The Third Voice in Career Counselling

As a Career Counsellor, I recognize that every client I work with is multi-contextual, or, to borrow a phrase from narrative therapy, “multi-storied”. Each client is always more than a typology, category, assessment, theory, skill set, or strategy. They are a distinct embodiment of their experiences, abilities, beliefs, and values; of their lives and relationships; of the world; of the communities and systems they belong to; and of their evolving relationship with work and career.

That distinct person and the world enter every career session and conversation. Multiple voices, opinions, expectations, assumptions, and aspirations are present, circulate through, and influence each conversation I have with a client. But I am noticing a particularly prominent third voice that has joined and is influencing the conversation: the voice of AI, ChatGPT, and social media.

This third voice increasingly accompanies a client into sessions. It may already have fielded their questions, offered a framework of “solutions,” shaped their expectations about the job market, and reframed how they view their skills, abilities, and careers in general. I am increasingly asked to respond to, confirm, contextualize, work with, or challenge this voice. I am also increasingly asked to defend the perspectives and approaches I bring to career counselling in relation to this voice.

Why has this voice become so prominent?

One consideration is clients’ growing desire for certainty and security amid a world of rapid change. I certainly understand this.

My clients understandably want practical guidance for the changes they are already experiencing and for those they fear may lie ahead. I see and hear the impact of these changes every day.

All these changes have opened the door (perhaps more of a floodgate) to fast, generic, ready-made AI prescriptions and strategies that clients increasingly bring to career conversations.

But…where is the person who continues to experience work and career?

AI can generate vast amounts of data, information, patterns, and plans. Data matters. It supports research, analysis, and interpretation of job-market trends. But data is only one part of career development and maintenance.

Equally important, and certainly worth upholding, is the unique person who is experiencing and authoring a career life, relationally embedded in the world, uniquely skilled, and actively bringing to life a role or job and its attendant responsibilities.

AI does not experience work. It does not experience aspiration, uncertainty, conviction, failure, resilience, purpose, or meaning. It doesn’t reflect deeply, struggle with a decision, become spontaneously creative, or take a leap of faith toward a new opportunity. AI doesn’t feel empowered by personal growth or the delight of learning and expanding one’s capacities, nor does it carry the emotional toll of systemic barriers, burnout, disappointment, or highly disruptive change. Our clients – real people in the real world – do.

AI can only produce a decontextualized and formulaic framework for clients’ questions. Its answers may seem more strategically certain than the experiential, reflective, person-centred work that requires the more nuanced human skills of creativity, questioning, critical thinking, weighing choices, taking a stand, taking a risk, dialogue, and perspective.

All of this leaves me with a choice as well, and I choose to advocate for the person and the conversations that are more enlivened, unpredictable, and highly creative.

I know AI is here to stay. I recognize its foothold and growing influence, and understand our concerns about it. Yet we will find ever-new ways to integrate and work with it, and we will inevitably decide where and how to set new boundaries or push back.

I can’t predict the future (nor can AI!), but as a career counsellor, I need to be especially attentive to the voice of AI that my clients increasingly bring into our conversations. In an uncertain world of work, AI and social media can amplify certain information, narratives, and prescriptions for career life while dismissing and even diminishing personal context.

The clients I work with bring unique experiences, knowledge, wisdom, motivation, expectations, hopes, dreams, successes, challenges, barriers, frustrations, insights, perspectives, opinions, and evolving capacities and skills. Their experiences and relationship with work and career provide a unique window into the world of work and career that AI can’t provide.

Our career lives touch on fundamental existential concerns. They influence our sense of having a place in the world and our ability to sustain our lives and well-being through meaningful work and fair wages. They also shape our ability to live and work with dignity, make choices about how we create and develop our careers, and find space to dream and aspire. At their best, our careers provide opportunities to express ourselves, have a voice, take responsibility, collaborate with others, and contribute in meaningful ways.

An increasingly important role we, as career counsellors, have is to ensure that this unique window, our clients’ experiences, and the multiple meanings of work and career are not lost, reframed, or heavily mediated by AI’s voice. An increasingly important role is to encourage our clients to flex and maintain their human muscles.

– By Britt-Mari Sykes –

Image generated using ChatGPT.