Such persons do not talk much about "choosing an occupation"; they just "get a job," and when it terminates, they get another. Simple as this process may appear, it does involve an occupational choice every time the individual decides that he will look for a job in one place rather than another and every time that he decides to accept or reject a job that has been offered to him.
Thus, an unemployed person who has always worked in a retail store and liked it may refuse even to apply for a factory job until he has exhausted every possibility of finding another job in a retail setting. Though he may say he is only looking for a job, he is at the same time making an occupational choice just as truly as is the high school senior who makes the same decision about where he will look for work and whose decision has been preceded by aptitude and interest testing, counseling, and the examination of a wide range of occupational possibilities.
Much of our most successful vocational guidance is done on this simple level, with persons whose demands are modest enough to be met without great difficulty and who can be helped to find the kinds of jobs they want by counselors, placement officers, and teachers of occupations who know the local employment market.
It is, perhaps, regrettable that so little of our discussion of occupational choice has dealt with these simple cases, for our preoccupation with the complex problems has led too many beginning counselors to measure their own success by their ability to satisfy the client whose demands preclude any reasonable possibility of satisfaction.
Needs are met in many ways, not all of them occupational. But when occupations are being chosen to meet needs, as they will be, the more occupations we counselors know and the more we know about them, the better is the chance that we will be able to help our clients to find occupations that will meet their needs and in which they can also get and hold jobs.
The ability to get and hold a job cannot be overlooked, even in a discussion of needs. The best occupation in the world will not meet our client's needs if he cannot get a job in it, hold that job after he gets it, or if he will not move to where the work must be done. Ultimately, the compelling need for most of us is to eat; the occupational choice which overlooks this need is hardly realistic, however well it might serve as an emotional outlet.
This is one more reason why we as counselors need a realistic knowledge of the occupations available to those we try to help.
This has several implications for counselors. The counselor should always remember that:
- The needs of his client may differ from the needs of the counselor.
- The counselor should operate within the framework of the client's needs.
- The counselor should provide every possible opportunity for the client to identify and to express his own needs.
- The counselor should be alert to notice and to remember the needs which the client reveals.
- The counselor should help the client to get whatever information the client wants about himself and about occupations.
- The counselor should help the client to discover the occupations which may meet his needs.
- The counselor should help the client to anticipate how well any contemplated occupation will meet the client's needs.
- The counselor should get the occupational information which the counselor needs in order to help the client to meet his needs.
- The counselor should stay with his client through the process of placement in order to provide the further counseling that will be needed if the desired job is not available.
- The counselor should follow up his client some months after placement in order to see how well the job is meeting the needs which the client thought it would meet.
While no one wants to dispense with individual counseling, it is conceivable that in some cases the course may be more effective than counseling, because the student does not understand himself and his needs well enough to reveal them to his counselor. But he does feel them, and when he sees an occupation that promises to meet his needs, he may feel strongly attracted to it. Without the opportunity to see it, as part of a general survey of occupations, neither he nor his counselor might ever have thought of it—he because he was unaware of its existence or its nature, his counselor because he was unaware of the need.
