Computer-based career planning systems have been a reality for 25 years. Over this time span, the technology has changed dramatically--from very expensive, slow, low-storage mainframe computers to low-cost, fast, high-storage microcomputers. Similarly, the presentation made possible by the technology has changed from screens without color packed…

There are three steps to challenging troublesome career beliefs: identifying the troublesome belief; considering alternative ways to viewing the underlying problem; and taking action incompatible with the troublesome belief. Each of these steps includes techniques which empower clients by providing them with information or enabling them to make…

Career counseling in middle and high schools should be tailored to the unique characteristics of adolescents during those tumultuous years when they begin to learn more about themselves. Establishing a rapport and building a relationship are key first steps for school counselors working with adolescents and their career aspirations. Individuals…

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 time is ripe to focus on early field reports from practitioners who are using distance methodologies in career counseling. The focus is the actual establishment of a working alliance or counseling relationship through the use of technology and then the continuation of the counseling work using technology-assisted methodologies such as…

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…

Changes in the workplace such as mergers, acquisitions, reengineering, and downsizing are forcing individuals to recognize the temporary nature of all jobs and develop what has been termed "career resilience.""Career resilience" differs from "career self-reliance" in that the former refers to individual career…

The technological advances that have occurred in recent decades have resulted in substantial changes in the nature and structure of occupations and industries. Career development is now being recognized as a lifelong process. Individualized career plans (ICPs) or personal plans of action are becoming important instruments for counselors and others…

School counselors must wade through many unconnected lists of interventions to plan the career guidance aspect of their work. Often this impedes their ability to think strategically about their career development efforts. This digest describes an attempt to discover the underlying taxonomic structure of career development interventions that occur…

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,…

Internationalization of higher education and of the student services areas within universities is almost certainly a subject to be dealt with now or in the near future. Career centers may be pressed to internationalize sooner than other areas because of student demand. The university career center should respond to this demand and seek to assist…

At a time when career counseling services are increasingly essential, they remain marginalized and under-used. This digest explores ways in which marketing counseling services in Canada can strengthen the professional identity of career counselors and increase public acceptance of this field. Many career counselors feel that marketing corrodes…