Career Counseling Portfolio

Name: Tala Sao
Age: 18
Date of Report: April 15, 2015

Social History:

Tala comes from a family of six, with an older brother and two younger sisters. She is the second oldest child of four and is known as the "nerd" because she loves to read and wears glasses. Her parents raised her in the LDS church and she has come to understand and love the church. Her family is a working family, with both parents working and trying their best to support the family. Her mother works as a second grade teacher and her father currently works at BYU-Hawaii but is soon switching over to a manager position in the new Marriott being built in their hometown. He also has a towing business on the side that he does for extra cash. Tala's family values the meaning of family and staying together, as well as supporting each other and everyone around them. Tala is very good at talking to people and making other feel welcome, but she gets a little shy in front of big groups. She likes to look at herself as a natural born leader with flaws. She is also good at Polynesian dancing and that is something she also likes to dream about. She loves dreaming of a better world with a better economy where she can make a living off of dancing, but for now she just loves to work. Whatever it is, she enjoys helping others and working hard so that her parents don't have to worry about supporting her. As she grew up, her hobbies turned from reading and playing with friends to helping family members with their kids and spending time with family. She still loves to read, but cant always seem to find the time.

Work History:
Tala has a small work history, dating back to when she was in Elementary. In fifth grade she was able to start working at the Polynesian Cultural Center as a keiki Luau dancer. She loved it and was very sad when they had to let her go because she was too tall for that position. The summer before her Junior year in High School, she returned to work at the Polynesian Cultural Center, but this time as a dancer in the Canoe Pageant. She danced on the Tahiti canoe for the Center during their canoe show that was put on for the guest. This has continually been her steady job up until this past summer when she had to move to Utah for schooling. She also had a job as a spray on tattooist at the center. It was just a small cart set up for tourist to come by and by a tattoo that was airbrushed on and lasted about a week. She had to quit due to schooling when she moved to Utah. She continues to work at the Center as a canoes dancer when she goes home on her breaks and will continue working there when she returns home for the summer. During this past school year, she was also able to obtain an on campus job, where she worked doing custodial in the Student Athlete Building. All of these work experiences have been a good fit for the client because she has been able to grow on her own and make some money to support herself. She has been introduced to work at a young age and she has grown to know the meaning of hard work and having to work with other people in order to make things work well.

Assessment Results:
After taking the Strong Interest Inventory, Tala got the theme code of SEC, or Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. The social result of her testing said that she is interested in working with people on a team and she likes to do service as well as help. The enterprising results said that she is interested in business, politics, leadership, and entrepreneurship. And the conventional result said that she likes to organize, accounting, investing, and in information systems. With these results, she comes with the values of cooperation, generosity, risk taking, competition, accuracy and efficiency. Her top five personal style scales preferences says that she prefers to work with people, she seems to prefer to learn by doing, she prefers to lead by example, she may be comfortable taking some risks, and she enjoys participating in teams. Through these results, she got the results of her top five interest areas being sales, mathematics, healthcare services, protective services, and human resources & training. Her top ten strong occupations resulted in radiologic technologist, production worker, costumer service representative, food service manager, optician, cosmetologist, nursing home administrator, computer systems analyst, farmer/ rancher, and an administrative assistant. Tala thought that these results were a pretty good fit overall. There were a couple of occupations listed that confused her a little bit and one that she didn't like at all, but she liked her other occupations listed. They were things that she has thought about before but had never really looked into. She thought that these were a pretty good fit overall because they are jobs that she thinks are pretty interesting and that would keep her happy throughout her life. She wants a job where she doesn't sit behind a desk all day and she can meet and mingle with new people.
After taking the Myers-Briggs Type Focus, Tala has found that she is an ENFP, or The Inspirer. She likes to be around people and is a warm, enthusiastic young woman. She sees the world as a place with endless opportunities and enjoys being in touch with herself, as well as those around her. She is a pretty intense young woman and just wants to succeed in this world. She is wrong a lot of the time, but she's not afraid to own up to those mistakes and take charge of fixing them. She tried to make everything fun and energetic, but sometimes she is too hung up in her independency that she doesn't realize when she has done something to control someone else or to hurt them. With these results and the results from the Strong Interest, Tala has found that she would be good at a career where she can work well with others and get to know people. Where she can be on her own if she wants to be, but is always surrounded by people because that is where she gets her energy from. My recommendation for her would be to put her in a career such as an artist or a counselor. There could also be the career of an actress or a psychologist. Because she loves to work with others and help others, these few careers would be perfect for something that she might want to do. Overall, the client was satisfied with these results because she knows that this test explains her perfectly. She does enjoy doing all the things that the Type focus said about her and she loves her results career wise. She thinks that this will help her so much when trying to figure her career out.

Concluding Recommendations:
For Tala, I would recommend a lot of things to her. She is head strong and ready to go into a career, but I would want her to watch out for those careers that she wants but doesn't quite know anything about. Because she is so head strong, I can see her jumping straight into something, but she needs to know to really get to know and understand that career before she goes straight into it. She has so many strengths, but she also has a lot of weaknesses and blind spots. She does like to get to know people so she is very friendly and kind, but when it comes to her not getting her way in something, her nice level drops very quickly. So when she is looking for a career, she needs to know that there are so many factors when choosing. That she may think she's ready, but that doesn't always mean that she is. She needs to understand that careers can set her future and she needs to be careful. Throughout her school year, I would suggest that she takes more career classes like student development 117 and go sit in on classes. She never knows what she might like until she actually tries it. Tala should avoid careers that involve history or geography. She should also avoid a lot of the science classes. These are all classes that she has done poorly in and it may have to do with the fact that she doesn't enjoy the topic as much as her teacher does and so she has to try extra harder than a lot of her classmates and she can't always keep up with it all. Tala should also go and volunteer anywhere she thinks seems like an interesting place to work, such as a hospital or a shelter or event to help a teacher out or do something that gets her involved. All in all, I think Tala is off to a good start with her career choice, but she still has a lot of work to do if she wants to figure her life out. But what ever Tala decides to choose, I would just say to follow her heart and do what makes her happy.