Career Counseling

Unaccompanied foreign minors are migrant children without their parents, relatives, or other adults. In Italy, especially in Sicily, an increasing number of young, non-European Union foreigners arrive daily in search of a new life and work opportunities. Despite this increasing phenomenon, interventions to support young migrants in career projects are infrequent and occasional within the host communities. With the aim of developing a career guidance intervention suitable for unaccompanied foreign minors, we propose a case study presenting a career guidance intervention for a group of unaccompanied foreign adolescents. The framework is the life design paradigm. The conductors of the activities were career counsellors, with the support of a cultural mediator and/or an educator. The setting of the interventions was individual and small groups. The instruments and procedures were predominantly qualitative. This paper includes a discussion of the strengths and weakness of this intervention, including the results of the post-intervention evaluation and the follow-up after one year.

This paper is based on a study examining the impact of young people’s backgrounds and educational experiences on career choice capability with the aim of informing education policy. A total of 706 students from secondary schools (Years 9-12) in New South Wales, Australia took part in an online survey. This paper focuses on the differences found between groups on the basis of their educational experiences. Participants who were uncertain of their future career plans were more likely to attend non-selective, non-metropolitan schools and were more likely to hold negative attitudes towards school. Career ‘uncertain’ students were also less likely to be satisfied with the elective subjects offered at their school and reported less access to career education sessions. It is concluded that timely career information and guidance should be provided to students and their families in order to allow them to more meaningfully make use of the resources and opportunities available to them with a view toward converting these into real world benefits.

PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY RESOURCES OF CAREER COUNSELORS: IMPLICATIONS AND PERSPECTIVES.

Contrary to the largest part of the 20th century, nowadays, workers “are increasingly dependent on their psychological and social resources (inner value and social capital) and less dependent on organizational career arrangements” (Coetzee, 2014, p. 5). Therefore, they need to act proactively and develop multiple skills and competencies in order to cope with lifelong learning issues (Coetzee, 2014).
On the other hand, career counselors, in times of socioeconomic variability and uncertainty in the world of work, undertake a notably demanding work, as they need to support clients in coping with an array of complicated issues: (a) having an active attitude towards learning and career as well as developing flexibility skills such as career adaptability and career curiosity (Sidiropoulou-Dimakakou, Argyropoulou, & Drosos, 2010a), (b) building confidence in personal capacities and psychosocial resources, such as resilience and self-efficacy (Sidiropoulou-Dimakakou, Argyropoulou, Drosos, Kaliris, & Mikedaki, 2014), (c) redefinition of career self-concept when it is necessary (Kaliris & Krivas, 2013), (d) negotiation of life and career changes without losing sense of self or social identity (Savickas, 2011). Additionally, sometimes therapeutic interventions are needed –to the extent which received training and counselor’s role allows for it- for personal problems that may interact with career development (McIlveen, 2015).
Complexity of career counselors’ roles is also associated to the field of provided services due to the differentiated needs each sector presents (e.g. Secondary and Higher Education, Vocational Education and Training, Public Employment Services etc.). Meanwhile, counselors have to confront differentiated traits and needs of counselees that vary according to gender, age, educational level, and culture etc.
Thus, it is made apparent that if counselors are to meet clients’ various needs and provide effective services it is crucial they are constantly up to date on latest knowledge and new skills (Kaliris, Sidiropoulou-Dimakakou, Argyropoulou, & Fakiolas, 2013), while it is equally important that they possess specific traits and qualifications such as counseling experience, positive self-concept, self-efficacy beliefs, optimism, and resilience (Ginevra et al., 2014). In this paper our focus was turned on career counseling self-efficacy beliefs which refer to career counselor’s perception regarding their skills in performing or coordinating career counseling activities effectively (O’Brien, Heppner, Flores, & Bikos, 1997).
Specifically, a qualitative research is presented based both on perceived self-efficacy resources theory (Bandura, 1997, 2005, 2012) and several research findings highlighting the contribution of self-efficacy beliefs in counselor motivation and effectiveness (Gilliam, 2012; Kaliris et al., 2013; Kozina, Grabovari, De Stefano, & Drapeau, 2010; Wan Jaafar, Mohamed, Bakar, & Ahmad Tarmizi, 2009). The aim of the study was to examine various potential resources on which participants – career counselors may rely on to construct their sense of confidence in their skills. This research endeavor constituted the first phase of a mixed methods research (sequential exploratory design, Creswell, 2009; Kalogeraki, 2013) which was applied with the aim of developing a new instrument to assess perceived resources of career counseling self-efficacy beliefs.
Generation of data evolved by semi-structured interviews (Issari & Pourkos, 2015) with seven (7) career counselors providing services in various agencies both in Education and Employment sectors (University, Liaison Office, Public Employment Services – OAED, Centers of Career Guidance and Counseling – KESYPs, agency for social and vocational  rehabilitation of vulnerable groups, NGO). We assume that information derived by interviews contributed to content validity of the scale as researchers did not settle at an intuitive approach of the phenomenon but made an attempt to record a wide range of dimensions through observation of reality (Mylonas, 2012, p. 272) related to career counseling self-efficacy resources.
Data were analyzed through Thematic Analysis procedures (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Thematic Analysis has the major advantage of promoting a consistent and deep data analysis (Due, Zambrano, Chur-Hansen, Turnbull, & Niess, 2015), resulting with clarity in the dominant themes in relation to the meanings that participants attribute to their experiences.
Through systematic analysis researchers arrived at the six (6) following themes as regards with the resources counselors feel they rely upon to develop confidence in their skills for career counseling tasks: (1) a supportive relationship with colleagues, (2) importance of received education and training, (3) contribution of relevant past professional experience, (4) repeated success – effectiveness of counseling work, (5) comparisons to other colleagues’ experiences, (6) contribution of positive feedback by clients. These results, to a certain extent, converge to Bandura’s theory (1997) including four proposed self-efficacy informational resources, namely: mastery experiences, vicarious learning, social persuasion, physiological and emotional states. Grounded in the previous results, we discuss possible research prospects in this particular field of interest and make implications about career counselor education – continuous training.

Keywords: career counselor empowerment, career counseling self-efficacy beliefs, self-efficacy informational resources, qualitative research, mixed methods research, career counselor training.

Es posible evidenciar similitudes y diferencias en las ideas de Simone de Beauvoir y Ayn Rand. Haciendo suyo lo que podría llamarse una "Ética de la Resolución", Rand elogia a las personas que realizan acciones dirigidas a objetivos sostenidos, como carreras profesionales. Beauvoir, sin embargo, apoya una "Ética de la Ambigüedad" que la hace más escéptica ante las perspectivas de la realización de proyectos a largo plazo sin engañarse a sí mismo.