Career path choice

Research shows that most young people make such decisions about the choice of educational or professional field under the influence of relationship with their peers or opinions retrieved from social networks which they are members of (Rutten, Ros, Kuijpers, & Kreijns, 2016). Modern understanding of the term career reflects these natural decision making mechanisms, defining career planning as a lifelong, circular interaction between individual abilities, preferences and the current life situation (Bańka, 2016, p. 80). Career decision is clarified in many steps during education and work. It is one of the most important processes of individual’s development (Porzak, 2018a).

Authors suggest three main groups of factors influencing career decisions: deterministic and constitutional factors, developmental experiences influencing personality and interests, and demographic and environmental factors (Gautam, Nigam, & Mishra, 2016; Roe, 1957; Schiersmann i in., 2012; Schmitt-Rodermund & Silbereisen, 1998). The importance of some factors depends on profession (Schoon, Parsons, 2002). There are many occupations which are likely to be correlated with personality traits and other human properties more than others. The example could be emotional labour. The term “emotional labour” refers to expressing emotions expected to be shown during professional interactions in occupations involving providing services (Hochschild, 2012). The question is how to support young people having such diversity in making accurate and satisfying decisions.

Career counselling

The same like in other types of counselling, the fundamental concepts of career counselling are related to the dominant perspectives in psychology. Career counselling has drawn on a diverse range of theoretical approaches derived from counselling psychology, including person centred and psychodynamic approaches, systems theory, motivational interviewing, cognitive behavioural counselling, and wider interpretive movements including social-cognitive approach, post-modernism, constructivism and narrative career counselling (Kidd, 2006; McMahon & Patton, 2001).

The career counselling process in behaviouristic approach leads to vocational preparation of students in terms of skills and knowledge. The chief aim is to recognize and develop competence in tasks which a person will have to perform at work, home or in the community (Arthur & Nicholls, 2014).

An alternative to the extrinsic, mechanistic understanding of the principles determining human behaviour is provided by psychoanalysis and its focus on subconscious conditioning. The humanistic career guidance stands apart from other orientations in understanding aims of guidance as supporting motivation to development towards aims needed by a guided person (Chen, 2001). Career counselling approaches that have focused on Super's life career development concept (Super, 1978) have offered alternatives to practice based on more traditional theory. Yet, despite an emphasis on more relational, contextual, and meaning-based perspectives in the professional literature, current career counselling practice often continues to reflect traditional matching and information-giving approaches (Amundson, Borgen, laquinta, Butterfield, & Koert, 2010).

Narrative career counselling exemplifies the constructivist approach to career. Narrative career counselling is a largely verbal process in which a professional counsellor and counselee(s) are in a dynamic and collaborative relationship, focused on identifying and acting on the counselees’ goals, in which the counsellor employs a repertoire of diverse techniques or processes, to help bring about self-understanding, understanding of the career concerns involved and behavioural options available, as well as informed decision making in the counselee, who has the responsibility for his or her own actions (McMahon, 2017). Within the Holland’s Theory of Career Choice, the career choice is framed as the optimal fit between person and environment and is based on six general personality types that include Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional (Gottfredson & Johnstun, 2009).

Career Tree – the counsellor’s tool

The career counselling may be understood as a process of providing effective tools for better understanding of counselled person. There are many interesting online tools for career counsellors based on theories of intellectual abilities, one- or multidimensional. The example is the online Test of Multiple Intelligences (TMI-TUW) tool for 7-16 year-old children based on Gardner’s theory. The tool allows to assess intellectual potential and supports planning educational and early vocational orientation (Poleszak, Porzak, Kata & Kopik, 2014).

The useful techniques and tools to provide online career counselling, developed on the basis of general cybercounselling model, are present in advisory practice since about 20 years. There are well elaborated and evaluated techniques of overcoming the absence of tone of voice and the non-verbal elements of communication in written cybercounselling, referred to as Presence Techniques. The Presence Techniques are: Emotional Bracketing, Descriptive Immediacy, Descriptive Imagery, and Time Presence. Emotional Bracketing employs the use of square brackets wherein we write about inner non-observable thoughts and feelings. Descriptive Immediacy provides the client with information about the counsellor's observable, non-verbal behaviour toward the client. Descriptive Imagery is the use of descriptive language to help the client create a mental picture that is relevant to the counselling environment. Descriptions of the counsellor’s office, the weather and the community context are some typical images that may be relevant. Time Presence involves writing as tough the interaction between client and counsellor is in the present. The Career Tree is a new tool in the practice of cyber counseling. It is a set of inventories and tests as well as additional tools supporting career counseling and making it easier to look for a job.

