PROACTIVE DIMENSIONS OF CAREER COUNSELLING AND ORIENTATION SERVICES IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM

Abstract

The creation of career counseling and orientation centers has brought
opportunities to students in regards to self knowledge (in the form of interests, needs,
abilities, etc) and consequently in the proper awareness of one’s appropriate
professional route.
Providing quality career counseling and orientation services (the proactive type),
consists firstly in establishing an optimum relationship between the counselor and the
beneficiary.
For this to happen, a crucial role is held by the counseling competence, defined
as a sum of scientifical, moral and social competences and as an intersection point of
managerial, teaching and therapeutical abilities.
First we aim to analyze from a theoretical standpoint the two essential
dimensions of the counseling competence, which are: scientific and moral competence
of the career counselor.
On the other hand, the study follows the measure in which the career counseling
activity undergone in the higher education system by career counselors is of a
proactive type. For this we aim to answer the following questions:
1.Who are the specialists that provide career counseling services, under the
followed specializations?
2.To what degree do career specialists know and respect the ethical norms that
are specific to their own profession?
3.What are the challenges that they face at the level of the counselorbeneficiary(
student) relationship and how do they respond to this challenge?
The study is realized on a lot of 50 career counselors in the career counseling
and orientation centers of several universities across the country, the research methods
used in gathering the data being the survey-based research and document analysis.
Upon processing the data, we can conclude that the services provided by career
counselors are of a proactive type, a fact which indicates an efficient counselorbeneficiary
relationship.
The conclusions of the study take into account a few recommendations
regarding the conditions that must be respected and that should contribute to the
optimization of the beneficiary-counselor relationship, implicitly in the optimizing of
career counseling and orientation services within the universities in our country.