Student Counseling Center

Career Counseling

Career Counseling can help a student plan and organize their major and career decisions. A counselor can listen, respond to ideas, give feedback, teach strategies for making decisions, and help students formulate their majors and career goals. Personality and interest inventories (such as the Myers Briggs and the Strong Interest Inventory) are often used as a part of the career counseling process.

 

Career Planning Process

Career Planning encourages individuals to explore and gather information that enables them to synthesize, gain competencies, make decisions, set goals and take action. Each individual varies in their progress through each of these stages for many reasons. Some advance rapidly through each or all of the stages while others progress more slowly. Individuals may repeat all or parts of the career development process at various points throughout their lives as values, interests, abilities, and life circumstances change.

 

 

Step One: Self-Assessment

Finding out what career is best for you begins with looking at yourself. Understanding your interests, abilities, aptitudes, personal traits, and desired life style, are important in relating the interrelationship between self and career choice.

 

• Appointments for career counseling may be made by contacting:

  • Student Counseling Center
    University Center. Room 3170
    Phone: 903.566.7254
    Office hours: 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.

 

• 1st appointment

  • Please arrive 10-15 minutes early for your first appointment to fill out paperwork. It may take up to 2 hours for your initial visit. You may feel that some of the questions that you will complete on the paperwork do not apply to you, as you are only seeking career counseling at this time. However, you will be meeting with a Licensed Professional Counselor, so the same issues of client/counselor confidentiality will apply to career counseling. Some students may also wish to discuss other personal issues with their counselor while going through the career counseling process. This is perfectly fine, as our counselors have credentials and experience to work with many different issues.
  • After completing paperwork, you will typically meet with a Licensed Professional Counselor who will talk to you about your interests, past work experiences, hobbies, and other information related to your career interests.
  • Assessments- After meeting with a counselor, you will be set up on a computer to take assessments such as the Strong Interest Inventory (interests) and the Myers-Briggs (personality).  Your visit with the counselor will determine which assessments you will need.


 

• 2nd appointment (allow up to 1 hour)

  • During your second appointment with your counselor, you will go over the results of your assessments and discuss several career options.
  • None of the assessments will give you an exact answer to the one career you should do, so your counselor will typically introduce you to several resources that are available to help you to explore your options.

 

Step Two: Career Exploration

The Self-Assessment finds information that directs further exploration into different career categories that reflex our unique attributes. The use of the following web sites can help with your exploration:

O*Net Online
Texas OSCAR (the Occupation and Skill Computer-Assisted Researcher)
 

• Follow-up appointments (allow up to 1 hour)

  • Once you have had the opportunity to explore your career options with the resources recommended by your counselor, you will typically return for at least one follow-up appointment with your counselor to determine your major and career goal.
  • If you need additional resources or referrals, you may feel free to discuss them with your counselor.

 

Step Three: Evaluate Information

The Career Services office offers career resource tools to current students and alumni as they pursue career development and the job search process in the world of work.

 

Step Four: Planning for Career Success

Individuals prepare for and begin conducting a job search, or apply to graduate or professional schools.