Career Tree presents an empirical approach to tests design. The questionnaires inventories and tests were developed on the basis of the Item Response Theory. Career Tree is a set of tools used to diagnose needs, interest and educational and professional disposition of people aged 15-25 who are planning their career paths. A set of questionnaires and tests enables a multidimensional diagnosis. Automatically generated report provides guidance for results interpretation and for educational and professional career path counselling orientation. Career Tree also contains additional tools to aid designing and active career path forming, including in particular the automatically generated CV in Europass standard and designing a portfolio of educational and professional experience in the career span, described in the above-mentioned books. A set of questionnaires, tests and counselling tools aims at helping counsellors to support young people in the cyclical and current career planning as well as providing its users with an opportunity for self-reflection and tools to apply this self-reflection in designing a broadly understood educational, professional and life career.

Career Tree is constructed as a set of Computerized Adaptive Tests. Computerized Adaptive Tests (CAT) display questions and tasks for tested persons on the computer screen. The results obtained in the tests with the use of computerized adaptive testing are calculated during the test after each question. Applied computing algorithms optimize the conduct of the study using the minimum possible number of questions and tasks allowing to obtain the assumed reliability of the result. Thanks to the adaptability of the Career Tree, it enables a comprehensive assessment of dozens of properties of the subjects grouped in eight areas:

1. Professional interests

2. Values (priorities)

3. Personality traits

4. Temperamental characteristics

5. Interpersonal skills

6. Entrepreneurial skills

7. Cognitive abilities

8. Educational/ professional Certificates and permissions.

Reliability assessment shows that tests included in the Career Tree in their vast majority, measure the assumed attributes accurately, in such a way that their use in individual assessment is possible. The vast majority of Career Tree tests scales has the reliability of between 0.8 and 0.9 making therefore the tool eligible for use in the individual differential diagnosis. The reliability coefficient of between 0.7 and 0.8 points acceptable in group studies for scientific purposes have 13 scales (Porzak, 2018b).

Validity of of Career Tree tests set scales were calculated by correlating CaT results with standardized tests like SDS test (Self Directed Search), RIASEC, NEO-PI-R, BFQ, APIS-Z, MłoKoZZ and Test nizov. Results were calculated separately for each of the countries in which the study was conducted. The results confirm the validity of Career Tree tests. The set of tests may be regarded as a relevant instrument producing results consistent with the results produced by widely popularised and standardised tools for educational and professional disposition recognition. Career Tree may be used as an automated batch as well as for the purpose of diagnosing selected traits contained in the tests and useful in projecting and active developing of one’s career with the support of automatically generated Europass CV and online portfolio.

Career Tree is accessible online on the web-page www.career-tree.eu.

Career Tree and the manual describing it were developed thanks to the implementation of international project titled Career Tree (CaT). The CaT project (Career Tree) has been financed with the EU funds under the Strategic Partnership Erasmus+ program (Project No. 2014-1-PL01-KA200-003345). The international team of psychologists and professional counsellors from Poland, Spain, Slovenia, Turkey and the UK developed the CaT project working under the direction of experts from the College of Economics and Innovation in Lublin (Poland).

Bibliography

Amundson, N. E., Borgen, W. A., laquinta, M., Butterfield, L. D., & Koert, E. (2010). Career Decisions From the Decider’s Perspective. Career Development Quarterly, 58(4), 336–351.

Arthur, J., & Nicholls, G. (2014). John Henry Newman. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Bańka, A. (2016). Psychologiczne doradztwo karier (3rd ed.). Poznań: Stowarzyszenie Psychologia i Architektura.

Chen, C. P. (2001). On exploring meanings: Combining humanistic and career psychology theories in counselling. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 14 (4), 317–330. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515070110091308

Gottfredson, G. D., & Johnstun, M. L. (2009). John Holland’s Contributions: A Theory-Ridden Approach to Career Assistance. Career Development Quarterly, 58(2), 99–107.

Kidd, J. M. (2006). Understanding career counselling: theory, research and practice. Sage Publications.

McMahon, M. (Ed.). (2017). Career Counselling: constructivist approaches (2nd ed.). Abingdon, Oxon New York: NY Routledge.

McMahon, M., & Patton, W. (2001). Induction into the Profession of School Guidance and Counselling. Guidance & Counseling, 16(2), 46.

Poleszak, W., Porzak, R., Kata, G., & Kopik, A. (2014). Diagnoza i wspomaganie w rozwoju dzieci uzdolnionych. Warszawa: ORE.

Porzak, R. (Ed.). (2018a). Career guidance Theoretical assumptions and exemplary practices. Lublin: Innovatio Press.

Porzak, R. (Ed.). (2018b). Construction and psychometric properties of Career Tree inventories. The example of multidimensional adaptive diagnosis in career planning. Lublin: Innovatio Press.

Rutten, M., Ros, A., Kuijpers, M., & Kreijns, K. (2016). Usefulness of Social Network Sites for Adolescents’ Development of Online Career Skills. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 19(4), 140–150.