The degree to which a career counselor has to help clients apply knowledge of their personal characteristics with educational, curricular, and job choice is intensive yet fundamental to the practice of career guidance and counseling. Unlike MH counseling, career counseling requires one to help clients identify what information they need, where to find information, ensure the information is accurate and current, and help the person know how the information can be used to inform decisions (e.g.,Herr & Cramer, 1996). In other words, career information either about the self or the world-of-work helps fuel career, education, training, and employment decision making (e.g., Herr & Cramer, 1996). I’ve come to compare face-to-face career counseling to working with clients who are dually diagnosed with MH and substance abuse because there are dual processes always present. When I think of distance career counseling, I think there are three processes –the distance counseling process, the career counseling process, and incorporating distance career information in the counseling process.
In practice distance career counselor must carefully think about distance career information delivery. One of the biggest challenges is determining how to get reliable career information that is accessible from a distance. Traditionally when meeting with clients face-to-face, there is a collection of books and employer materials (e.g., in college career libraries, on private practice shelves) to inform people about activities like interviewing, applying to graduate school, career options, job outlook & salary information, job hunting skills, etc. Although there is no exact replication of traditional resources, there is some history of computer applications and a newly emerging impact of Web 2.0 technology that I want to review briefly to assist distance career counselors as they deliberate how to incorporate career information into the career counseling process.
Three trends come to mind that I believe need to be contemplated for current practice of a distance career counselor. Within these points I will offer a cursory history.
Read the complete post here: Indispensable Information and Distance Career Counseling
Author: © Lynn Atanasoff, PhD, LPC, DCC
Originally published by Online Therapy Institute, Inc. January 12, 2011
