Chapter 8: Using Information to Facilitate Career Development

Chapter 8 reminded me of the first day of class, and the introduction I gave. I said that researching occupational information has been one of the factors that have led me to change my area of interest in graduate school from research psychology to a field of psychology where I am able to interact with and help individuals. In particular, I remember going online and visiting the US Bureau of Labor Statistics website (www.bls.gov) to do more research on school and career counselors. I knew that I wanted to pursue a career where I would be able to utilize my education, but I also wanted to be able to incorporate my volunteer work experiences as I found them to be great opportunities to learn about the real world outside of academics. The important qualities of school and career counselors were all things I found important in the type of career I was attempting to pursue as I found being a teaching assistant far more enjoyable than being a research assistant.

The number of sources available to people when searching for information on occupations and the labor market provided in the chapter was truly astounding.  I can only vaguely remember taking a personality quiz in high school, but that was the extent to which any career information was provided. My school counselor did not make an effort to prepare students entering their senior year to do some career and college exploration.  I found Brown’s (2012) outline of the importance of career information on career development and the overview of other sources of occupational information to be a great way to have individuals learn more. Starting career development with children and the progression to learning about careers of interest to them would help to gain some personal insight on what types of people pursue what particular careers and the type of environment to be expected.

Having opportunities to directly observe workers while at their jobs, job shadowing, and career days (Brown, 2012) would have definitely been a beneficial asset when deciding where I would see myself in the future. In addition to having career information and firsthand experiences with different careers, I believe it is very important to make these resources readily available to students throughout their education. I personally chose psychology as a field of interest because I was interested in human behavior, not because of a psychology course in high school as it was only for half the school year, solely focused on sleep, and taught by the assistant principal.

References
Brown, D. (2012). Career Information, career counseling, and career development (10th ed.). New York: Pearson Education, Inc.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2012-13 Edition, School and Career Counselors, on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/ooh/community-and-social-service/school-and-career-counselors.htm.