Validating the Results of Test Scores: A Case Study in Career Counselling, Illustrating How a Gifted Child May Benefit from Job Analyses

Abstract

Career counselling theories have traditionally been concerned with optimizing the fit between an individual and his or her environment — e.g. the trait and factor theory and the matching of environmental and personality characteristics — as the relational aspect of career theory. However, it is equally important to recognize the environment that any person knows and with which he or she interacts as he or she continually makes and remakes (shapes) his or her career and or world. Executing job analysis is a problem-solving way of furthering career counselling. In this way, clients are encouraged to take a more active role in the counselling process. When students utilize job analysis concerning specific careers, they become aware of the specific requirements of a certain career and they are also able to compare their own personal profile to the profile of the career. By means of these mentioned factors, career counselling is conducted and presented in a more scientific way; in this way pupils are also integrated into the work situation according to the personal as well as the work requirements. Utilisation of this strategy in career counselling may potentially contribute significantly towards optimising the ‘fit’ or ‘match’ between youths' personal potential and their prospective careers. It is rather deplorable that more career counsellors do not take the trouble to guide youths towards the construction of meaning and getting motivated to excel. This paper is concluded with a case study, exemplifying the potential meaning of job analysis in administering career counselling to gifted students.