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Career Planning and Employment Counseling

The first step in career planning and employment counseling for adults with disabilities is working with the job seeker to identify their goals based on their unique talents and interests.

Career planning and counseling activities include:

Person-Centered Career Planning

Using a person-centered planning approach ensures that the choices and preferences of individuals are respected and represented. Decisions are made “with” job seekers during the process and not “for” them. This includes offering job seekers a choice of who assists them during career planning.

Keep in mind the unique background and circumstances of the individual you are working with.  Are there other strategies that may help you provide more effective services?

Focusing on Strengths

As you develop a career plan, focus on job seeker strengths – what they can do and not what they can’t do.

Make sure to describe the job seekers  by their skills, strengths, and interests rather than their disabilities. Limitations or work challenges should be defined as training and supports that may be needed once the individual is employed.

Gathering Information

Spend time with job seekers during familiar daily activities to learn more about their interests and skills. Skills that a job seeker shows in familiar community settings can be different from those in facility-based agencies or programs that are specifically designed for individuals with disabilities.

  • Informal observations in familiar settings can provide information on the job seeker’s functional skills and abilities (i.e., communication, mobility, social, functional academics, etc.) when doing familiar activities that they select.
  • Interview job seekers to discuss their vocational goals including employment conditions, needs, and preferences. Informal conversations with job seekers, including family members and other people in their lives, form the foundation on which to select career planning activities. Other important information to collect during these conversations includes transportation options, work schedule, hours, benefits, wages, workplace characteristics, impact of work on disability benefits, and so forth. Employment specialists develop open-ended questions to guide the conversations. Job seekers are assisted in selecting people who may provide information on their interests, skills, and work preferences, if needed by the individual.

Completing Vocational Interest Inventories and Reviewing Assessments Results

Career planning activities are individualized according to the interests and needs of each job seeker. Employment specialists work with a job seeker one-on-one focusing on their choices and preferences.

Gathering Information from Self-Assessment Tools: Learn more about individual strengths and interests by completing career assessments and inventories.  Here are a few:

Resource: Berkley’s Self-Assessment: Resource & Tools

Reviewing Existing Report and Evaluations: When reviewing existing reports and evaluations look for positive information on the job seeker’s support needs, interests, and preferences. Recognize information in these reports may bias expectations for a job seeker’s employment outcomes.

Consider forming your own evaluation and professional opinions early in the process before reviewing existing reports. How does your evaluation compare to what others observed and recorded? Use existing reports and evaluations to augment the findings from your own observations and interactions with job seekers when developing the person-centered career plan.

Existing reports and evaluations could include:

  • Transferable Skills Analysis
  • Aptitude tests
  • Reading Comprehension
  • Functional Capacity Evaluation
  • Medical Reports
  • Mental Health Evaluations

Conduct a Work Assessment

Work assessments, sometimes referred to as situational assessments, happen in community work settings.  The purpose is to use the settings, materials, employees, and tasks at a business to assess an individual’s skills, interests, and employment preferences.

Businesses are selected chosen in collaboration with the job seeker based on their skills and interests, and are not “generic” to all job seekers at an agency. Work assessments for the purpose of supported employment services are not conducted in facility-based programs or other agencies that are specifically for individuals with disabilities. Work assessments are used to identify potential opportunities for employment and identify support needs to address potential barriers for the specific type of work.

  • Negotiate with businesses where work-based assessments occur to select tasks/job duties that match the individual’s interests.
  • Observe the business prior to the assessment to develop training and observation materials, such as task analyses.
  • Identify opportunities for employees of the business to interact with and support the individual during the work assessment, if possible.
  • Observe job seekers during work-based assessments to determine job seeker’s current skills as well as to identify how they learn new skills.
  • Observe the individual to determine interest and engagement in the work tasks as well as reactions to the characteristics of the business, and estimate the level of coworker and workplace supports and training that may be needed after job placement.

This information provides the foundation on which jobs can be analyzed to identify a good fit for the job seeker. The purpose of work assessments in supported employment is not to identify areas for pre-employment training or to “screen out” individuals from receiving supported employment services. The purpose is to observe job seekers to identify the impact that the characteristics of a setting may have on the individual’s behaviors (e.g., noise, clutter, organization, items, people, available support, etc.). Then use this information to match the person’s support needs to the characteristics of a potential workplace.

Identify Career Pathways of Interest to the Job Seeker

Each job-seeker is unique in their interests, aptitudes, and abilities. They’re also uniquely influenced by the social and cultural expectations about what career options are possible and socially acceptable. While honoring their goals, don’t forget to share non-traditional employment options as well. The job market is changing quickly in response to technological and demographic changes, and opportunities for job-seekers are changing quickly in response. Share what’s possible!

Work-Based Learning Experiences

A variety of community-based experiences may be conducted to assist in career planning. The job seeker and their support team are offered a variety of options to include job shadowing, volunteer work experiences, and work-based assessments. Not all of these experiences may be needed by all job seekers. If community-based work experiences, including assessments, are used, then the following features are offered as guidance.

  • Experiences should be individualized to meet the person’s vocational goals and objectives. These experiences can be done in with private, for-profit, public or nonprofit businesses in your community and/or through web-based resources.

*from the Workforce Innovation Technical Assistance Center (WINTAC)

  • Job Shadowing: Job shadowing experiences are used to assist job seekers in gathering information on their interests and preferences for employment. During these experiences, a job seeker follows or “shadows” an employee, within specific businesses of interest. These one-on-one experiences may develop as a result of connections with the job seeker’s friends and family members as well as other community connections, including the supported employment agency’s connections. Each job shadow experience is specific to the job seeker’s work preferences and not selected because of agency convenience.
  • Informational Interviews: An informational interview is an informal conversation with someone working in a career area/job that interests the job seeker who will give them information and advice. It is an effective research tool in addition to reading books, exploring the Internet and examining job descriptions. It is not a job interview, and the objective is not to find job openings.
  • Volunteering: Volunteer work experiences, also referred to as service-based learning, may assist job seekers in identifying their work interests and preferences. Volunteer work should not be a prerequisite to employment, and individuals must offer their services freely and without coercion. Individuals with disabilities may volunteer for religious, charitable, or similar nonprofit organizations but may not volunteer services to for-profit private sector businesses as guided by the Fair Labor Standards Act. They also should not replace workers without disabilities who are paid by the business or organization to do the work. If a person is involved in a volunteer position as part of the career-planning process, information must be gathered efficiently and align with the parameters for work-based assessments that are detailed in this document.
  • Internships (Paid or UnPaid): An internship is a temporary position with an emphasis on on-the-job training rather than merely employment, and it can be paid or unpaid. An internship is an opportunity to develop specific job-related skills before you are qualified for an actual job.

Putting It All Together

All of the information gathered through work-based learning activities is used to create a Person-Centered Career Plan. Although many examples and resources of community-based learning include students as examples, work-based learning benefits adults, too!

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Tools

Following are some tools and resources to assist you with your career planning activities.

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Featured Resource

Core Features of Quality Supported Employment Services from WINTAC

Training

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