Effective Career Counselling: Relationship Between Work Personality, Learning Style and Client Intervention Preferences

Randy B. Penney; Mildred Cahill

Authors

Randy B. Penney John Howard Society of Newfoundland
Mildred Cahill Memorial University of Newfoundland

Keywords:

career counselling, effectivness, work personality, learning style, intervention, client

Abstract

Determining client preference regarding the structure and approach to the career counselling intervention could be expected to benefit the counselling relationship, especially when working with clients who are resistant to typical intervention approaches. A process is proposed that seeks to provide offenders with a choice between two approaches to group career counselling, one that is action-oriented and a second that is grounded in self-reflection. This study focused on the development of an assessment tool that included work personality and learning style in the process of determining the individual’s preference for career counselling. This instrument, the Career Counselling Preferences Questionnaire (CCPQ), along with Holland’s Self-Directed Search (SDS-E) and Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory (LSI) was administered to 60 inmates, parolees, and probationers to investigate these inter-correlations and to determine the validity of the CCPQ in assessing preferences for counselling structure. Four Holland types, Artistic, Investigative, Social and Enterprising, were found to be positively correlated with a “thinking” approach to career intervention. The Social type was found to be additionally correlated with a “doing” approach. The Realistic Holland type, accounting for the largest portion of the sample, was found to be not significantly correlated with either approach, as was the Conventional type.

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