chapter 13 and 18

Chapter 13 and 18

It helped to have feedback on the literature review; however, I am not sure that reading all four was the best use of class time. I think I could have provided more in depth feedback if I had only needed to respond to two reviews. Utilizing the reviews in my own writing, I found responses repetitive and it confirms that class time could have been better used. 

I found both chapters very helpful.  As a former Academic and Career Advisor at a Community College, I was responsible for a lot of the Career Services program. I found it interesting that Brown (2012) noted that career services are particularly important for those entering vocational  and community college vocational programs. I found that very true, because some schools don’t change their programs based on the job market, so it falls to the career services advisor to help the student identify the job opportunities available in that field.  Also, I found that students entered a vocational fields thinking they could build on it later with a 4-year program and later found out that couldn’t.  Because of the various types of programs community colleges offer, it can be hard to navigate alone and Advisors become key in helping the student lay out a plan. When I worked for Career Services at Millersville as a student career educator,  the biggest issue with our career program was awareness of the program for students. Like someone else mentioned in their blog, many students don’t utilize career services until senior year.

The trends about various career development areas provided helpful information for awareness when helping clients. As a future school counselor, changes in the job hunt, career assessments, career counseling, etc, will impact how I help students talk with their future career. The prompt about virtual job interviews would be an interesting one to discuss further. In my last job the organization did conduct interviews via Skype for professionals which lived out of the area; however, they only did this for middle-upper level positions such as Associate Deans.  For upper level interviews the first interview happened via skype if the candidate did not live in the area, and the second interview occurred in person.  When I applied to graduate schools, one of the graduate assistantships I applied for conducted an initial interview via an online recording program. We had to record our responses to the questions on a specific website designed for this. This particular interview let you re-record your interview up to three times; however, organizations could set the number of times you could re-record before submitting.  

It will be important as a high school counselor to stay on-top of the trends in job demands and job search tools.  Brown (2012) notes the difficulty in developing high school career development programs and points to ASCA (American School Counseling Association) for tools to rationalizing the high school career development programs.

Brown, D. (2012). Career information, career counseling, and career development (10th ed). New York: Pearson Education, Inc.