1995 EDO-CG-95-65 Five Processes of Career Planning Kris Magnusson Overview The context in which career decisions are commonly made is dynamic: occupations are changing rapidly, so- ciety is becoming increasingly complex and multicultural, and individuals need to plan for diverging rather than converging career paths. Furthermore, in times of social change and economic uncertainty, clients often feel dis- couraged, despondent, and hopeless about their futures. The encreasing complexity of client needs and career counseling interventions have rendered inadquate, and simplistic approaches to resolving career issues. Although traditional approaches still may play a role in career plan- ning, additional emphasis must be placed on other issues: how self-concept is implemented (Super, 1990), personal adaptability (Super, 1985), and personal meaning-mak- ing (Miller-Tiedeman & Tiedeman, 1990). Career coun- seling should also help clients achieve independence rather than dependence. Such factors necessitate a dif- ferent vision of the counseling process. The Five Processes The model in this paper describes five processes criti- cal to effective career planning: initiation, exploration, decision-making, preparation, and implementation (Magnusson, 1991, 1992). The processes are cyclical, al- though a few clients may begin at initiation and proceed sequentially through to implementation. Initiation Initiation means to set in motion. Clients become dis- couraged or lose hope and strategies to secure meaning- ful engagement are necessary. The initiation process ad- dresses three core issues: 1. Establishing an effective counseling relationship. Traditional approaches to career counseling often over- look the importance of the therapeutic relationship. How- ever, the establishment of a strong therapeutic alliance can be invaluable in motivating clients to take action. 2. Determining current motivation for career plan- ning. This involves a detailed examination of presenting issues, with a particular emphasis on identifying client motivation for change and the context in which that change must occur. With this information, counselors can determine if clients are ready for specific career planning activities or if other interventions are needed. 3. Building relevance for career planning. Many cli- ents who enter career counseling are discouraged and see themselves with limited opportunities. Counselors must encourage these clients and foster hope. Typically this is done by identifying issues of meaning for the client and by promoting a sense of the future. To illustrate, clients may be asked to complete a “sig- nificant experiences” exercise, in which they write a two to three page narrative describing some accomplishment or experience of which they are proud. Client and coun- selor work together to identify the skills and characteris- tics that were demonstrated and then clients are asked to select the 5-10 most meaningful of these. Posing a simple question such as “How would you like to experience that level of pride again?” invariably increases client motiva- tion for career planning. Attending to the core initiation issues increases client awareness of the career planning process, builds trust in the counselor, and renews hope by helping clients build a vision of the future. Exploration Exploration helps clients discover ways to implement aspects of their vision while concomitantly attending to issues of meaning and personal context. This is most ef- fectively done by capitalizing on the renewed sense of energy and hope that arises during initiation. While for- mal assessment and occupational information sources may be useful, informal strategies tend to produce more mean- ingful, more accurate, and more enduring results. These include information interviewing, relational networking, job shadowing, and work experience. For example, clients who have completed the signifi- cant experiences exercise described above will have a ranked list of skills and characteristics that were associ- ated with a meaningful experience. Clients can be taught basic networking techniques to identify other people who share a similar passion. An interesting outcome of infor- mal networking is that the occupational titles of the con- tacts are often surprising to clients—they never associated the occupation or setting with their own attributes. In this way, new vistas may be opened to clients as intriguing options spawn further exploration. Opportunities to ex- perience the passion, through job shadowing or work ex- perience, serve to validate initial impressions. Thus, ini- tiation determines what is meaningful to clients, while exploration determines how that meaning may be expressed. Decision-making Decision-making has one dominant issue: How to select the most appropriate option from the range of alternatives discovered to date. Formal decision-making models and strat- egies may be useful; however, these strategies by themselves rarely leave clients with a good feeling for the decision. Most clients are more comfortable with decisions which “emerge” as a result of engagement in the career planning process. When initiation and exploration have been thorough, a “right choice” crystallizes for most clients. Formal strategies may then be used to confirm a choice, rather than determine a choice. Uncertainty is a major obstacle to career planning Most clients need to recognize that a certain amount of ambiguity is associated with any decision. At this stage in the planning process, clients need to rely on their intuition to guide them to tentative choices. This may be encouraged by exploring how clients feel about alternatives they have encountered during exploration, and by using “what if” scenarios to pre- vent perceived barriers from prematurely ruling out options ERIC Digest