Career Counseling

What is Career Counseling?

Certain situations and life transitions shed light on our need for career exploration. Other times, we just feel a sense that something needs to change. By embracing these situations and taking action, we can begin to tell our own story and feel confident in our path forward. Career Counseling can offer more than a vocational goal - it can offer a sense of self that goes beyond a job and helps clients feel more connected to their world in and out of the workforce.

How is Career Counseling different than Career Coaching or Job Search Services?

Career counseling is a way to align values to action. It is a process of self discovery and often touches on personal experiences that don’t feel directly connected to vocational goals. Career counseling is not the same as seeking job search support which could include resume writing, LinkedIn profiles or other job search strategies. If you are in need of job search support, consider reaching out to a resume specialist or other job coach.

The Career Construction Method of Career Counseling

Career construction views work as a vehicle to make life more meaningful. It rests on the premise that individuals construct themselves through story. In telling their life stories, people shape identities in the form of self-defining autobiographical narratives. These narratives hold them during and carry them through times of uncertainty and instability, especially characteristic of life in the digital and global age. Career construction emphasizes narratability to tell one’s story coherently, adaptability to cope with changes in self and situation, and intentionality to design a meaningful life.

Career construction counseling entails an interpersonal process of helping people author career stories that connect their self-concepts to work roles, fit work into life, and make meaning through work. Using the narrative paradigm, career construction counseling begins with a Career Construction Interview. Each question prompts individuals to tell small stories about themselves that convey who they are and who they wish to become. Counselor and client collaboratively shape the themes culled from these micro-stories into a macro-narrative about the person’s central preoccupation, motives, goals, adaptive strategies, and self-view. This co-construction process empowers individuals to author life-career stories that enhance their experiences of work as personally meaningful and socially useful. They may then use work to actively master what they passively suffer.

Paul J. Hartung Northeast Ohio Medical UniversityIt all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.