Career advisor, guidance officer, or career counsellor? The nature of definition, meaning and practice of career work

Abstract

Until the turn of the last century advice on a career was provided by parents and teachers, and tended to be directive and prescriptive. Gradually over the last century, because of industrialisation, the Second World War, recession and information technology the world of work became more complex and a new approach was needed. Career advice turned into a service offered by specialists and professionals. While on the one hand in the UK, service provision of career advice has developed within a distinct field, with close affiliation to, and links to education, in the USA on the other hand, the issue of matching people to jobs was adopted by psychology. As this field developed, clinical psychology separated from personal counseling, and career counselling went with personal counseling. Locally, although career guidance falls under the remit of guidance and counselling in the majority of educational settings, the Career Policy in Schools Report has clearly distinguished career guidance as a separate field to counselling. While career work in the USA is inseparable from the counseling field techniques, the link is much looser in the UK where the use of counselling skills and techniques has been a much more recent development. The development of career guidance reflects the way practitioners have responded to changes in society, in personal and professional relationships as well as in the world of work. They have also learnt from and incorporated elements which have traditionally belonged to the counselling field, of which the person-centred approach is the most significant. The nature of work, the labour market, industry skills and roles have radically changed, and as a result of technology will continue to change quickly. Now, instead of talking about some people having jobs and others having a career, 'career' is used to describe the sum of a person's educational and working life. The study will refer to 'career work' and for example, career advice. 'Career work' refers to the relevant services which are facilitated by practitioners. Counselling in the UK and USA are very different entities. The spelling of 'counselling' in the UK and 'counseling' in the USA highlights this difference, so when referring to UK and USA counselling, the different spellings have been used.