Career-story Interviewing Using the Three Anecdotes Technique

Abstract

This article describes the value of using the Three Anecdotes Technique (TAT) during career-story interviewing. The TAT is a technique aimed at eliciting clients' three earliest memories to help counsellors identify clients' preoccupations and thereby support them to deal with problems they encountered in early life, that still influence them. The participant was a white South African woman in her mid-twenties who was frustrated in her current career and who sought career counselling to help her decide on a career path and redesign her life. The results suggested that the technique helped the participant confront the complexities of negotiating a career pathway after the intervention. She appeared motivated to realise specific goals for her career and life development: Deal with her current (problematic) career situation, decide on a career path and redesign her life. The TAT offers a promising strategy for career intervention counselling.

The need for contextually appropriate career counselling assessment: Using narrative approaches in career counselling assessment in African contexts

“…Inadequate research has been conducted on the value of subjective (qualitative, storied or narrative) interventions and associated techniques in career counselling along with quantitative approaches in Global South, especially in the context of a developing country (Maree, 2010(Maree, , 2015(Maree, , 2016a(Maree, , 2016b. In many Global North contexts, however, the use of integrative career counselling approaches (integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches and interventions) has grown exponentially in popularity (McMahon & Watson, 2015).…”

“…The life-design approach represents the first-ever coordinated career counselling theory (Savickas et al, 2009). It was induced by the need for lifelong, holistic and contextual career counselling interventions to help people preserve perspective and hope in rapidly changing work contexts (Maree, 2010(Maree, , 2015. Life-design intervention comprises a space-bound, time-bound and context-bound type of career counselling intervention.…”

Developing a self-directed career guidance intervention for South African high school learners amidst severe COVID-19 restrictions

“…The communities are characterised by high rates of poverty and unemployment, and attendant sequelae such as high crime rates and school attrition. Crucially, schools in these communities are often understaffed and under-resourced, with limited access to career guidance services and resources (Maree, 2010).…”

The key innovations in career guidance on labour market

“…Career construction theory is supported by the philosophy underpinning the narrative paradigm. The narrative approach in career counselling is central of constructivist approaches by Hartung [32], Savickas [2], Watson [28] Cochran [16], Reid [8] in McIlveen [33] and Maree [34]. To ensure narrative career counselling, the client should be viewed as an individual who has not before had adequate opportunity to apply his or her own abilities in making sense of his or her problems [16].…”

“…Storied career facilitation starts when the facilitator creates a safe atmosphere within which people, who are shown respect throughout, are invited (to share their stories. The career story interview [2] and anecdotes technique [34] is used from this theoretical perspective to gather information on and transform it into practice, that is, into a constructivist career counselling strategy and methods that encourage clients to re-author their lives and career stories. In doing so, they enhance their chance to experience work as a personally meaningful endeavour and context for further development and for making a social contribution.…”