Attitudes Regarding Career Counseling: Perceptions and Experiences of Counselors-In-Training‪.‬

Engels, Minor, Sampson, and Splete (1995) stated that counselors who locus on career development concerns must be prepared to address stress, wellness, change, performance, occupational health, satisfaction, interpersonal and intrapersonal issues, family, leisure, technology, and communication issues with their clients. Other authors (e.g., Flores & Heppner, 2002; Lent, 2001) agreed that it is critical for counselors to gain proficiency in the practice of career counseling with all populations in order to adequately meet clients1 needs. Hartung (2005) further asserted that economic globalization demands that career counseling assist workers worldwide in adapting to the transforming work environment. Hartung (2005) pointed out a shortage of adequately trained career counselors, despite an increasing need for career counseling. To complicate this issue, authors (e.g., Hartung, 2005; Warnke et al., 1993) described interest in career counseling as low and perceptions of career counseling as negative within the profession. According to Watts (2005), a closer look reveals that the counseling profession has marginalized career counseling. While Tinsley (2001) remarked that counseling training programs have devolved from training students to offer clients vocational assistance to training them to work with psychopathology, Savickas, Van Esbroeck, and Herr (2005) indicated that master's programs accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP; 2001) typically offer one career counseling course, and many doctoral programs do not offer advanced career counseling courses. In addition, few accredited programs have faculty with a career counseling specialty, and "this results in the career course being taught by adjunct faculty or by lst-year assistant professors" (p. 79).