Since culture provides a direction for discovering a sense of coherence between stability and change, therapeutic change can be established when clients become aware of their cultural rules. This digest examines techniques developed for ethnographic research that can be applied directly to the career counseling interview. Ethnography assumes that…

Due to ongoing changes in the labor market, groups that assist people in developing or changing career directions are particularly important. This digest outlines some features of employment group counseling. Research has shown that the unemployed face numerous factors, such as job rejections and financial pressures, that can hinder the job…

The centric model of career counseling was developed for use in employment counseling and takes into account psychological, social, and economic factors. Four developmental phases are used to describe movement within the centric model. The initial phase, readiness, establishes the working alliance between the counselor and the client. Clients must…

Creating Self-Portraits is an individual and/or group career development tool designed to assess without testing. Researchers have found that testing can be counter-productive; once clients were labelled, they frequently stopped self-examination. A tool was needed that would help people understand themselves in a way that would encourage further…

A value conflict arises when one value can only be realized at the expense of another value. This digest describes the scope of career value conflict, its developmental significance, and some conflict resolution strategies. Several studies have shown that some career values are particularly prone to conflict, such as salary, freedom in the job,…

Although counselors have implicitly understood and used a number of its tenets, an action-theoretical approach is a relatively recent development in career counseling. This digest analyzes the tenets of this approach. An action approach to career counseling sees clients as agents who steer and direct their activities. It represents an integration…

The context in which career decisions are made is dynamic--occupations are changing rapidly and society is becoming increasingly complex. This digest describes a model that uses five processes which are critical to effective career planning: initiation, exploration, decision making, preparation, and implementation. The first process, initiation,…

Career exploration typically involves the investigation of personal factors: interests, aptitudes, values, and personal style. This digest outlines one counseling method, pattern identification exercise (PIE). PIE starts with past experiences and identifies personal patterns which are relevant to career decisions. A premise of PIE is that…

The need for lifelong career development in Canada is becoming increasingly evident as more people switch jobs. To meet this need, it has been suggested that counseling services for adults should be organized in a three-tiered structure. Such a structure would ensure that individuals have access to a counselor in accordance with their level of…

A constructivist framework can often appear vague and abstract to the novice counselor. The abstract and nebulous realm of meaning-making, which is central to constructivist approaches, can be frustrating for a linear, task-oriented counselor. This digest explains the approaches used in constructivist counseling. The need to use constructivist…

Employment counseling is a set of interventions designed to help clients identify and resolve issues in employment-related decisions. This digest examines Canada's measurement model which was designed to enhance understanding of counseling's function. The model uses four employability dimensions: (1) career/occupation decision making; (2) skills…