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Guidance and Counseling

Notes 20.6 Employment Problems

Community-sponsored vocational guidance services deal particularly with the employment problems
of the nonselective worker. Many young people have no particular occupational interests, but have
sufficient general ability to perform creditably in jobs that require little special training. Included in
this group are the boys and girls who either complete a general curriculum in the high school or
drop out of school as soon as they are old enough to do so.
It is estimated that from 25 to 50 per cent of all workers belong in this category. They are the persons
who fill the business, clerical, semiskilled, and unskilled jobs that do not require special training
and therefore are not very attractive. Community employment services are concerned primarily
with the placement of workers who constitute a body of occupational “floaters.”
The number and kind of out-of-school vocational counseling units needed by any one community
depend on available job opportunities in the community and the extent of and reasons for
unemployment among its citizenry. Public employment services co-operating with other agencies
dealing with adult workers gear their counseling services

(1) to discover available job opportunities in various occupational fields,
(2) to encourage unemployed workers or those seeking advancement to use their services,
(3) through a series of interviews, including the administration of appropriate testing
materials, to attempt to place nonselective workers into jobs for which they appear to
be best suited, and
(4) to maintain a follow-up service for the benefit of employers and employees.

The aim of the boys is to become economically independent, to marry, and to support
a family as best they can. Often they see the kind of work in which they will engage
as relatively unimportant. The girls’ objective is marriage; to them a job represents
interim gainful activity.

20.7 Job Counseling

The purpose of job counseling is to help the individual make a practicable occupational choice and
to assist him toward finding employment in that field. Vocational counseling is a much broader task
than merely matching any person who needs a job with any opening that is available. The requirements
of the job; the personality, training, and experience of the candidate; and other family, social, and
environmental factors must receive consideration.
Hence the employing counsellor must be a person of wide experience, who is well informed and a
keen judge of people. The counsellor’s function is to help the client make his own decision about job
selection, not to issue directives.
The counsellor should know how to work with other counseling organisations, public and private,
in schools or in colleges or in the industrial plants themselves. He also is concerned with the working
conditions that prevail in each position and with the placement of prospective employees in the
kind of work for which they are fitted and in which they are likely to succeed. Whenever it is
necessary, he assists in effecting transfers or promotions.
Employees are benefited through these services, and employers who are concerned with getting
efficient employees co-operate with the agencies. The community is willing to finance them because
it has come to realise that they are performing a worthwhile community service. Prompt placement
benefits the employee, the employer, and the public.

220 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY