【第299回】Mark L. Savickas, “Career Counseling”

The author explains three types of career services on page No. 280 as below.

(1)Vocational Guidance: Actor, Scores, Traits, Resemblance, Matching, Object

(2)Career Education: Agent, Stages, Tasks, Readiness, Implementing, Subject

(3)Career Counseling: Author, Stories, Themes, Reflectivity, Constructing, Project

This is one of the most important summaries of analyzing career theories. As time goes by, third type is fit to our career.

The “dejobbing” or “jobless work” that has accompanied the digital revolution changes long-term jobs into short-term projects, making it increasingly difficult to comprehend careers with theories that emphasize stability rather than mobility. The new employment market in an unsettled economy calls for viewing career not as a lifetime commitment to one employer but as selling services and skills to a series of employers who need projects completed. While the form of career changes from commitment to flexibility, so too must the form of career counseling change. Career theories and techniques must evolve to better assist workers throughout the world in adapting to fluid societies and flexible organizations. (kindle ver No. 212)

As business environment and technology has changed, career theories have to be changed and adjusted to them. One of the most important points of change is about from long-term and stable to short-term and flexible.

So today, depending upon a client’s needs, practitioners may apply different career services: vocational guidance to identify occupational fit, career education to foster vocational development, or career counseling to design a work life. (kindle ver No. 289)

Based on that career theories have been changed, practitioners who consult clients who seek for their career tend to use different tools to make them to find it out.

To assist in producing identity capital, 21st-century career interventions should help individuals construct and use their life stories to make choices and take actions with integrity of character. (kindle ver No. 359)

It is important for clients to narrate their own career as a story, in order to fully understand their own career. When we narrate our life and career history, we connect each decision and event in our life and career.

In considering career construction, the theme denotes a moving perspective that imposes personal meaning on past memories, present experiences, and future aspirations. (kindle ver No. 612)

To construct our own career, we have to reflect the past, understand what we are doing now, and seek for what we want to do and to be.

Although both plot and theme may be considered career, the first objective and the second subjective, career construction theory refers to the objective career as occupational plot and the subjective career as career theme. Objective outcomes such as success or failure are part of the occupational plot, whereas subjective outcomes such as satisfaction or frustration are part of the career theme. (kindle ver No. 667)

There are two points to draw about career. One is about objective career, and it is useful for us to understand occupational plot. The other one is about subjective career, and it is important for us to understand our feeling and emotion to construct our career view.

R. Babineaux and J. Krumboltz, “fail fast, fail often”
“To sell is human”, Daniel H. Pink
“How will you measure your life?”, Clayton M. Christensen
Luck is no accident 2nd edition（John D. Krumboltz, Impact Publishers, 2010）
“TRANSITIONS”(William Bridges, Da Capo Press, 2004)
“Creative Decision Making –Using Positive Uncertainty- ”(Gelatt, H.B. and Gelatt, Carol ,Crisp Series, 2003)