Abstract
Having individual occupation to produce work and to be effective is necessary for individuals. Concurrently, society desires to respond to social expectancies while meeting this need. Vocation, as both social and individual needs, expands people's lifetimes. This rate is even higher in developing countries than in economically developed European and North American countries. Therefore, career choice is important to meet individual happiness as well as addressing social expectations. Choosing vocation carefully has been addressed by many different theories (Parsons, Super; Holland, and Krumboltz). While these theories comprehensively examine the importance of the theoretical knowledge on the career choice, age, personality, ability, and gender roles are significant affecting factors. Solutions and recommendations based on avoiding stress, culture-infused career counseling, avoiding negative thinking, and using family tree into career counseling are additionally provided.
TopIntroduction: The Importance Of The Career Choice
What do human beings need to live in this world? Meals (food, water, and air), shelter and breeding are humans’ primary needs. It could be seen complicated that these are still our basic needs even in modern life after centuries of evolution. Today, primary needs are still at the core of our daily behaviors, such as eating food and drinking water, housing in a safe place and reproduce to have future generations. Humans’ needs, which help humans to reach their primary needs, are called secondary needs. For instance, people may use the marriage institution to address social norms to have babies (breeding) or work in a job to make money for buying food (meals). Secondary needs are bridges to get through to what exactly human beings need in the first place. In the 21st century, humans do not have to be hunter-gatherers to find food or to be a construction foreman to build a house. The human can gain all their needs by becoming an expert in one field. Then, making sufficient income becomes the only need. In this context, occupations are vehicles that can meet the human’s primary needs by responding to their secondary needs.
In a social context, the profession could be defined as a set of actions based on information abilities that are socially defined and acquired with a certain education (Pipkins, Rooney, & Jaunarajs, 2014; Sarıkaya & Khorshid, 2009). Since the profession is also one of the significant sources of identity, it affects social respect, communication methods, and social status. An individual also influences his or her lifestyle in society by choosing a profession (Bikos, Dykhouse, Boutin, Gowen, & Rodney, 2013). Choice of profession weaves even people’s private and daily lives, such as where they drink a cup of coffee or how they dress up in evenings for social events (Table 2). In addition, the profession is one of the ways in which the individual expresses him or herself, self-realization and meets his/her psychological needs. In general, during the current century, the average working hours in many developed countries are around 40 (Table 1). Here is the preciousness of the career choice. After taking out the sleeping hours, people spend more than half of their remaining time on their profession in their lives.
Table 1. Which nationalities work the longest hours? (Hours Per Year)
| 1 | Mexico - 2255 | 14 | Turkey - 1832 | 27 | Australia - 1669 |
| 2 | Costa Rica - 2212 | 15 | Ireland - 1820 | 28 | Finland - 1653 |
| 3 | South Korea - 2069 | 16 | US - 1783 | 29 | Sweden - 1621 |
| 4 | Greece - 2035 | 17 | Czech Republic - 1770 | 30 | Austria - 1601 |
| 5 | Chile - 1974 | 18 | Hungary - 1761 | 31 | Switzerland - 1590 |
| 6 | Russia - 1974 | 19 | New Zealand - 1757 | 32 | Belgium - 1551 |
| 7 | Poland - 1928 | 20 | Slovakia - 1740 | 33 | Luxembourg - 1512 |
| 8 | Latvia - 1910 | 21 | Italy - 1730 | 34 | France - 1472 |
| 9 | Israel - 1889 | 22 | Japan - 1713 | 35 | Netherlands - 1430 |
| 10 | Lithuania - 1885 | 23 | Canada - 1703 | 36 | Norway - 1421 |
| 11 | Iceland - 1879 | 24 | Spain - 1695 | 37 | Denmark - 1410 |
| 12 | Estonia - 1855 | 25 | Slovenia - 1682 | 38 | Germany - 1363 |
| 13 | Portugal - 1842 | 26 | UK - 1676 | | |
Source: (Telegraph, 2018)
Key Terms in this Chapter
Choice: A decision for future expectations.
Career: A job that could take important commitments in one’s life and create opportunities.
Competence: An ability to complete tasks.
Skills: Personal talents.
Personality: Personal wishes, characteristics, and choices.
Culture: Local social norms.
Counseling: Helping people professionally and based on their needs.