CNL-523 Week 6 Assignment
How is information about personal values used in career counseling? Is it important? Why or why not? How can personal religious or spiritual values play into career counseling?
An individual’s values matter when exploring career options. In career counseling, learners are assisted in making and implementing informed occupational and educational choices. According to (Loffredo, 2017), career counseling develops a person’s competencies in career planning, self-knowledge, and occupational exploration. Personal values such as hard work, intelligence, achievement, determination, brilliance, insight, passion, and responsibility are core in guiding a client in which occupation to select and study. Counselors consider this information important in career therapy, for it guides them in guiding the client to select a course or professional that match his/her values.
Research by (Loffredo, 2017) indicates that there is an interface between religion/spirituality and career development. For example, college students who have stronger spiritual awareness, spiritual presence, and experience in the lives report high career self-efficacy, decision, and career choice commitment than students who have lesser spiritual awareness. This means that personal religious and spiritual values drive peoples’ actions and motivate their career goals. Thus, spirituality must be accounted for in career therapy.
What kinds of interest inventories might you use in your counseling practice? Why?
Counselors use these interest inventories to identify the likes and dislikes of a client along with the kind of activities they prefer (Hirschi, 2010). Mostly, interest inventories help assessors to do career analysis to assist people in finding areas in which they display strong interests and which they can work comfortably. In counseling practice, the common kinds of interest inventories used include:
- Strong interest inventory: This is used to assess individuals’ careers and interests in life. Typically, it takes between 30 to 45 minutes to administer.
- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): Measures experiences that people have on the principles of psychological functioning – feeling, sensation, thinking, and intuition.
- Self-directed search (SDS): Helps counselors to assess vocational personalities when assessing the six types that John Holland’s theory hypothesizes.
- Vocational interest inventory: Measures basic interests that people have on nature, athletics, social service, teaching, religion, health, language, business management, and others.
- Campbell’s interest and Skills Survey (CISS): CISS measures the basic interests that people have on life experiences, mechanical activities, medical service, and global exposure.
References
Hirschi, A. (2010). Vocational interests and career goals: Development and relations to personality in middle adolescence. Journal of Career Assessment, 18(3), 223-238.
Loffredo, S. (2017). Do Your Career and Work Values Align? Career Counseling, 11-13.