teachers in general
career counselling concepts as well as in establishment and equipping counselling clinic in
schools to afford effective delivery of Career counselling and the General Counselling
Services.
For example, Nigerian scholars such as Onoyase and Onoyase (2009), Oladele (2007), as
well as Raji (2012) have in their works continued to emphasize the need to consider the
following factors in the efforts to achieve wise career decision:
 social and socio-demographic characteristics (gender, health, history, employment of
parents, household size, individual life experience),

 needs and interests of young people and their parents,

 opportunities in the labour market and development opportunities for the selected
profile,

 development opportunities (in the sense of training) for the desired professional
choice,

 thorough knowledge of interests, abilities, needs and values and development of

positive work attitude,

 increase in students’ knowledge of career possibilities, the structure of the world of

work and job duties and requirements,

 know-how on principles of decision-making and planning skills.

The above stated factors can only be achieved if full time professional career counsellors are
employed in educational institutions in schools, the community and the world at large.
Organizations and individuals like OECD (2014), Deutscher Verband fur Bildung and
Berufsberatung (dvb) (2007) and individual authors like Schiersmann and Weber (2013),
WeiB (2009), Ertelt (2007), among others have expressed very similar opinions on what is
required in order to be able to guide youths in the process of making wise career decisions.
What the investigations conducted by the author during her dissertation research filed work in
2009 and situation analysis of the nine Technical College in Osun State of Nigeria in 2014
and 2015 respectively, demonstrate that about 90% of young people have no knowledge of,
and have not been guided to take cognisance of the above-mentioned factors before selecting
their subjective combination while in secondary schools. They lack opportunities for a
professional vocational and career counselling during their transitions from Junior Secondary
School to Senior School. Most young people selected their subject combinations and future
career on the basis of factors such as:
 peer group influence,
 parental influence
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  societal value,
 fantasy information from social media etc. The important factors that are paramount
to making good career decisions were hardly considered.
As a result of wrong subject combinations and wrong career decisions, the number of school
and study drop-outs has continued to increase year after year. This has naturally led to high
rates of criminal activities in our society today. This has in no small measure contributed to
economic difficulty and at the same time caused problems for affected individuals, their
families and the society at large. It should be considered as an urgent matter to make sure that
young people decide their future career after junior secondary school through the professional
counselling of the career counsellor. In many schools, secondary schools three profiles of
choice are available after the junior secondary education:
 Science (science oriented subject combinations),
 Arts (humanities oriented subject combinations),
 Social science (vocational and business oriented subject combinations).
In a research carried out by Onoyase and Onoyase (2009) and which focused on the
relationship between personality types and career choice of students of secondary school in
the Federal Government Colleges (in Anambra state, Nigeria), findings have shown that
students chose the following career after junior secondary school focuses only on the basis of
whether the career can win them great prestige in the future. They further presented the
following as the choices of the targeted adolescent:
 medicine
 accounting,
 law,
 pharmacy and
 engineering.
Onoyase and Onoyase (2009), p. 114) came to the conclusion that the targeted adolescents
were both ignorant of subject combinations that could lead to their dream career and as those
careers that suit their personality types.
Not only should adolescents be well guided in the process of making career choices, parents,
teachers and communities also need to be educated on the important factors. Furthermore,
professional career counsellor also need to work as a team with community leaders,
politicians, philanthropists from diverse career background etc., to access necessary supports
to facilitate quality career counselling program in schools and the community at large.
Enechet et al. (2008, p. 31) took an initiative from the new national policy on education and
suggested that the services of a school counsellor ought to begin from the first year of
secondary school education to the end of senior secondary school. a file is to be opened on
each student for the purpose of recording data on aptitudes, performance in class and
examination, temperament, interests, family background, etc.
At the appropriate time, the data, as well as the results of the state examination at the end of
junior secondary education would be used in the process of advising the student on the
subject combination, he or she should opt for. Also, to be involved in the process are the
parents and class teacher of the adolescent.
Expected services to career counselling to the clients

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Important points extrapolated from the “International Vereinigung für Schul – und
Berufsberatung” (IVSBB) on the expected services of career counselling are presented as
follows:
i. high quality career counselling services should have life-long impact on the subject

ii. it must provide professional guidance to every individual by making all relevant
information that could be needed to achieve wise career decision making available.

iii. The intervention from career counselling should guarantee continuous career
development in terms of continuous educational development and career progress.

iv. Career counselling is a profession that recognises the importance of giving equal
educational and job opportunities to every person, regardless of their social
demographic status or background.

v. And to achieve these equal opportunities for all, there must be continuous assistance
from professional career counsellor towards their clients.
OECD (2004) presented its view on the expected activities, services and medium of services
delivery in career counselling. summaries of these are in the graphic below
S
e career counselling services are needed in schools, universities, education
r institutions, public employment services, business, voluntarism institutions,
Av community services and at private sector/non-profit organization.
ci
tc
ie Its setting or operation can be individual and group counselling in
vs nature. The services can be rendered through face-to-face
i communication or social medium of communication (for example,
hotlines and web-based services)
t
i
e
s In the process of counselling a client, the counsellor will provide information
about career requirement printed, electronic devises, assessment and self-
assessment tools, personal consultations, career training programs to prepare
Perfor individuals or groups for the requirements of their dream job. The forum should
mance also provide opportunities to raise awareness and provide the competence
spectru profile required for different careers. The forums as well should provide
m information about/on available job prospects and challenges on jobs for seekers
as well as for adolescent in preparation for transitional period from secondary
school to tertiary institutions.

