03/01/2025

Overcoming Students’ Assumptions About Career Counseling

By Adam Diaz

Students pursuing a master’s degree in mental health counseling programs are required to complete coursework in career counseling. Many students, like myself, start off with a preconceived notion that mental health counseling and career counseling are two distinct tracks. It wasn’t until I began my required coursework in career counseling that I understood how vital it is in supporting clients in a clinical setting, and how deeply careers impact self-concept, the supports that are available, connections with others, and the overall structure of life. Career counseling as a discipline requires knowledge and an approach that is well-informed, practical, and integrative. Counselor educators may need to help counselors-in-training overcome the assumption that career counseling is simply vocational counseling. The point of career counseling should be stressed throughout training. Understanding the integrative approach that is needed to support clients makes career counseling concepts both practical and expansive, and selecting frameworks that tap into this is fundamental in career counselor training.

Integration of Theory and Practice

Prior to taking a course in career counseling, I had created a narrative that my life’s work would support mental health in clients and that career counseling was a completely different profession. Upon reflection, I also believed that my own insecurities or anxiety around the word “career” played a role in my initial aversion to career counseling.  Dr. Rich Feller, professor of counseling and career development at Colorado State University, noted: “I’ve never really separated career counseling from mental health and I’m not sure how you can” (Feller, 2016). This sentiment has become more clear to me through exposure to different case studies, and particularly through partner work in my career course. I now view both of these as completely related and essential in supporting clients, and more importantly, I have achieved comfort with career counseling as part of best practices for any mental health practitioner.

An assignment in my career counseling course that helped change my view of career counseling was a project on Savickas’s Career Construction Interview using the Life Design Counseling Manual (Savickas, 2015) to aid in the development of Life Design Counseling for Career Construction. The Manual describes phases of treatment, session-by-session principles, and an outline of procedures; each component includes clearly defined yet flexible steps for common, everyday practice (Savickas, 2015). My assigned partner and I first prepared and rehearsed the structure of the interview (which included its core elements: sense making, the development of an egalitarian relationship between counselor and client, and reflection). Questions during this part of the interview include such things as “who did you admire growing up? Who were your heroes and heroines”, which elicit responses that can include sports stars, actors, and politicians. After the initial interview, counselors are tasked with preparing a narrative for the client which aids in career construction and the co-construction of goals. “Although structured and systematic, the flexible guidelines allow counselors to appropriately address their clients’ situations and values” avoiding the false stereotype that career counseling is only vocational guidance (Savickas, 2015, p. 6).

Structure Can Provide Freedom

My partner and I rehearsed our scripts individually before conducting our interviews with each other. The practical nature of the script allowed for flexibility throughout the session (being prepared created space for improvisation) and while we were both prepared for the role of counselor, I believe that we were both taken aback by our answers in the role of clients. Understanding how idolizing Indiana Jones as a child could connect to the type of work that I have chosen as an adult is fascinating territory and it is the type of discovery that brings individuals to the counseling profession. Savickas pointed out that the “stories people tell have a way of taking care of them … dwelling in their own stories often destabilizes old ideas that block decision making and usually enables an awareness that prompts a choice (Savickas, 2015, p. 9). Reconstructing a “life portrait” then requires a combination of sense-making (interpretation) and concrete paths towards a profession, which may include more preparation or support seeking. As clients give voice to their stories, they hear what they already know and find the answers which they seek.

Transparency in Gatekeeping

Gatekeeping is well addressed in the counseling literature, including the need for programs to create transparent performance assessment policies and practices that are explicitly communicated to students and to which students can respond (Haddock et al., 2020). Throughout the completion of the Career Construction Interview, our professor held all-class meetings to review the steps of the interview process, to review how this work would be assessed (including sample videos of this framework and rubrics), and offer direct feedback afterwards attached to the filmed interviews submitted. This process was structured, transparent, supportive, and motivating - all points that should be considered when preparing coursework for career counseling training. Furthermore, the use of filmed interviews becomes particularly important for training in online graduate programs where feedback is an important part of the process and often includes both peer feedback, in the form of observation notes or class discussion, as well as notes or scaled assessments or rubrics provided to the student by the instructor (Cicco, 2020). This formative feedback allows students an opportunity to rewatch and evaluate their own work, and practice counseling skills consistently in a space with low stakes (Haddock et al., 2020).

Like all clinical training, career counseling should be seen by both students and their teachers as an integrative process that is a pivotal component of becoming a mental health counselor. Counseling students and practitioners are expected to maintain self-awareness as a consistent practice in professional development, and any feelings around the concept of careers, any anxieties or narratives around work and identity, should also inform the preparation of counseling students. Utilizing structured frameworks for career counseling can provide the practice and understanding that can create confidence in counseling students who are learning about career counseling, as I found through work with the Career Construction Interview. Finally, transparent feedback from professors and peers can be motivating and is particularly important for online graduate students who require innovative and thoughtful ways of staying connected and developing skills.

References

Cicco, G. (2011). Assessment in online courses: How are counseling skills evaluated? Journal of Educational Technology, 8(2), 9–15. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1102103.pdf

Haddock, L., Cannon, K., & Grey, E. (2020). A comparative analysis of traditional and online counselor training program delivery and instruction. Professional Counselor, 10(1), 92-105.

Feller. (2016, July 18). Rich Feller on mental health & career counseling. [Video] Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltZGSF1n2Ek

Savickas, M. L. (2015). Life-design counseling manual. http://vocopher.com/LifeDesign/LifeDesign.pdf

Adam Diaz is a second-year student in the Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling program at University of Tennessee- Martin. He holds a BA from Georgetown University, and an MEd from the University of Granada, and currently serves as the Director of Wellness at Landon School, in Bethesda Maryland. He can be reached at adiaz16@ut.utm.edu