Career Services Training Manual (Objectives)

Objectives

• To provide staff and students with requisite industrial skills needed in critical sectors, now and in the future, within Nigeria and beyond.
• To design and provide partners, collaborators, and industry players with career development options for students and staff.
• To integrate entrepreneurship, social skills, emotional intelligence, and mentorship into technical and character development.

4. Guiding Principles for Career Service Practice and Delivery

There are various assumptions underlying the practice of career counselling which serves as the guiding principles of Centre for Career Services, Federal Polytechnic, Bauchi. These include the following perspectives:

1. People have the ability and opportunity to make career choices for their lives. The amount of freedom in choices is partially dependent upon the social, economic, and cultural context of individuals.
2. Opportunities and choices should be available for all people, regardless of sex, socio-economic class, religion, physical challenge, sexual orientation, age, or cultural background.

• Individuals are naturally presented with career choices throughout their lives.

1. People are generally involved in a wide range of work roles across their lifespan. These roles include both paid and unpaid work.
2. Career counsellors assist people to explore, pursue and attain their career goals.
3. Career counselling basically consists of four elements:

(a) helping individuals to gain greater self-awareness in areas such as interests, values, abilities, and personality style,

(b) connecting students to resources so that they can become more knowledgeable about jobs and occupations,

(c) engaging students in the decision-making process, in order that they can choose a career path that is well suited to their own interests, values, abilities and personality style, and

(d) assisting individuals to be active managers of their career paths (including managing career transitions and balancing various life roles), as well as becoming lifelong learners in the sense of professional development over their lifespan.

• The reasons why individuals enter particular occupations vary according to the amount of importance placed on personal preferences, such as interests, or external influences, such as labour market trends or parental expectations.

4.1 Career Decision-making

This is not something that happens only once in a person’s lifetime, but, rather, it is an ongoing process that might take place at any age. All forms of work are valuable, and contribute to the success and well-being of a society.