To help us through the stress and uncertainty of these periods, we can turn to a career
counsellor for help. From guiding school and community towards their first jobs to helping
experienced workers change professions, career counsellors can make difficult transitions
easer. How do they achieve or deliver their counselling services? Below are five of the top
techniques used in career counselling.
i. developing a therapeutic relationship

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as with all forms of counselling, career counselling is most successful when the counsellor
forms a meaningful connection with their client. While many career counsellors use career
aptitude tests and personality tests, the top career counsellors have completed a clinical
mental health program and use their clinical training to go beyond simple career counselling.
they work to understand their client’s worries, interests, fears, and desires on a level that is
much deeper than what any test might reveal. By establishing a therapeutic relationship with
their clients, the top career counsellors can provide fuller support and guidance.
ii. defining goals
the top career counsellors set specific goals with their clients and redirect their clients
towards those goals if the conversation drifts too far toward other concerns. That said, career
counsellors might ask clients to describe their perfect job, or consider where they would like
to be 5 years from now. Career counselling professionals might also focus their client’s
attention on what is important to them in life and what they enjoy accomplishing at work. All
of these questions can help define a career-seeker’s goals.
iii. creating room for self-exploration
top career counsellors do not just hand their clients the results of career tests. They get to
know their clients and, most importantly, they give their clients the space to talk through the
issues affecting their career choices. A good career counselling session can be a gateway to
self-discovery, but only if the career counsellor is skilled in helping his or her client open
avenues of self-reflection. For the top career counsellors, data like vocational assessments are
only the beginning.
iv. understanding the job market
it does little good to be told you are suited for a career that is in steep decline. Likewise, there
is not much utility in being told you are well suited for a career you lack the skills for. The
career counsellors now this and work hard to stay abreast of the issues facing the job market.
They pay close attention to the ways autonomation, outsourcing, downsizing, and global
competition affect job opportunities. Often, counsellors work with their clients to make sure
their clients are competent with technology, accepting of diversity, prepared to handle
modern job insecurities, and capable of maintaining the level of occupational awareness
needed to avoid falling behind or becoming redundant.
v. helping turn life themes into goals
The best career counsellors do not just recommend possible professions. They help their
clients uncover a previous unrealized passion for specific careers. To do this, career
counsellors take a holistic approach, viewing each client as a whole person and then seeking
out life themes that have a natural connection to a career for which the client is qualified.
There is little long-term benefit to entering a career that one is good at but dislike. The best
approach is to find a career that is in tune with one’s abilities and the person’s life goals.

Conclusion
In the coming time, the scope of career counselling will expand and the graph of career
counselling will increase exponentially. Therefore, the future of career counselling can be
seen on the brighter side. If we have the right skills and ability to understand people’s
requirements and provide them with the best possible solutions, we can be a part of this
evergreen growing industry. Career counselling is also important because counsellor uses

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various logical methods which can help students and communities and career counselling can
be extremely beneficial to build careers of students and community and it is equally
important in the education service system as well.

REFERENCES
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Emerald Insight.
Capra, F. (1997). The web of life: A new scientific understanding of living systems. New
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Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes ’error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. New York:
Avon.
Federal Republic of Nigeria (2015). National policy on education (3rd ed.). Vgl. National
Policy of Education, Federal Republic of Nigeria 2013, Paragraph 9, & 89, S. 41, &1.
Oladele, J. O. (2007). Guidance and Counselling: A Functional Approach, Focus on the 6-3-
3-4 Educational System (4th ed.). Lagos, Nigeria: Johns-Lad Publishers Limited.
Onoyase, D. & Onoyase, A. (2009). Relationship between personality types and career choice
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Kommission (2004). Berufsberatung – En Handbuch für Politisch Verantwortliche.
Luxemberg: Amt für amtliche Veroffentlichugen der Europaische Gemeinshaften.
OECD (Hrsg.) (2004). Bildungs-und Berufsberatung. Verzahung mit der offentlichen Politik.
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German translation, http//www.oecd.org/dataoecd/35/53/30499492.pdf (access: 28 th August
2011).
Powers, W. T. (2005). Behaviour: The Control of Perception, 2 nd ed. New Canaan
(Connecticut, USA): Benchmark Publications.
Raji, M.N. (2014). Situational analysis of Vocational/Technical Education and Training
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