Career narrations of individuals from communities that are representative for a certain
economy and culture of work make up a methodological frame which can be put to use in
career counselling and guidance.
Method presentation
Career narration or career stories are the ensemble of events, experiences and human
relations associated to the professional evolution of a person. Far from being a report /
exposition / abstract, narration presupposes the collaborative attitude of the person to
present to the counsellor or someone else the significant moments alongside the progress
of the career and the emotional implications of these moments in a given social frame.
Clients and counsellors work together on a narrative structure based on past experiences
and real present competences recounted by clients, at the end of which the future
socio-professional adaptation ways are identified.
The topics encountered in narrations have nuclei characteristic for each individual,
according to priorities, preferences, level of self-knowledge, verbalization capacities,
sharpness in seizing the connections between constitutive sequences or decision-making
characteristics. The links between facts, perceptions, factors and events can be done
through unstructured interview (Savickas, 1995) or decisional tree. Counsellors trace
the lifeline of a client from a certain moment to the next, agreed upon and justified as
relevant to write a symbolic life story about. To this end, it is recommended to stimulate
the evoking of episodes corresponding to the respective period and to describe role
models in the client’s narration. These stories often reveal, “vaguely structured” (Law,
2003) a central problem felt as negative and an aim constantly in view throughout one’s
life, sometimes under masked forms.
The obsession of losing all the time or investing precious resources in situations that do
not guarantee success may be signs of psychotic deviation, lack of autonomy and self-
adjustment or ill-meaning counselling. Professional interests may be seen as the bridge
symbolically linking the problem (pictured in early stories) to the solution (pictured in
role models). The preoccupation for a problem (e.g.: manipulating people, decisional
independence, belonging to the elite) sometimes makes one’s entire life be organized and
lived in order to transform this preoccupation into reality, without ever reaching the level
of awareness.
An experienced counsellor with good communication skills will detect the essential
elements form a person’s story and discuss the possible effects on the narrating subject,
from a position of positive feedback.