Why career counselling is more valuable now than ever before

15 August 2016 by Professor Kobus Maree

The world of work is changing all the time – and fast. Jobs have emerged that didn't exist five or ten years ago, and the idea that you'd stick with one career for your entire working life has been left in the dust. The Conversation Africa's education editor Natasha Joseph asked Professor Kobus Maree of the University of Pretoria's Department of Educational Psychology to explain how career counselling has changed and why it is so important.

When you talk about career counselling, I suspect a lot of people think back to their school days when a guidance counsellor said, 'You should do this job one day.' But it's a far broader world, isn't it?

Career counselling entails much more than merely choosing a job and hoping to stay in that job for the rest of one's life. Choosing a career is seen by many as trying to find a way to integrate into society, say as a teacher or a plumber, and also about making a social contribution.

Today, career counsellors believe that it is essential to identify a person's original 'pain'. This provides the starting point and life plot of every person's career and life career story.

Career counsellors endeavour to help people deal with their pain and empower them to use this pain to help others. In the process, people can heal themselves and make social contributions. Some people understandably grapple with the contention that every life story starts with pain. My own research, and others', suggests that very high career achievers understand the value of pain to any life story: the more you hurt and struggle, the more you have to strive to prove yourself.

Why is career counselling so important?

Once people know where they are headed, they mostly become motivated to work hard to realise their goals.

People consult career counsellors when they face a 'natural' crossroads: having to choose a school, university, field of study or one from a number of employment opportunities. A second group consults career counsellors when they begin to doubt whether they have made the appropriate choice in terms of schools, subjects, universities, careers or employers. In all these cases, the future is already upon them: 'the old' – what used to work – no longer does.

Workers are being confronted increasingly in the postmodern era with the impact of change on the workplace. They have to face and deal with repeated work-related crossroads and transitions. They hesitate because they are uncertain about the way forward. Career counsellors then enable them to recount their career life story. This allows them to listen to themselves by revisiting instances when they faced a crossroads. And by listening to themselves, they become able to deal with their current crossroads.

Whose responsibility is it to set up career counselling mechanisms? Individual schools and universities? Does the government have a role to play?

I should think that everything starts with the government. But a host of other stakeholders are also responsible: education and labour departments; primary, secondary and tertiary training institutions; professional bodies and qualifications authorities; and youth development agencies, private practitioners and non-profit organisations.

The role of parents, teachers, role models and a person's peer group also shouldn't be underestimated. Society has a collective responsibility to ensure that every person be granted access to career counselling. In fact, postmodern career counselling can help 'invisible' and 'unvoiced' people who are desperately in need of career counselling become 'visible' and listened to.

How much does your research and experience suggest that people are using career counselling services in South Africa, where you're based? What holds people back from seeking career counselling?

Sadly, only a small percentage of South Africans ever have access to career counselling. Career counselling in Africa at large is still premised on the belief that career counsellors should 'test' clients to assess their personality profiles and help them to find the 'best fit' between their personality traits and the traits required to execute a certain job successfully. People hope that career counsellors will tell them which careers to choose.

Moreover, career counselling offered by private practitioners is too expensive to be accessed by people who are poor – and that's the vast majority of South Africans.

Far too few teachers are trained to administer career counselling adequately. Introducing Life Orientation as a school subject has not resolved the challenge either. Few of the teachers currently facilitating this subject have been trained adequately to administer career counselling.

There is some work being done to improve career counselling in the country. The South African Qualifications Authority, for instance, has developed a career guidance hotline that doesn't just involve a professional telling job-seekers what to do. The government is working on a plan to develop and implement a three-tier system of career development services in South Africa.

The world of work is constantly changing. We have jobs today that didn't exist ten or even five years ago. How much is career counselling as a field adapting to those changes?

The US Department of Labour estimates that 65% of today's schoolchildren will end up working in jobs that don't currently exist.

Change is the new normal. For this reason, career counsellors must do their work in such a way that their clients become career adaptable and, most importantly, employable. It is vitally important that students acquire those skills that will help them not only survive but rather flourish in times of change. Career counsellors should become au fait with the basics of 'employability counselling', so to speak.

Career counsellors should try and use the best elements from various approaches in their work. Their allegiance should, ultimately, be to find the best ways to be useful to clients.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Researchers

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  Professor Kobus Maree

  Deriving inspiration from his own childhood experiences, Professor Kobus Maree of the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Pretoria (UP) has made it his life's work to help people find their life's purpose. He is a world-renowned researcher and educational psychologist, is cited by acclaimed researchers in the field and is generally acknowledged as one of the leading global experts in the area of career counselling.
  
  When he took up his post at the University of Pretoria, Prof Maree set out to develop a career counselling strategy that would benefit all people, irrespective of their colour, creed, socio-economic situation or geographic location. His work contributed to the rather drastic shift from the traditional, 'positivist' style of career counselling (which entails conducting tests and, based on the results, telling the person what they should pursue), to an integrated, qualitative and quantitative style of administering career counselling. His strategy is premised on the belief that it is essential to elicit people's career-life stories and identify their major life themes and to enable them to draw on these during career counselling.
  
