Assessing my approach for effectiveness has led me to conclude that I make several assumptions about what kind of career counselling women need. This article is a discussion of those assumptions and it addresses major personal needs of many women who seek career counselling; the needs for independence, self-esteem, the development of planning skills, to deal with life-style issues such as child bearing and to provide encouragement to dream.

Career Counselling Fosters Independence

When a woman tells me that she hasn't a clue what she wants to do with her life, I no longer feel I must give her answers. I have learned that the primary responsibility of a career counsellor is to empower the individual to make her own choices, to help her feel she is capable of answering her own questions.

Self-assessment is a style of career counselling which fosters this kind of independence because it is based on self-inquiry. Because she is given homework which she completes on her own, it gives a woman the concrete feedback she needs to answer her own questions. Thus, she begins to believe she is capable; the process itself makes her feel confident.

In this context the counsellor's role is to structure the experience, to assess the problem areas for the client, and to find the right questions to ask her. The questioning process falls roughly into four areas of self knowledge:

1. What are your skills? And which ones do you want to use?
2. Your interests: What kinds of people and activities excite you? What are your enthusiasms?
3. Values: Why do you work? What is it you want to commit yourself to? What type of contribution do you want to make to the world you live in?
4. Environment: What kinds of people are you comfortable with? Where would you best fit in?

The key to developing independence is to gear the questioning process to the individual. I find that, when I ask the right question in an appropriate way, the individual's energy comes to the surface. Her willingness to tackle the question (what counsellors generally call "motivation") becomes apparent and her desire to take charge has been sparked. As she has been asked questions which are important to her, she actively involves herself in finding the answers.

I have used vocational testing sparingly in my practice because it can short circuit this essential questioning process. I react particularly critically to mechanized vocational testing packages because in addition to cutting off the questioning process, they foster a peculiar type of dependency. People receive answers to their career questions, but they don't usually know where the answers come from. Because the answers are not their own, they do not feel empowered by them. Instead, they have subtly been discouraged from actively taking stock of their situation, and "fed" expert answers in the form of computer print outs and impersonal career assessments.

Career Counselling Must Teach Women the Skills Necessary to Plan and Carry Out Future Career Moves

I begin teaching women career planning skills by helping them to grasp the concept of career planning itself. As Richard Bolles says, career planning is essentially an information gathering process. We begin by gathering information about the individual through self assessment, and develop a picture of preferences, values, the underlying criteria for evaluating career moves. Once this is done, she goes out into the world to learn what is happening in areas of the job market which interest her. Through this process then, making a career plan boils down to gaining knowledge and applying it to a decision-making process.

Starting with an overview that the client can understand, we work together at developing more practical tools. The first of these tools involves helping women understand the self-inquiry process as they do the specific homework assignments. I explain the various components of the self-assessment, helping them to see how they will join together. As we go along I help them identify their blind spots, the areas that present difficulties for them. I use my understanding of psychodynamics to help them gain insight into why this aspect of the self-assessment may be more difficult for them to do.