Customer Reviews

Career Counseling: Applied Concepts of Life Planning

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

While there is an immensely broad array of career counseling topics covered in this book, it is extremely poorly written and is of little use. The author fails to define the key terms, and only vaguely discusses the key concepts. For example, Zunker fails to effectively explain Donald Super's career maturity factors e.g., Zunker full definition of Super's crystallization of traits is, "individual progress toward forming a self concept." In addition, Zunker writes in an extremely passive, wordy, vague style more tailored to impress academics than to be relevant for students.

this was a textbook used in one of my graduate school classes, and even reading it was a chore. There was virtually no "applied" information - nothing about how to actually do career counseling with a live human being. I would not recommend this book for anyone who is seeking usable information on career counseling, especially if counseling clients are adults.

I read all the other reviews, I get a feeling they are all from students. As a practicing professional in this field for the past 20 years, I can say that as Boles'"What Color is your Parachute" is the bible for Job Seekers, Zunker's "Career Counseling: Applied concepts of Life Planning" is the bible for the Career Counselor. I find Zunker's information well exposed for easy comprehension. His writing style is simple and straight-forward. I believe the book is well structured for its purpose and didn't get a 5 star rating because It should be more economical in pricing.

I used this book for a graduate career counseling course. It didn't set career development in an economic history which would explain why theory developed the way it did. Additionally, the book doesn't explain many of the theories so the student can dilineate the differences between them. the author states that career counseling will soon integrate with other forms of counseling and yet, he doesn't point out obvious relationships between career theory and other psychological and developmental theories. There is a lot of guidence on counseling which covers both general and career skills. I would have liked the assessment section to be much bigger and more practical and the school assessment section to be much smaller. Zunker has an assessment book and should probably take his huge section on school counseling and make a book from that. All together the book was very dry and boring.

Like the other review this is a book I used for a graduate class in ed counseling. I needed safety pins to keep my eyes open. This book is too broad and covers too much. If I ever wanted to go into career counseling I wont now cause its toooooooo boring after this book.

If at all avoidable, DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS TEXTBOOK!!!!!
I am a graduate student just beginning a new semester. I have read the first four chapters of this book and am frustrated and angry. It is so poorly written that I am having to read and re-read the text (only to discover that most of what is contained therein is just the repeated fluff of a few simple points made ad infinitum). There is very little useful information. Were I a professor grading this text as a paper, I would give it a "D" and recommend Zunker spend some serious time in the "writing lab". I cannot believe I paid $90 for this book.

The book arrived on time and in very good conditions. The price was unbeatable.

I am very happy with my Career Counseling purchase. The book was a hard find and I paid less than the other members in my graduate cohort!