My Client Wants To Talk Career Counseling! HELP!

I don’t know about you, but career counseling was not big in my graduate degree. I had a summer class crammed with information, but it wasn’t until I had an internship at my university’s career center that I truly saw what career counseling was all about. It is similar, but still so different…

I’ve had colleagues over the years wanting to refer clients or discuss career counseling because they did not feel they had enough information to help their clients with career development. So, today, I wanted to come to you as a professional who has been working full time in career counseling and part time in mental health counseling for nearly  2 ½ yrs now to give you 5 things to remember when your client brings up anything about career development!

Tips for when a client brings up career development in session

  1. When they aren’t too sure about where they want to go in life, affirming, reflecting, assessing needs, and goal planning function just the same as with any other exploring client. The topic is just career!
  2. When processing all that comes with determining career paths or jobs it’s important to think about their skills and interests. Those skills and interests can expand beyond what they’ve done professionally. Not all interests or skills a person holds are used in their everyday job, but they all can be used to identify more fulfilling ones, or highlight what could be a job and what could be a hobby/side hustle.
  3. In addition to skills and interests, use things like MBTI or other assessments to show clients how their personality, preferences, needs, skills, and interests all work together to make them, them. 
  4. Resumes can be intimidating. Scratch that. They ARE intimidating. Encourage clients not to use templates as it is harder to fix spacing, font, and overall structure. If they have a degree, they can check and see if they can still utilize career services as alumni (for anything career related, not just resumes). If not, there may be on-demand resources on university career center websites that help them build/edit their resumes, interview, job search, etc. 
  5. Brush up on resources like O*Net Online, salary.com, payscale.com, and simplyhired.com. These help with occupational information, salary negotiation, and job search, respectively. You can encourage clients to utilize these tools in their journey.

Career counseling can be a ”uh oh” moment, but do what you can to help your clients believe and trust themselves. Help them become comfortable in finding their potential just in another aspect of who they are. If they need additional help, of course, seek out referrals!