The history of career counseling from the early 1920s to the present day

Donald Super in his Life Span, Life Space Theory (1953, and later in the 80s and 90s) argued that a person's professional identity is built and changes throughout life, just as a person's self-perception develops and changes, and therefore the choice of a professional occupation is not one-time and fixed. According to Super, there are five stages in the model: Growth, Exploration, Establishment, Maintenance, and Disengagement. The beginning of professional identity starts to develop in childhood when the child begins to understand their tendencies and values, develop self-image and a sense of capability. This is followed by a stage of research and occupational experimentation, which ends with the beginning of establishment and specialization that needs to be developed and maintained until retirement. According to Super, the role of the counselor is to accompany the person throughout the stages of professional development and help them understand the professional process they are going through (Hartung, 2013).

John Holland developed the Holland Occupational Themes model (1959), which is one of the most important and influential models in the field of career counseling and forms the basis for professional compatibility tests worldwide. Holland claimed that there are six types of personality types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional (RIASEC), according to which one can match a person to the occupational field that suits them (Learn more), (Holland, 1997).

John Krumboltz in his Social Learning Theory of Career (1979) and The Planned Happenstance Theory (1999) argued that a person's professional choice is the product of countless learning experiences, planned and unplanned, accumulated throughout life, and not of a personality match to the work environment. He argued that not all life events can be planned, and therefore it is important to foster openness to unexpected opportunities, to open one's mind and take advantage of random events and situations to develop new professional directions. He called on people to "learn to love what they do," and not just look for what they "were meant to do." He saw career counseling as a framework to help the client open their mind and develop decision-making skills, flexibility, and dynamism, so they could cope with unexpected changes in the world of work (Krumboltz, 1976; Krumboltz, 1999).

Linda Gottfredson in her Theory of Circumscription and Compromise (1981) examined how developmental processes in childhood affect future career choice. She argued that children are not driven only by personal preferences, but also by social constraints and perceptions regarding gender, social status, and personal abilities, which shape what they perceive as "suitable" or "unsuitable" for them. According to the theory, the process of occupational choice includes two main stages: gradual reduction of career options - where children reject professions perceived as incompatible with their self-perception, and compromise - which means giving up an ideal preference in favor of a more realistic option due to constraints such as occupational availability or educational requirements. Gottfredson saw counseling as a framework to help the client develop self-awareness, understand their inclinations and desires, and identify processes of reduction and compromise, among other things by exposure to a wide variety of current professions (Gottfredson, 2002).