The search for daily meaning: A technique for career counselling

Abstract

Because work is such a tremendous potential source of meaning in an individual's life, techniques which turn career choice into technical talent matching are inadequate. The individual's search for authentic meaning needs to be the focus of career counselling, but few approaches have been able to addressed this relationship between working and living. Major developments in career theory are reviewed to highlight the distinction between the more technical logical positivist and the phenomenological approaches. Super's Career- Development Assessment and Counselling (C-DAC) model is described in detail as it is the first significant attempt to move beyond the technical approaches by incorporating developmental theory into career counselling and by stressing the role of counsellee readiness to use the information provided. However, especially in South Africa, any test-based approach to career counselling runs the risk of shifting the locus of control from the counsellee to the counsellor, so an autobiographical non-test approach, the life-line, is introduced to assist counsellees in their search for personal meaning without running the risks associated with test-based assessments. The life-line helps to contextualise the choice of work within the counsellee's subjective life experience and turns career counselling into a shared search for a range of personal meanings rather than the provision, by the counsellor, of a limiting interpretation. Three case studies are presented to demonstrate the use of the life-line, and the conclusions arrived at are shown to be essentially1 similar to conclusions obtained from using the C-DAC battery. The advantages and limitations of the life-line are discussed and its ability to combat problems associated with school based career counselling is outlined as well as its usefulness with mid-life career changers, in cross-cultural contexts, and in group counselling.