Career Counseling Case Study

Taneka, a 17-year-old, African American female, is a junior in high school. She is the oldest sibling and lives with her single-parent mother. As the oldest child, Taneka has provided a lot of support for her younger siblings building her natural leadership skills. Taneka currently has a part-time job as a salesperson at the mall and became aware of her good people skills because of this job. Her supervisor approached her to see if she would join the company’s employee leadership training program. This prompted Taneka to consider post-secondary education. Her grade point average is a 2.05, but she is on track to graduate with her class. However, she is unsure of what she would like to do for a career, how to prepare for it, how to figure out

The American School Counselor Association (2012) identifies that counselors should provide students with specific knowledge, attitudes, and skills to enhance learning in the area of career development as well as academic and personal/social development. Further, guiding students through the decision making process about career choices and how to get there is a central part of career counseling (Miller & Miller, 2005). In this case, the counselor would apply John Holland’s Typology Approach. This approach would applicable because it would allow the counseling objectives to include developing strategies to enhance self-knowledge, identifying career options, and identifying occupational requirements (Zunker, 2016). All of these areas are needs of Taneka’s and would allow her to gain insight so that she could move forward with making a

The counselor would also use communication skills, such as minimal encouragers, reflecting feelings, clarifying, and validating, to build and maintain rapport with Taneka. In subsequent meetings the counselor would continue to validate, support, and encourage the student while using communication skills, such as using the student’s language and interpreting, to continue to maintain rapport. These skills would help to show Taneka that the counselor understands her problems and wants to assist her. Likewise, building rapport with coworkers and supervisors would be beneficial because it could give the counselor a professional support network to gain information from and support. For instance, a new school counselor that has built rapport with a coworker can seek information from them or be able to work collaboratively with them for the benefit of the