Practice and research in career counseling and development—2003

Career Development Quarterly, Dec, 2004 by John C. Dagley, Shannon K. Salter

Emotional intelligence. Emmerling and Cherniss addressed the issue of the complex interdependence of cognition and emotional intelligence in career choice and development. Decisions are not solely cognitive and rational. Career interventions tend to be cognitive based, but few veteran career counselors would fail to recognize the powerful role emotions play in clients' life choices. Conflicts with significant others, self-conflict, doubts about personal abilities, choice anxiety, and the general angst associated with exploding rates of change not only in the work world but also in other areas of life all combine to make the emotional side of life something that deserves more than just management. It is time, according to Emmerling and Cherniss, to acknowledge the vital role that emotion plays in career choice and development.

Career assessment of the gifted. Any career counselor who might possibly work with intellectually gifted students would be wise to consult Kerr and Sodano's article on the career assessment and counseling challenges unique to this population. "Many of the nation's academically talented students are making surprisingly unimaginative career choices" (p. 173). Among students who achieved perfect scores on national tests, relatively few chose majors in their area of greatest expertise, but instead chose from a rather narrow range of options, mostly majors leading to high-paying, plentiful jobs.

Multipotentiality refers to the construct that gifted youth possess a sufficiently high general intelligence that they can select from a very wide range of career options. Unfortunately, as might be imagined, high ability tends to lead to high interests across the board. Some gifted students, under pressure from parents or other adults, move toward a foreclosure of options, decide early, usually in line with practical, income-related encouragement, and then follow that early choice beyond a time of satisfaction with the choice. Such a choice reflects the long-debated relationship of passion and success. In a study (Cooper, as cited in Amundson, p. 150) of 1,500 business majors, all but 1 of the 101 eventual millionaires, 20 years later, had chosen their major on the basis of something they cared about deeply rather than on the basis of wanting to make more money. In contrast to multiple talents and interests, some gifted youth demonstrate extraordinary talent in one specific area. For these youth, the challenge for educators, parents, and career counselors is to nurture the exceptional talent and at the same time facilitate well-rounded development. Kerr and Sodano identified several specific techniques and strategies for working with the gifted, including the use of interest tests at a younger age and the use of structured groups.

Trait Complexes

Ackerman and Beier added to their program of research on identifying trait complexes comprised of identified communalities of intellectual abilities, personality characteristics, and interests. They presented a cogent argument, based on earlier meta-analytic studies and a recent factor analysis study, for improving career counseling by considering together all three of these important variables, each with its innumerable permutations, combined into complexes of traits. These trait complexes, in turn, then share communalities with career choice options.