Counseling Career Reflection Questions Essay

In this discussion, you will reflect on what you have learned throughout the course to consider how assessments relate to your career goals.Counseling Career Reflection Questions Essay

Reflect on the material learned throughout this course and how it may apply to your career goals. In your initial post, address the following questions:

  • How do you see assessments playing a pivotal role in your future career path?
  • What role do you see technology playing in the future of assessments? How is it currently being utilized in your field?Counseling Career Reflection Questions Essay

After you have posted your initial response, read through the posts of your peers. In your responses to at least two of your peers, discuss some of the ethical issues that could potentially arise in the identified career path. For example, if one of your peers discussed the role of IQ testing in academia, you could generate a response or some questions about the cultural considerations. Also, discuss whether there is a technology that would work well with the assessment mentioned by your peer.

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To complete this assignment, review the Discussion Rubric document.

AFTER COMPLETING THE INITIAL POST, PLEASE ALSO RESPOND TO THE FOLLOWING TWO STUDENTS REGARDING THE SAME TOPIC!

STUDENT ONE:

Assessments will absolutely play a pivotal role in my career path. Whether I end up being a forensic evaluator or a psychologist for the courts or in DOC, assessments will be a daily part of my job. Assessing clients or inmates will be a huge part of what I do, which means I’ll also have to know how & when to administer these assessments. I’ll also have to know how to interpret, read & reiterate the results of these assessments to my clients and other professionals.Counseling Career Reflection Questions Essay
I think technology is already a huge influence on assessments and their future in the field. Being able to administer certain assessments via computer rather than manually, can be extremely beneficial for time and cost. At my current job at the competency restoration facility, we are slowly transitioning to using some assessments via computer, which is cool to see. It’s interesting to see how much more willing to participate some of the patients are, when they are told that they can take the assessment via computer or with a tv.

When I finished university and started working in the corporate world, I was so excited about the adventures ahead of me. I was hungry to keep learning and growing, and I was convinced I knew exactly what my dream career looked like. Until I didn’t.

The fast paced, fun, steep learning curve in every position I was in wore off in about six months. Every time, after six months being in a position, I found myself feeling a bit bored and unchallenged. I made an effort to join extra initiatives at work and create new challenges for me, but in the end I couldn’t escape the real truth: the role wasn’t right for me.Counseling Career Reflection Questions Essay

Luckily, I started my corporate career in a graduate scheme which meant every 12 months I was asked to switch positions and locations anyways. That meant that when I reached boredom at six months, I had another six months still to go. I learned to use the latter six months to focus on reflecting on what I enjoyed and what I didn’t enjoy. I also did productivity tests on myself to see what helped me perform at my best. Then, when the 12 months was up, I got to move to another new exciting role.

I did this for three years before I finally admitted to myself that I was in the wrong industry and wrong company. It took a very intense coaching session to help me realize that. In fact, that very coaching session is what inspired me to become a coach and help others to do what he did for me.

Now that I look back on my past, and think about all the career tips I got along the way, I realized there were six simple questions I wish someone had asked me at the start of my career. I don’t claim that I would have known all the answers to them, but at least having them handy to reflect on would have helped me adjust my sails a bit quicker than I did. Now, even on my entrepreneurial journey, I reflect on these questions at least every six months to make sure I’m on the right track.

1. Think of a time when you were performing at your best. What were you doing? What were you saying, thinking and feeling? What was going on around you?

Reflecting on times like these help you identify what helps you succeed. Often this is the marriage between what you do well and what you enjoy doing. The more detailed you answer this question, the more you will be able to get out of it. Don’t feel like you need to limit yourself to performing at your best at work. Maybe it’s in social situations, fitness classes or family interactions that you feel you’ve truly reached your potential. The things you learn about yourself from these kinds of situations are equally relevant.Counseling Career Reflection Questions Essay

2. What are your natural strengths that you love to use?

What are the abilities you feel like you’ve been blessed with? These are the things that come really naturally to you, and often when you’re doing them you rarely even notice yourself putting any effort in because it comes so easily to you. Really be open minded here about what you define as a strength – it can be anything from being a great communicator to always being really positive to finding it really easy to love. It doesn’t matter how you define that strength as long as you know what it means to you and that you make sure it’s a natural ability rather than a learned skill (e.g. a mind that understands numbers really well vs. creating effective algorithms, an eye for beauty and design vs. using Photoshop well).

3. What drives and motivates you?

This is one of the most important questions to reflect on yet we almost never stop to think about it. Often we assume what our motivators are and then we find ourselves getting frustrated when we’re not feeling motivated by them. This is where it’s good think about our values as being able to live our values and seeing others respect our values is what tends to drive us the most. Are you driven by creating positive change, or by having a sense of freedom when you work? Do you like to be recognized for the work you do individually, or would you rather collaborate with others? List a maximum of five values that you think motivate you the most.

4. What kind of why and positive impact do you want to have?

This is very related to question number three but it’s so powerful it needs to be separated in itself. Even when you think you don’t want to have any positive impact in the world, subconsciously in the back of your head you probably do. Humans are social creatures and we are all designed to help each other and make the world a better place. Sure, we do argue over stupid things and get involved in unnecessary battles. That’s why it’s so important for you to remember your own personal why as it will help you to avoid these arguments and battles more successfully. You’ll realize that everyone has their own take on a purpose and that’s what makes the world such a special place. We are all striving to make our mark on the world in different ways and the clearer we are about the mark, the easier it is to stay on the path that’s right for us.Counseling Career Reflection Questions Essay

5. What do you love the most about your current or past work?

This is a simple question so don’t try to over complicate it. Write down whatever comes to your mind when you ask yourself this. It could be a supportive manager, a funny co-worker, free snacks in the office, an office dog, a challenging project or a specific work responsibility you have. Write down everything and anything you can think of – and don’t filter yourself. You can do the filtering later when you put all of the answers from these six questions together.

