Career Intervention paper

Career Intervention paper

            High school students are always facing challenges in choosing the best career paths. The lack of proper mentorship programs has forced students in choosing careers which they have lived to regret. A career intervention program is thus proposed to help the students in making better career choices based on passion and not being forced. The choice of a particular career depends on a particular student’s knowledge on the career path chosen. Career intervention comes in to save the students from making regrettable decisions concerning their career paths. The theory of social cognitive can be applied to high school students to change their career choices by changing their way of thinking to fit the ever-growing career market. The career needs of students vary adversely among students in the same institutions. The different career preferences are motivated by the natural impact of vicarious experience where students prefer to choose because they have seen people choose the same careers to become successful in the long run.

The social cognitive theory is based on the belief in an individual’s capability to trust their confidence. Students may have problems choosing their best course. Besides, the choice could have been made by the students simply because they probably had some little information on the course alone. Students always have some special confidence that makes them trust their choices without looking at the wider parts of the career objectives and goals (Nota, Santilli & Soresi, 2016). Changing the thinking of the students goes a long way in helping them to make the right choices and then leaving them to employ their strong confidence in their choices to pursue their careers seriously. The social cognitive theory is based on self-efficacy, which attempts to assess students based on experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological and other emotional factors. The experience may not be fruitful for students since they require models that go hand in hand with the problem at hand. However, the ability of students to believe in vicarious experience is instrumental in coming up with an intervention plan. The plan will aim at changing the way students make their career selection and leave them to pursue careers at their convenience in the future.

The intervention process should precede a career assessment plan to find the right career paths for various students. Both qualitative and quantitative assessment strategies are critical in ensuring that the career advice given to the student goes hand in hand with their capabilities and passion. The experience by the career advisor helps in deciding the career path suitable for a student after analyzing the results of the assessment plan. The assessment plan should be done after the student has willingly accepted to take an assessment test since forced participation will only give unreliable information that could mislead both the instructor and the student.

Informal tests are applied as one of the tests carried on the students. The informal test applied at the assessment stage is the asking of the student random questions concerning their early childhood, to check for impacts on the current career selection by past experiences and influence. Individual face-to-face engagement is done on students to obtain information concerning the career path in which they will adequately help in making the right career decision. The information collected is sufficient for giving the right career advice. However, quantitative tests are required to give 100 percent confidence on the career advice given.

A personality test serves well to help a career guide in delivering their responsibilities. The test for this design is the performance of a personality test that gives the required information concerning one’s personality (Sjöberg, 2015). The choice of a career path is significantly affected by the personality performance of the student. Proper knowledge of the student’s personality is crucial in identifying a suitable career for a particular student. The personality test can be modified to meet the flexible nature of students, and the career advisor can only trust evidence from a strong personality. The use of online personality test machines is critical in maintaining the trust of career advisors on the correct answers and should be able to repeat the same test from the individual different times and give similar results.

After analyzing the responses by the student, the most important bit of the intervention plan is the method used to pass the final information to the student. The final information is critical in that gambling with such information might adversely affect an individual’s career life. One-on-one engagement is chosen as the best strategy to pass information since it presents the student with an additional chance to make more inquiries concerning the career chosen. The one on one engagement also allows the student closer to the career advisor, and thus the advisor can confirm whether the information obtained in the initial stages of the plan was reliable.

The design is, however, susceptible to various challenges. The students only give information that they feel is not confidential and could leave out critical information that could impact the decisions made on their career choice. Also, the procedure is costly and requires patience and determination.

References

Nota, L., Santilli, S., & Soresi, S. (2016). A life‐design‐based online career intervention for early adolescents: Description and initial analysis. The Career Development Quarterly, 64(1), 4-19.

Sjöberg, L. (2015). Correction for faking in self‐report personality tests. Scandinavian journal of psychology, 56(5), 582-591.