Creative Use of the Career Construction Interview

Abstract

Designed as part of an individual career construction and life design counseling intervention, the Career Construction Interview (CCI) and My Career Story (MCS) workbook aid career counselors and other career service providers in helping clients construct, deconstruct, and reauthor their career stories. Recently, some career counselors have developed ways of using the CCI and the MCS in group settings. In this article, the author offers 3 additional ways to use the CCI and, thereby, add creativity to the career counseling process. These 3 ways include use of written exercises, career collages, and career portfolios. The article concludes with a call for career practitioners to continue to think creatively in using the CCI with clients.

The Challenges of Life Design Counseling in the Times of the Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)

“…One is that career adaptability is an important variable affecting individual career, and LDC intervention can be designed around career adaptability, such as increasing intervention time; the other is that similar groups may have common characteristics, so future researches can focus on the common needs of clients and carry out more group-based LDC (Maree and Symington, 2015 ; DaSilva et al, 2020 ). In addition, a more personalized LDC can be developed by creatively combining counseling methods such as career collages and career portfolios (Barclay, 2019 ).…”

“…CCI, for example, lists several core questions: role models for growing up; favorite magazine or TV program, etc. (Barclay and Wolff, 2012;Barclay et al, 2019).…”

Life Design Counseling: Theory, Methodology, Challenges, and Future Trends

“…In addition, the creative use of LDC is still a problem that needs the attention of career practitioners. Specifically, how to combine intervention methods of methods with art (e.g., painting) to help clients better narrate, reconstruct their own life themes, and find the power for change is a issue that needs to be solved urgently (Barclay, 2019). LDC practitioners need to creatively develop intervention methods, so that they can be applied to a wider range of clients, help them express themselves through narration, generate motivation for substantial change, discover life themes, find life goals and plan their own future.…”

“…In addition, Interpersonal process recall (IPR) is an important auxiliary method of LDC that is usually used to explore the experience of clients in the process of counseling dialogue (Cardoso et al, 2016a). Written exercises, career collages, and career portfolios are often combined with CCI creatively (Barclay, 2019).…”

“…On the other hand, the effective implementation of LDC is inseparable from professional counselors. The lack of professional LDC counselors may bring the following negative effects: it is difficult for clients and counselors to establish a working alliance and sort out ambivalence through coherent narration and re conceptualization, then it is hard for clients to draw a life portrait and formulate a plan for moving forward (Cardoso et al, 2016a,b;Barclay, 2019). In addition, long-term intervention is an important guarantee for the effectiveness of LDC (Di Fabio and Maree, 2012;Nota et al, 2016).…”