Do you work in the career services industry? Do you find the work to be increasingly exhausting? If you answered ‘yes’ and ‘yes’, read on to understand what might be happening to you.
I have the privilege of teaching people how to transition from one situation in their life to another. That privilege includes being able to train others who do similar work. I inevitably end up doing some important and often surprising learning myself. One lesson struck a particularly strong chord with me. It was when I recognized that lots of my colleagues didn’t realize how many different hats they wear – how many different jobs they do – under the guise of one job title.
The first time I recognized this, I had asked the question “which role or roles do you fill in your job?” The response across the room was either a blank look or one of complete confusion. I carried on – quickly, as I’m wont to do – by naming the various possible hats (roles): career counselor, employment counselor, career and labor market information specialist, academic counselor, financial counselor and personal counselor. Heads nodded so I naively thought I’d clarified things.
Wrong! There were times during the rest of the training when I would get blank looks again and have to repeat myself, or someone would ask me to re-name the work.
It took a few more times of running the training this way before I realized the roots of their confusion and loss of focus was my assumption that I could simply name the different roles (hats) and my colleagues would recognize them. Further, they would know (because they work in the same industry as me, after all) what each role entailed. Wrong again! They were not clear about the type of work that belonged with each role. They just valiantly went about their work every day, doing many of those roles – and maybe even all of them!
I re-vamped the training and started with the same question, but this time I also provided the table below: “The Many Roles of a Career Practitioner Defined”. Lightbulbs went off all over the room! For the first time these hard working, caring and supportive people could see why their work was slowly wearing them into the ground!
The Many Roles of a Career Practitioner Defined
| Role | Definition |
| Career Counselor | Helps clients figure out what they want to do next in their career |
| Employment Counselor | Builds clients’ capacity to find and secure a job |
| Career and Labor Market Information Specialist | Helps clients effectively locate and use information about work and learning options without becoming overwhelmed by the volume and complexity of it all |
| Academic Counselor | Helps clients understand the intricacies of academic offerings and secure a position in the program and institution of their choice |
| Financial Counselor | Helps clients locate and secure funding needed to make their next career move |
| Personal Counselor | Guides clients through the process of getting the assistance needed to overcome/deal with negative realities that would interfere with or stop them from making their next career move |
Each of these roles requires specific and extensive training. All of them are complex and expansive in their nature. Any one of them can completely fill an employees’ work week to the point of overflow. If you are wearing even two of these hats, you are doing the work of two specialists.
This told me a few things. First of all, these career practitioners were doing the work of multiple people every day, thinking that they were doing one job! No wonder they were exhausted when they went home! Second, they were probably moving from one role to another – and back again – multiple times, leaving their clients struggling to keep up with their train(s) of thought. Some of them told me that having this information was beginning to ring bells about why some clients might not come back for their next appointments.
Needless to say, this list is included in every training for colleagues now. I hope it also helps you become clearer about your work. What are we doing to ourselves? What are our employers unknowingly expecting of us? Perhaps having this list in hand will also give you the information you need to open your employer’s eyes to the overwhelming nature of your job!