The counselor should know the other opportunities besides the first jobs for his dropouts and graduates in his community. No technique is perfect. Desirable and indispensable as the follow-up study is, it will not do the whole job of revealing all employment opportunities to the counselor and his clients. Dropouts and graduates may have missed some excellent opportunities of which they were unaware. New opportunities may have arisen since the last class entered the employment market. To discover these, a survey of the employment market is desirable.
The extent of the employment market, already revealed by the follow-up studies, will vary greatly from one institution and from one community to another. High school dropouts and graduates usually find their first jobs in or near their hometowns, even in suburban areas, but this tendency is not universal. College alumni usually cover a much wider territory, but not always. Amateur counselors in rural areas sometimes assume that employment opportunities near home are too limited to permit much choice, but hundreds of different occupations may be found within a 25-mile radius of a rural school.
Any follow-up is likely to reveal a considerable concentration of alumni employed near the institution. A follow-up of alumni from the high school at Jamestown, N.Y., revealed that 74 percent of the respondents still gave Jamestown as their address five years after graduation. Local employment opportunities, therefore, should never be slighted by the counselor.
The occupational survey
The occupational survey may be as simple or as elaborate as the counselor's resources permit. The beginning counselor, coming into a new college or a new community, should begin his survey by browsing through the classified section of the local telephone directory, observing the kinds of organizations listed therein. Anyone who has not done this before will be surprised at the variety of industries and occupations that he might otherwise have overlooked.
The counselor should next call on the school or college placement officer, if there is one, and on any teachers who have helped their own students to get jobs. He should then go to the nearest office of his state employment service and to any private employment agencies in his community. The addresses of employment agencies are usually found in the classified telephone directory. If no office of the state employment service is listed in the local directory, a letter to the state employment service at the state capital will reveal the location of the nearest office.
To each placement officer the counselor should introduce himself, explain that he is trying to learn something about the local occupations that are likely to be open to his dropouts and graduates, and ask the placement officer if he can give the counselor any information or suggest where he might get any. Because the employment agency business is sometimes fiercely competitive, some placement officers are understandably reluctant to reveal trade secrets, including the names of the employers they serve.
But most placement officers will be willing to indicate the kinds of jobs they find easy and hard to fill and the kinds of applicants they can and cannot place. Because the interest of any informant may sometimes be served by revealing only part of the truth, the counselor should accept all information gratefully but tentatively and check it against other sources at every opportunity. No information is perfect. No source is infallible. But excellent leads for further investigation may be obtained in a short time with little effort and almost no expense by calling on placement officers and employment agencies.
The beginning counselor should call next on the secretary of the local chamber of commerce, from whom he can usually obtain some information regarding the largest local employers, approximately how many persons they employ, and the nature of their business. If this information is not available locally, it may sometimes be obtained by writing to the state chamber of commerce at the state capital. In a very small community, a call at the local bank or a walk around town may be all that is needed.
After identifying the larger employers, the counselor's next calls should be on the personnel directors or employment managers of these companies and on the officers of the local labor unions with which these companies have contracts. If the counselor also teaches a course in occupations or another course in which industrial tours are appropriate, he may save time and improve his service to students by taking his class with him on these trips.
The survey activities so far described can be and should be undertaken by the counselor himself. No appropriation is necessary if the counselor is willing to spend a little of his own money for postage stamps, telephone calls, and local transportation. Of course, if he can get expense money for these items, he can conserve his own funds for other things.
When these activities have been completed, the counselor may wish to undertake a more complete survey of the employment market for his graduates. This may be done at little or no expense as a student project in a course in occupations, or it may be undertaken by the counselor himself.
All that has been said above about counselors who work in schools and colleges is equally true of counselors who work in community agencies or elsewhere. Every counselor who attempts to help his clients make occupational choices should know the principal employment opportunities of the community in which he works.
