The Internet is increasingly import...

The Internet is increasingly important for career counseling; however, there are not many suggestions for training graduate counseling observers how to use this technology. This concoct sought to address that lack according to having graduate counseling students use a structur interview with undergraduate tender clients to assess which lacks could be met using the Internet. Graduate learners then identified relevant Web sites and explored these in a meeting with the proffer clients. Results of class inspects indicated that participants encountered scarcely any obstacles using the Internet and perceived this intervention to be useful. Implications for training graduate close examiners in using the Internet for career counseling are discussed.

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Although predicting the long-range impact of the Internet forward the counseling field is challenging, it is an important task for career counseling practitioners to undertake (Harris-Bowlsbey, Dikel, & Sampson, 1998; Steven & Lundberg, 1998) First, the Internet radically affects the accessibility of career-related information in ways that are important for career counselors and their clients. next to the first the Internet can profoundly alter the proces of career counseling by the agency of allowing instant communication among counselors, clients, and unruffled employers through electronic mail, postings forward Web sites, and videoconferencing (Sampson, 1999) Although a number of resources exist that document the explosive proliferation of career-related Web sites commonly available (Koonce, 1997), there has as besides been little systematic exploration of their usefulness as it applies to career counseling (Sampson, Kolodinsky, & Greeno, 1997) In addition, despite the increasing carcass of literature pertaining to integrating the Internet into the classroom (Kahn, 1997) there are not many suggestions for training career counselors in the use of the Internet.

Because the Internet vastly increases the accessibility of information, a certain have wondered whether career counselors will find themselves by-passed as clients increasingly manner of life their own career searches online (Noll & Graves, 1996) However, Noll and Graves (1998) argued that career counselors who prosperously integrated the Internet into their interventions would not be left behind. Rather, the services of career counselors may become to the end of time more important as the amount of information available online expands exponentially. Although using the Internet as part of one-to-one, face-to-face counseling with clients is more time intensive than using it in other modalities (for example, as part of assemblage interventions or as a homework assignment complet outside of session), this approach may pay substantial dividends in helping clients manage the potentially overwhelming amount of information that is available online. Because career-related information onward the Internet is constantly changing and expanding, trainin g in its use for one-on-one interventions may also provide a unique opportunity for counselors-in-training to learn about these resources and their relative utility for clients.

Harris-Bowlsbey et al. (1998) have identified four broad categories of career resources onward the Internet: assessment services, communication Web sites, occupational information, and career-related databases. However, as Steven and Lundberg (1998) pointed gone out seekers of information on the Internet today are bring into the presence ofed with much the same task as those using libraries before the advent of the Dewey decimal system: Vast amounts of information are available, unless not necessarily organized in a coherent manner. In fact, the ease with which individuals who are surfing the Web can become mired in the sheer mass of information available has been cited as united of the main barriers to the Internet's effective use (Presno, 1998) Career counselors can be of great service to their clients on helping them overcome the possible discouragement associated with not finding relevant information (Offer & Watts, 1997) This, of course, means that the counselor must first be familiar with the various shadows of information that exi st forward the Internet and the best ways to find it. The latter can be accomplished with the various search engines now available to navigate the Internet (Gilster, 1997)

intent of the Study

Because the Internet exhibits both considerable promise and numerous challenges for career progression in a continuously ascending gradation activities, this study was designed as an exploratory investigation of the possible benefits and obstacles in its use for one-on-one career counseling. The intervention was designed to help two purposes: (a) to perform the operations indicated in graduate counseling students' Internet career counseling skills and (b) to facilitate the use of these skills with present undergraduate clients. To accomplish the first goal, the graduate counseling scholars developed their facility with the Internet by the agency of learning how to use various search engines to find career information and then assisting in the design of a class Web page containing links to relevant career resources. The inferior goal was accomplished by having the counseling pupils use a structured interview with undergraduate offers assess which of their necessitys could be met through the Internet, and then use Internet resources (with the class Web page serving as a starting point) as part of face-to-face meetings with their clients.