Career Counseling Process Quality Promotes Reemployment

Abstract

One-on-one career counseling has been established as the most effective type of career intervention. Prior research results have suggested that process quality determines counseling success. In this multilevel study, career counseling process quality is validated as a predictor of job seekers’ reemployment at three Swiss job centers. Supervisors’ evaluations of the process quality of mandatory counseling sessions predicted faster reemployment of the 444 counseled job seekers by 18.9 working days on average. This effect equals yearly savings of 418 million Swiss Francs CHF (US$ 422 million) in Swiss unemployment benefits. While in many countries, the counseling of the unemployed is predominantly an administrative process, the findings should encourage investments in process quality of career counseling to promote reemployment. Furthermore, the study calls for further research on the underlying factors of career counseling process quality and the respective career counselor behaviors.