If there is any single issue that must be of constant concern to a career counselor, it is that human beings as a group are going to be difficult to fit neatly into the pigeonholes of theory and practice. In any endeavor that involves the human element--from planning war strategy to planning a career--nothing is so certain as the fact that behavior predictions are bound to be uncertain. Were that not he case, there would be no need for the helping professions such as career counseling, psychiatry, or psychology. Were there not profound differences of personality, culture, language, social position, and so on, and were those differences not so difficult to identify, quantify, and analyze, everybody in the helping professions could just go home.
Now of course counselors and psychiatrists and nurses do not just go home. But because the stakes are high when people are in need of help with the course of their lives, the willingness of helping professionals to become engaged with the hopes and fears of their fellow human beings must be matched by competence and should be matched by expertise in the discipline if help is going to be accomplished. The special challenge facing would-be career counselors is a slightly ironic one. That is because career counseling as a discipline has been flooded with highly specific instruments for measuring intelligence, aptitude, interest, and capabilities. Yet all the standardized and quantified tests in the world of career counseling cannot reduce even the most career-compliant of human elements to the status of a factor of analysis. That is why, despite the plethora of standardized tests and computer models for providing appropriate career guidance that are available to career counselors, it seems advisable for the responsible counselor to leaven any interpretation of the results of standardized testing and evaluation with an attitude of skepticism. Any career counselor's review of a battery of tests mus...