“Not knowing what to do in the future”: A challenging problem in career counseling

The paper describes how career counselors treat university students’ problem that they “do not know what to do in the future.” The problem poses a challenge for counselors who cannot know their clients’ skills and interests and should avoid giving advice to their clients. In this study, we analyze video-recoded career counseling discussions that took place at a Finnish university. Analysis is based on the principles of applied conversation analysis. The study shows that counselors have two basic ways of addressing the problem in a way that maintains their expert position and promotes their clients’ agency; the counselors treat the problem as lack of self-knowledge or lack of knowledge about employment opportunities. However, the study also demonstrates how students may emphasize the structural nature of their problem and resist counselors’ agency-focused proposals. The study emphasizes the importance of joint working problem definition in career counseling interaction.