Three Ways to Fix The Career Advising Process for Students
By Ben Fuller
The way we help students find their career path is broken. We have taken what could be a formative and fun journey and reduced it to an impersonal, isolating, and fragmented process that boils down to taking a career test and looking online for advice. We can do better! Here are three ways we can improve the career advising process for students.
Three Ways to Fix The Career Advising Process For Students
#1 – Shift From Impersonal to Personal
Our current system is impersonal. It is the result of attempting to find wholesale solutions to help large groups of students in a short amount of time. There is no nefarious motive here; this is just the inevitable result when the number of students outweighs the number of guidance counselors or career advisors to such a large degree.
So when Sara steps into the career advising office at her school and says, “I don’t know what I want to do with my life.” The career advisor responds and says, “Here, take this career test”, and then moves on to the next student in line.
Now, I’m not opposed to career tests. In fact, if you know me, you may know that I actually really like certain career and personality tests and have taken many of them! That being said, think about what they are actually accomplishing. What career and personality tests do is loop back and rephrase what you already believe about yourself. Then they categorize you and say how you are kind of like this group of people, but not like these other groups of people. This can be helpful, except for a few major issues. Here is the first issue: it is impossible to categorize a person! Each person is a category unto themselves, uniquely designed by God in a way that the world has never seen. So we cannot stop at career tests.
Career tests can be a small side dish in the career advising process, but not the main course.
We need more wise and trustworthy adults to walk with students through this journey. There needs to be one-on-one conversations, personalized goal setting, and deep reflection that goes beyond the cookie-cutter solutions and reaches each student where they are.
#2 – Shift from Isolating to Relational
Another negative effect of boiling down the career advising journey to an online test is that career tests are, by their nature, solo activities. Sending students out to sit on their phones and scroll through career test results while looking at random pieces of advice online is not a picture of a successful career advising program. We were not made to take this journey alone. We all need a community of support to help us discover our unique gifts, identify potential career paths, and walk us through an intentional process. Here are a few ways that we can make the shift from an isolating approach to a relational approach.
When students ask, “How should I figure out what I’m good at?”
❌ “Take more career tests.”
✅ “Ask wise and trusted people in your life and combine their answers with deep personal reflection to get a well-rounded picture of your gifts.”
When students ask, “How do I know if I would like this career field?”
❌ “Look online for answers.”
✅ “Grab a coffee or conduct informational interviews with people in your field of interest, job shadow, or find an internship.”
When students ask, “Who is my support system in this process?”
❌ “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”
✅ “Find at least one trusted and experienced adult to walk with you on this journey.”
#3 – Shift from Fragmented To Integrated
The career advising process is typically fragmented because it does not connect the dots or take into account the whole person. It lives on its own island, far away from other important parts of life like faith, purpose, and values. An integrated approach takes into account all the important aspects of a person’s life- their strengths, personality traits, interests, and sense of purpose because all of these things can inform what career path would be the best fit for them. That is why in the Find Your Path Program, the seven steps intentionally link all of these facets of a student’s life together. In addition, we use the power of AI to help students synthesize their findings into helpful, bite-sized chunks so they can make informed college major and career path decisions.
When We Make the Shift, We Also See A Shift In Our Students
When we make the shift from impersonal to personal, from isolating to relational, and from fragmented to integrated, we all see a shift in our students. We begin to see students go from anxious to confident, from disengaged to purpose-driven, from feeling behind to taking their next step with clarity.