  Prof Maree has built upon the pioneering work of Mark Savickas, of whom he says: 'He is my personal role-model and career counselling's most eminent scholar, a man who single-handedly reshaped the face of career psychology, and the single biggest influence in my career and life.' Prof Maree explains that people's earliest recollections are used to elicit their central life themes and that these life themes co-determine what they need to do to 'actively master what they have passively suffered (especially in their early years)' (Savickas). The themes, which identify the 'original' pain in people's lives, develop from early childhood experiences and it is the job of career counsellors to help clients turn their pain into hope and social contributions. Examples of life themes include a desire to help people who are vulnerable, a desire to look after sick people, a desire to defend people who are being bullied, or even a desire to be very wealthy (although this particular desire often stems from feelings of insecurity). Unfailingly, people are astonished when they learn more about themselves, or discover who they are, based on their own account of their early recollections. Once you gain the trust of the person, you can proceed to identifying the themes that recur in their lives.
  
  Prof Maree has dedicated 30 years to designing an integrated strategy that combines both qualitative and quantitative instruments to help people elicit their own interests and their central life themes in a relatively short time. What sets Prof Maree's work apart from that of previous researchers is that he is one of a small band of researchers who have successfully designed an integrated approach to career counselling by merging the 'results' from quantitative instruments with the subjective data elicited using qualitative assessment strategies.
  
  If the quantitative 'results' confirm and are confirmed by the life themes yielded by qualitative 'assessment', Prof Maree is satisfied that an optimal outcome has been achieved. Based on these results, his instruments are able not only to facilitate the process of finding appropriate careers for people but, more importantly nowadays, to help them become employable.
  
  Prof Maree's quantitative career counselling instrument (a psychological test), the Maree Career Matrix or MCM, is listed with the South African Professional Board for Psychology as a psychological test that can be used by registered counsellors, psychometrists and psychologists, provided that the constructs used are within their scope of practice. His Career Interest Profile or CIP (a qualitative or narrative instrument and associated strategy) is used in conjunction with the MCM. The CIP is not a 'test' – rather, it focusses on people's 'subjective' aspects and is therefore used to enable people to narrate their own career-life stories. The CIP has been translated into other languages and is used extensively abroad.
  
  A major driving force behind Prof Maree's work, and perhaps his own central life theme, is his desire to facilitate social justice. Poverty and injustice are issues that are close to his heart. Being able to use his expertise to empower people and help them realise their dreams has been a life-long commitment. Prof Maree notes that about 90% of all his research has been conducted in townships and rural schools, and he describes these visits as the most revealing and rewarding experiences of his life. He continues to refine his instruments by testing them in regions that are challenged by major disadvantages (in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa). 'If the approach works where people are struggling with a shortage of resources, language barriers and other constraints, then I know it will work everywhere else,' he says.
  
  Prof Maree's integrated approach is not only unique, but also reliable and valid, in that, unlike traditional career counselling tests, it allows individuals to narrate their stories, listen to themselves and draw upon these stories to make their own deductions and conclusions about themselves. People are no longer assessed to determine how similar they are to others – quite the opposite, in fact. Assessment is aimed at discovering the individuality and uniqueness of clients. Prof Maree says that he never tells a person who they are, but rather, through the questions he asks, enables them to reflect on their own answers (reflections). Reflexivity is the term he uses to describe the process whereby individuals reflect on and utilise their own reflections to plan a better future. It allows them to listen to themselves and find out what will make them happy and successful. 'I believe that unless we make social contributions, we are not doing what we are supposed to be doing with our lives. Everything I do revolves around the principle: if it does not mean something to someone else, it is not worthwhile,' he says.
  
  Prof Maree has helped countless people realise what they would like to do with their lives. His instruments are suitable for all people at points of transition, such as Grade 9 learners who need to make subject choices, Grade 11 and 12 learners who need to make career choices with a view to tertiary studies, first-year students who are not enjoying their study choices, other students who feel uncertain about whether they are pursuing an appropriate field of study, and working (or unemployed) people of virtually any age who do not feel satisfied or content. Prof Maree says that he has learned a great deal from asking workers in humble positions (such as waiters, office cleaners, newspaper vendors and domestic workers) about the aspects of their work that they enjoy and those that they dislike, and what they really want to do in life. Their answers routinely reveal some of their reasons for not doing (or not being able or allowed to do) what they really want to do, such as becoming social workers, teachers, medical doctors or engineers.
  
  Prof Maree's contributions have resulted in his being selected to serve on the UNESCO Chair that strives to facilitate the goal of decent work for all people across the globe. Decent work means that everybody should have certain non-negotiable rights at work, social protection and access to jobs where these are promoted and accommodated. Prof Maree works tirelessly to facilitate decent work in South Africa, but notes that corruption is a major obstacle that hinders it in this country.
  
  Prof Maree holds a B rating from the National Research Foundation (NRF), the highest rating of any researcher in the Faculty of Education at UP. He also runs his own private practice, where he uses his instruments (in conjunction with others) to apply in practice what he developed in theory.

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  Why career counselling is more valuable now than ever before