Process: Career guidance with a Grade 12 pupil
The request presented to me:
I want to Bring my teenage son / daughter in for psychometric assessments before he goes to study next year (Grade 12 pupil).
Dear Ma’am,
Career guidance assessments used to be a once-off intervention in the past. The adolescent will be brought to a Career Guidance Counsellor or Psychometrist for an intense ½ day of assessments, or even longer. He or she then came back for feedback a week later, and usually had to sit through an hour long run-through of what the assessment results say, and the assessor’s recommendations for a suitable career. These recommendations were off-target for the client, more often than not. I have heard so many people say that the career advice they’ve received thus was inappropriate or ill-considered for their unique situation.
My process differs. I feel that it is important to establish rapport with the teenager over a period of time, and really let him have a voice in the process.
The first assessment(s) I will take the adolescent through, is a personality profile or two. Different personality profiles highlight different characteristics of a person, and I find that helpful for the individual to get to know themselves better. For this reason it is also important for me to meet with the client for a face-to-face feedback session to discuss their results from the personality profile(s) before proceeding with the next step of the assessment. That way, they get time to process the results in between, and most importantly, develop trust in me for the next step.
I will then have a separate session with them where I take them through a cognitive processing assessment, to establish where their areas of strength lie, and possible weaknesses. This part of the assessment may feel like an actual test, so that is why it is important that the individual has built up trust in me. I will also provide feedback to them in another face-to-face consultation on these results.
At this stage, I should be able to give him some “homework”, i.e. tasks to do for him to explore different career options, say over the next two to three months.
Thereafter, he would come back to me for a follow up session, wherein we can discuss what he has learnt so far and thoughts that he has developed around a career that is suitable to him. I would encourage you as the (foster) parents to also share your insights and thoughts during the process.
I know from my own experience that an adolescent can reach matric or even early adulthood, and not yet be in a space where they feel comfortable to make a career decision; and often they have insufficient knowledge about the type of careers available to them to make an appropriate decision.
So my process is aimed at helping the individual grow in his self-knowledge, self-confidence and knowledge about available careers, for him or her to stand a better chance of ultimately making a career decision that is right for them. Empowering individuals to empower themselves.