Career Counseling & Vocational Rehabilitation
1. Discuss the potential for conflict between the information-providing aspect of career counseling and the goals & methods preferred by most counselors. How might you, as a counselor, try to resolve (or at least minimize) this conflict?
2. Trait-and-Factor theory posits that people engaging in career counseling need to accomplish three goals. What are they? Which of them do you think would come most naturally to you as a counselor? How do you imagine yourself implementing this step? Which do you think you would find least congenial? Why?
3. Often people's abilities correspond with their preferences, meaning that they incline toward occupations in which they are likely to thrive. But sometimes this is not so. What issues does such a discrepancy raise for a counselor? How would you handle a client whose expressed desires were a poor fit with her/his abilities?
4. Study your own Strong (or SDS) results, using your two- or three-point code type. How consistent is it? How well differentiated? Assume the human services profession to have an SEC or SEA code. How congruent are you with the field? How might any incongruence affect your professional life? And what, if anything, came as a surprise?