Page 223 - DEDU502_GUIDANCE_AND_COUNSELING_ENGLISH

Unit 20: Organizing Counseling Services at College Level

11. Descriptions of occupations found in fiction, Notes
12. Printed information regarding specific occupations, and

13. Vocational tryouts
20.3.4 Counseling and Vocational Attitudes
Businessmen, industrialists, and other employers claim that hiring, firing, and promoting are based
more on the kind of person a candidate for a job or a worker is than on his skill competence. For
example, a group of businessmen who made a study of the causes of promotion and discharge of
office workers found that success in office work usually is the result of the worker’s possession of
specific personality characteristics, such as punctuality, industry, neatness, cheerfulness,
responsibility, trustworthiness, and co-operation.
These findings should have definite significance for parents and for teachers, and especially for the
members of a guidance staff. It is misguidance to excuse a child or an adolescent, on the basis of his
immaturity, for a display of undesirable attitudes or personality failings. From a practical point of
view, it is the duty of the counsellor to make known to young people the importance of good
behaviour characteristics and to help them to develop them.
They first must make certain that the fault for the individual’s behaviour is not theirs. They should
not expect a young person to take responsibilities or to engage in activities that are beyond his best
efforts. Once satisfied on these points, they owe it to him to see that he gradually acquires the kind
of personality which will earn him success and advancement in his occupational work.

Self Assessment
1. Fill in the blanks:
(i) Counseling services at the collegiate level is .............................. .
(ii) .............................. in the college as teachers help the student to appreciate the value of
possessing certain attitudes and behaviour characteristics.

(iii) ..............................provides help to find out solutions of occupational problems.
(iv) .............................. and .............................. are counseling activities that can not be achieved
quickly or even completely.

20.4 Counseling in Training Institutions

Counseling of students in specialised colleges is extremely important. In every form of occupational
activity, the possession of certain appropriate personality characteristics is as significant in achieving
worker success as are specific skills and knowledges. Hence the guidance personnel must be
thoroughly acquainted with required personality qualities and must help their students to acquire
them.
The staff of the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising, New York City has made a job analysis of the
desirable personal qualities of an individual who plans to enter their field. Among the characteristics
included are such general traits as punctuality in meeting appointments, industry, honesty,
cooperativeness, and the like. In addition, these young women need guidance toward the
development of meticulous grooming and appropriateness of dress, poise, dignity, adaptability to
personality and job variations, ability to meet and talk intelligently with buyers and others concerning
the quality, workmanship, and so on of products, and a proper recognition of lines of authority.
The guidance programme of this school includes courses in applied psychology, speech, dress and
grooming, and current events and economics, besides the regular merchandising courses.
The school offers a two-year course. During the first year, the students engage in full-time
supervised work projects in retailing establishments for about four weeks and during the

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