6. What do you dislike the most about your current or past work?

A process of elimination is equally important. Think about what you really don’t like and wish you didn’t have to deal with. The admin stuff? The lack of socialization with your colleagues? The bad food in the office canteen? The rigid hours you have to be in the office? Write anything that you can think of that you really don’t like.

Once you’ve got the answers to these six questions, you can start to the things that keep repeating themselves in your answers. These are your key career performance indicators. These are the things you know you want in your role, regardless of what company or industry it’s in. You can even take these notes to your manager or potential manager, and ask them how they could help you meet these things to make sure you’re at your happiest at work and being able to perform at your best.

Whatever you do or wherever you go, make sure to reflect on these questions regularly whilst you continue to grow and develop as a person. That way you’ll always stay true to who you are and on the right track for building your dream career.

With the exception of a few ineffectual sessions with an in-house therapist at my college following a bad breakup, I had no experience with the counseling process when I made my first appointment to see a career counselor earlier this year. I had heard the gamut about counseling, though: it’s so helpful, it’s a total crock, it changed my life, it’s a waste of money. All I really knew was that I’d hit a wall with my own efforts to clarify my job goals, and seeking professional help seemed like a good next step.Counseling Career Reflection Questions Essay

When I first contacted my counselor, she suggested we speak on the phone for a few minutes to make sure it would be a good fit. I told her my central problem (“I’m interested in a lot of jobs and am having trouble narrowing down”) and she laid out a path to clarity: we’d take stock of my strengths and preferences, then match them up with careers that would put them to best use. Sold!

Personal revelations

My counselor spent the lion’s share of our first 50-minute session taking a wide-ranging personal inventory of me. Questions went from “Did you go to a private high school?” to “What are your relationships with your siblings like?” By the end, I felt a little self-conscious from blabbing so much, but my counselor wanted to learn as much about me as possible. Toward the end of that first session, she asked what impressions I thought my parents’ working lives had made on me. As I thought aloud about it, I found myself saying, “They gave me a sense that there were no limits, but also that there was little direction.” After saying it, I realized that this one sentiment explained a lot about how I’d lived my life thus far. A good counselor can help draw you out and let you reveal for yourself factors and habits currently operating undercover.

Identifying themes

Another benefit of this kind of personal reflection was being able to tease out the strongest themes in my personality, with the goal of matching them to career possibilities. My counselor gave me a post-first-session homework assignment called “Seven Stories.” You jot down brief descriptions of 25 different times you can remember enjoying doing something, thinking you were doing it well, and feeling proud to do it. Not just one or two of those things; all three. Then you take the seven stories you like the most from the bunch and write a paragraph about each of them. The exercise takes time, but can quickly reveal some striking trends in personality. In my case, I immediately noticed themes of close personal relationships and a desire to help; in addition, my counselor picked up on the tactile nature of many of the stories, and on how most of the goals I reached came from me setting my own bars and reaching them.Counseling Career Reflection Questions Essay

After identifying themes like these, we moved on to more formal methods of personal data mining, including the Strong Interest Inventory and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (for professional use only!). Using info from all these sources, we compiled a list of some of my strongest personality trends (artistic, extroverted, collaborative, intuitive), then dove into career matching. The Strong especially includes lots of cool matching tools, but there are other helpful sources available free to anyone online, including O*NET’s Interest Profiler (created by the U.S. Department of Labor).

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The total picture

Something I found at first frustrating but then comforting throughout career counseling was my counselor’s contention that there are thousands of jobs any person can find satisfying, and by the same turn, there is no such thing as a job without drawbacks. So she emphasized that career search is not about finding the one magic title that will solve everything, it’s about matching your interests and skills as much as possible to a line of work. Kind of like Dr. Phil’s 80/20 rule.

In this vein, my counselor also appreciated that there’s a lot to every job that’s not in the description, but that affects its total scope tremendously. A doctor’s bio blurb might indicate his academic degrees and areas of specialty, but it won’t mention that it can be lonely running a private practice, that his office is a two-hour commute from his home, or that insurance paperwork takes up half his time. Another example comes from my counselor herself: she always enjoyed counseling, but it took her awhile of working with teens, then business school students, before she realized she would really feel most at home working with young professionals in the arts, which is her focus now. When searching for the right opportunity, pay attention to the kind of daily lifestyle (work environment, potential colleagues and peers, even seasonal changes, etc.) your work could entail.Counseling Career Reflection Questions Essay

A few notes on choosing a counselor

A trusted friend gave me the name of a counselor she’d seen and found helpful, and since my friend and I are a lot alike, I was confident that I’d see eye to eye with the person on at least some things; it turned out she was just the counselor for me. If you can’t get a recommendation, make sure to scour potential counselors’ websites for clues to their style, and ask for a ten-minute phone chat before you book your first appointment (if the counselor doesn’t suggest it first) so you can get to know each other a tiny bit before starting. If you’re not at ease with the person’s demeanor, or you feel they’re focused on different goals than you, take an initial pass and try someone else.

Career counseling can be expensive, no doubt about it. Frankly, I don’t think I’d ever spent so much per hour on any activity, except perhaps flying. And it absolutely stretched my budget. But for me, it was worth every penny. I consider it a great investment in the future, ounce-of-prevention style: the new ideas and methodologies I learned have streamlined my thinking, and will save me time and headaches down the road.Counseling Career Reflection Questions Essay