Career Counseling:
Foundations, Perspectives, and Applications
edited by David Capuzzi and Mark Stauffer
Chapter 13
College Career Counseling:
Traditional, Hybrid, and 100%
Online Campuses
Jeffrey C. Cook
Leanne Schamp
Undergraduate College
Students
Generations
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Placement in history
Common political and social events
Experiences create shared values
Millennial generation
How would you contrast notions of the
“traditional” college student today’s
undergraduate students?
Student Perspectives Regarding
Career and Career Counseling
• Successful overall but small numbers of
students per capita
• Stigmatization
• Internal and external
Self-awareness
• Reductionist view of self-awareness
and career awareness
• Career counselors continue to focus
on career awareness and job
placement rather than on pursuing
avenues into a deeper exploration of
self-concept.
Self-awareness
• Assessments
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•
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Strong Interest Inventory
Myers-Brigs Type Indicator
Discover
Strength Indicator
• Experiential opportunities
• Internships
• Part-time Jobs
• Volunteerism
Career Awareness Construct
• Over-focus on career awareness and
“landing a job”
• Movement toward quest for self and place
• How does career counseling help with selfconcept?
Job Success Construct
Traditional College Career Counseling
 Translating Career Awareness into job success
 Preparing for job market
 Drop-in for help with job success materials
 Mock interviews—interview protocol and process
 Career fairs—practice approaching employers
 Testing and test prep
 Additional services
Career Decision-Making
 Plethora of decisions
 Anxiety, confusion, feelings of inadequacy
 What to do with one’s life?
 Toward a life-design perspective
Therapeutic Alliance
 Success in the counseling process rests in
the therapeutic alliance between counselor and
client.
 On what grounds would you agree or
disagree with this assertion?
Therapeutic Alliance
 A therapeutic alliance definition:
“the client and counsellor’s subjective
experience of working together towards
psychotherapeutic goals in the counselling
context, including the experience of and
interpersonal bond that develops while
engaged in this endeavour”
(Duff & Bedi, 2010, p.91).
Needs, Concerns, and
Development of College Students
Issues related to Life-span development and
“Emerging adulthood”
 Rituals of “becoming” an adult
-Marriage, formal education, children, career
 Other rituals of role transitions
-Drinking, clubs, organizations, independence from
parents
Needs, Concerns, and
Development of College Students
 Increasing maturity and experience in
interpersonal relationships
 Exploring and establishing identity
 Adjustment to academic life
 Separation from family
Interventions
 Lapour’s three questions
 Write and/or verbalize a Mission Statement
 Systems Theory Framework and multicultural
considerations
Three Questions for Students
1. Who am I?
2. What is my purpose?
3. How do the answers relate to my career?
Gay and Lesbian Students
• Identity development around sexual
orientation
• “Coming out” or self-disclosure
• Experience of depression, shame, and
possible suicidality
• Possible suspended career maturity
• Biased career information
Collectivist Versus
Individualist Cultures
 Include family in the decision-making
process
 Honor various decision-making styles
 Address the need for communal
support
 Work to understand culture and
subjective experience
Constructivist Approach
 Cartesian Mission
 Empirical or objective paradigm
 Modern life and constructivism
Constructivist Approach
 Allows students to construct their
identities and careers by making sense of
their lives holistically, within a uniquely
subjective context, and in a manner that
emphasizes their unique multicultural self
–all in the context of a relationship with a
career counselor.
20th century career development
21st century life design
From a traits and states approach that was
To context which seeks to understand life
developed by the natural sciences
patterns and the lived experience of students
From prescription, or prescribing a career (when
To process that helps to develop ways of coping
the average person has 9.6 jobs by the age of 36)
and surviving for employability
From linear causality that is common in
To non-linear dynamics that accompany a more
traditional scientific reasoning
holistic life design
From scientific facts where individual careers
To narrative realities that support student’s own
were shaped by society norms
significant references for career
From career models that describe a single
To modeling a way of approaching career that
variable outcome
leads to the discovery of personal patterns
Constructivist Interventions
 Life-Design Model
 The Life Line
 Career-Style Interview
 Mixed Methods Approach
References
Duff, C.T., & Bedi, R.P.(2010). Counsellor behaviours that predict
therapeutic alliance: From the clients’ perspective. Counseling
Psychology Quarterly, 23(1), 91-110. DOI:
10.1080/09515071003688165
Savickas et al., (2009). Life designing: A paradigm for career
construction in the 21st century. Journal of Vocational Behavior.
75, 239-250.