Career Counseling Over the Internet [Hardcover]

Patricia Mulcah Boer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0805837442 | ISBN-13: 978-0805837445 | Publication Date: 2001

This is one of the first books on the subject of counseling clients via e-mail. The author has taken the area of counseling practice and systematically reviewed relevant counseling theory, counseling ethics, and counseling skills in relation to Web counseling. The objective is to provide a practical text and guide for career counselors in online service. This book will be of interest to professionals in the field of career counseling, to graduate students of counseling, and to human resource management and outplacement professionals.

The book begins by articulating issues in the debate on Internet counseling, giving particular attention to counselor concerns about ethical issues and the client-counselor relationship. Next, it details the 11 necessary competencies and skills for counseling professionals in general, translating these for use online, including the role of assessment, various electronic interventions, and the pros and cons of career counseling via the Web. Specific guidelines are offered for career counselors to implement online. The book concludes with suggestions for continuing research, as well as recommendations for counselor supervision, preparation, and training models as the field makes a paradigm shift. Framed into 10 chapters, 35 question and answer examples are interspersed to bring to life the actual experiences, themes, issues, and questions presented by a global clientele regarding their career development. Each chapter closes with discussion questions for practitioners to consider themselves or discuss with students in classroom and practice settings.

Editorial Reviews

Review

...this book provides a practical text and guide on emerging career counseling practices via the Net.
—Business Horizons

Dr. Boer does not only present a framework for Internet based counseling but also demonstrates the proposed framework's utility and effectiveness, using actual cases from her own counseling experience. The book succeeds to both challenge the misconception that online career counseling is just answering e-mail messages and to demonstrate that specific skills are required for providing quality service.
—Itmar Gati, Ph.D.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The topic of career counseling is very timely. Many chapters are relevant to the concerns of career professionals--the reference to the skills needed to handle career counseling online, the online resources available to assist clients in gathering information about a topic of career concern, and the discussion of ethical issues related to the use of this new communication tool.
—Roseann Sorenson
Career Planning and Placement, Fordham University

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805837442
• ISBN-13: 978-0805837445
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,763,310 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #91 in Books > Computers & Technology > Business & Culture > Careers

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and informative, if somewhat over-anecdotal and self-indulgent, December 5, 2006

By 

Dr W. Richards "wmr-uk" (Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Career Counseling Over the Internet (Paperback)

There is a dearth of resources on career counselling online, and this book is one of the few that fills the gap. It offers a good defence of cybercounselling, and takes the time to consider what cybercounselling actually means, as well as distinguishing between 'career planning' and 'career counselling' and arguing for the latter as a needed online service.

The author's own history as an online counsellor - a role she more or less stumbled into - is used throughout to reinforce and provide evidence for her arguments. The examples she produces here are certainly useful and do provide illustration of certain points. However, it makes the coverage of the subject very anecdotal and lacking in academic rigour. One person's experience does not a research study make.

To a degree, Boer is not attempting to offer a definitive study of online counselling; she states in her introduction that she's using her experience to illustrate the possibilities and the way in which online counselling fits with ethical guidelines and professional competencies. However, on the book's cover the claim is made that it presents 'an emerging model for trusting and responding to online clients' - and it does not quite go that far. Nevertheless, for anyone wanting to know more about how online counselling works in practice it is a useful read.

However, what is very irritating and unprofessional (and it's taken my rating down from a 4 to a 3) is the amount of errors in the text. This book needed a good proof-reader. There are numerous punctuation errors; Boer does not know how to use the comma. There are typos. There is carelessness: the states as opposed to the States on one occasion, missing letters, missing words. This does not reflect very well on Boer as an effective online communicator, and in fact I did notice that some of her email responses to clients, quoted in the text, equally contained spelling and grammatical errors. If this is how she writes to international clients whose first language is not English, it isn't setting a very good example.

Overall, though, I can recommend this book as a good introduction to the possible where cybercounselling is concerned, as long as readers don't expect it to be any more than it is.