A day in the life of a Czech counsellor
The counsellor usually starts his day with checking the mailbox and scheduling meetings (usually from partners, because clients generally contact counsellors only by phone). Then counsellors perform all administrative tasks related to their service, such as preparing monitoring sheets, client satisfaction sheets and printing.
In the morning counsellors may have meetings with partners (e.g. Regional Branches of the labour office) in order to present the GOAL project to clients who were identified as suitable by the representatives of Regional Branches of the Labour Office. They give a short presentation about the project, scope and form of the cooperation to the suitable clients. The counsellors also distribute promotional material (leaflets with contact details and working hours to the client). If someone is interested in the service provided by the GOAL counsellors, he or she easily approaches a counsellor by phone.
Meetings with clients usually take place in the afternoon. If a meeting with a client is booked, the counsellor generally travels to the client and then he spends approximatly 1-1,5 hours with his client.
At the start of every session, counsellors try to find out information about the client, his or her position within the family and wider friendship circles, his or her health, and they also explore the client’s feelings and ideas, motivation et cetera. Based on the client’s answers, the counsellor selects ways to proceed in order to meet the client’s needs and goals.
Although the approach is different for each individual client, there is a ‘shared’ methodology:
- Introduction
- Explanation of project objectives, working conditions, ensuring anonymity etc.
- Clarifying expectations
- Identification of client´s needs
- Concretization of the client´s goal
- Mapping the client’s current situation (mapping the client´s past and current situation, his competences = career diagnosis)
- Expectations and interview based on counselling methods– identifying strengths and weaknesses, client’s needs et cetera, use of particular tools in accordance with client’s needs.
- Finding the solutions (educational trajectory, career changes, personal development journeys)
- Proposals that emerged from the sessions
- Supporting the client in the realization of his target (setting the action, plans, checkpoints in client´s development based on his/her career objective/goals)
- Conclusion
After the meeting, the counsellor usually travels back to his office and then checks the mailbox and answers the phone calls.
Some clients prefer to obtain additional information by phone or email, while others prefer solely face-to- face conversation with a career counsellor.
Answering the client’s questions usually takes place either in the afternoon or evening (usually by phone).
By the end of the day and based on the guidance session outcomes, a counsellor usually archives and updates client folders together with all documents such as monitoring data sheets.
