The increasing specialization of today’s more diverse and technologically advanced labor market challenges employees and job seekers alike to continually evaluate their career choices and engage in career appraisal. The development of a comprehensive career plan is essential in understanding one’s interests, attributes, abilities, and values necessary to fit into this ever-changing vocational environment. Moreover
The comprehensive college and university career center is a uniquely American phenomenon that has evolved over the past 100 or more years in response to changing educational, economic, political, and social conditions. This entry identifies several historic events in the evolution of the career center, outlines the core functional elements, enumerates the behavioral objectives, and
Career coaching has become a popular form of career development services since the mid-1980s. The International Coach Federation has estimated that there are currently more than 10,000 career coaches in the United States. The general goal of career coaching is to assist clients’ personal and professional development so that they can (a) better identify or
Career construction theory provides a way of thinking about how individuals choose and use work. The theory presents a model for comprehending vocational behavior across the life cycle as well as methods and materials that career counselors use to help clients make vocational choices and maintain successful and satisfying work lives. It seeks to be
Internet Careers Background Perhaps you’re a casual user of the Internet, occasionally surfing the Web and exchanging email. Perhaps you’ve published your own Web page and spend several hours a day online reading the latest news, checking stock quotes, buying groceries, doing research for a paper, or playing computer games. Regardless of your experience with
Publishing Careers Background The origins of publishing remain unknown. Historians have proposed various theories on the subject, but the best guess is that publishing came into existence when people developed written language, perhaps in Sumer in approximately 4000 BC. After it became possible to record information in writing, somebody had to decide which information was
Wood Careers Background You can’t get away from it. It’s in your home. It’s in your school. It’s in your books and your paper and even your cereal boxes. Because wood is used for so many different purposes, you probably come in contact with it, in one form or another, several times every day. Wood
Accounting Career Background Even before the introduction of the first coins in about 600 BC, farmers kept track of their livestock and other valuable possessions in order to have an accurate financial record. Having 16 sheep, for example, meant the ability to trade up to 16 sheep for something else of equal value. The farmer
Sales Careers Background Sales is a complex and diverse field. It involves the selling of all types of physical goods, such as automobile parts, pharmaceuticals, clothing, health care products, books, and food, as well as services, such as automobile repair or rug cleaning. The selling of physical goods usually requires both a wholesaler and a
Business Careers Background The practice of conducting business is as old as civilization itself. As long as people have been exchanging goods and services for payment of some sort, business transactions have been a part of life. Business was, in fact, one of the factors that led to America’s independence, when the early settlers, who