The 5 Main Benefits of Career Counselling
We are regularly asked what are the benefits that a person can achieve from career counselling. This question is asked by people choosing their subjects to study or making their initial career choices or thinking about making a career change. We have therefore challenged ourselves to list the 5 main benefits a person typically gets from working with a career counsellor.
But first, what is a career counsellor?
A career counsellor (also known as a career adviser), can help you to figure out who you are and what you want out of your education, your career and your life.
Here are the 5 main benefits you might get from working with a career counsellor.
1. Determining strengths, interests and values
Qualified career counsellors are trained to use a variety of career assessment tools like our CareerHQ Compass to help you to match your skills, strengths and abilities with appropriate career and education options. These assessment tools can help to point you in the direction of career options that play to your strengths and interests rather than choosing something that might play to an area where you are weaker or less inspired, and may therefore lead to more frustration.
2. Setting direction and goals
Once your career counsellor has helped you determine your strengths and interests, they can then help to guide you through a process of evaluating your options and identifying the steps to progress towards your goals. The work you have done to identify your strengths and interests will help to make it more likely that you will be working with realistic and achievable goals. This can be particularly useful if you tend to struggle with goal setting or making changes, as a career counsellor can make you more accountable to someone other than yourself.
3. Understanding the world of work
There is a wide range of job options, which is great for job seekers and career changers – but it can also be overwhelming. The world of work continues to go through considerable change, and if you are just starting out, you ideally want to be able to focus on careers that will more likely have good prospects for the next few years.
On the other hand, many of the jobs that exist today weren’t around 10 years ago. So if you’re thinking of a career change, it helps to know which of these new jobs, and the ones that are emerging, might fit your skill set, in addition to those that existed when you began your career journey. Career counsellors understand the wider world of work and can broaden your perspective on what careers might be available and/or suitable.
4. Identifying options and choices
As the changing job market is creating many new challenges and opportunities, it is common for people to now find themselves in a position to need help with their next career step.
One of the things that a career counsellor will help you identify is one or more fields of work that match your skills, strengths and abilities – for eg. sales or working with animals. Each field of work will have a number of possible job choices based on other factors you will also want to take into consideration, such as providing for your living needs, and connecting with your values.
5. Enhancing your personal brand
Ultimately, securing or changing jobs will require you to present yourself in your best light. Career counsellors can also offer additional support in terms of help with constructing your CV and LinkedIn profile, researching potential employers, writing job applications and cover letters and interview practice. They will guide you in ways of making you, and your ‘personal brand’ more marketable to potential employers.
A good career counsellor will provide you with an objective and supportive ear and means to help you with your career, education and broader life decisions and steps. They should add value and perspective to your thinking but shouldn’t tell you what to do. This is for you to decide with the benefit of the insights you have obtained from the career counsellor.
