Applying Career Counselling in the Saudi Workforce

Applying career counselling in the Saudi workforce

Career counselling involves forming strategic partnerships between the employers and the employees and forming professional relationships between the two. Career counselling forms an integral part of any country’s workforce and is therefore important in maintaining a productive labour sector. This paper looks into the emerging changes in the Saudi Arabian workforce and the role that career counselling plays in developing productive and effective employees. Furthermore the paper discusses the problems that employers, human resource practitioners and managers in Saudi Arabia face and how career counsellors can use their expertise to provide solutions to these problems.

Career counselling is aimed at improving the employees’ development and finding solutions to emerging career problems. This is meant to improve the Saudi economy by ensuring that unemployment levels are low and that the workforce is at full productivity. However, Saudi employers continue to make changes such as budged cuts, laying-off workers and downsizing which make it almost impossible to have functioning self-managed careers. For a long time, career counselling focused on developing employees, having a well-rounded leadership and providing corporate training in organizations (McMahon, 2011). McMahon suggests that career development and career counselling should be synonymous with human resource initiatives (2011). However, in Saudi Arabia, this is not the case. The goals of the human resource practitioners centre on serving the employees while career counsellors cater for the needs of the employees (Gedro, 2008). Therefore, the core interests between these two fields are very different.

How can career counsellors make significant contributions in the Saudi labour sector? The workforce has severely beer reduced due to corporate restructuring and downsizing, making many of the former employees to be out of jobs (Torofodar, 2011). In addition, major technological innovations have reduced the need of hiring staff as more industries invest in machines. Also, the growth of the information sector as the world becomes more global makes it difficult for people in the Saudi workforce to keep up and self-manage their careers. Therefore, there is a need to introduce career counselling in the mainstream corporate world in order to improve the labour sector.

A major opportunity that can assist the adaptation of career counselling in the corporate sector is making sure that the career counsellors provide high-quality career guidance and provide the necessary drive to the workers in order to provide flexible personnel to improve the organizations and the overall Saudi economy. Career counsellors need to be aware that by moving into the corporate sector, they will be serving the employers and employees (McMahon, 2009). Career counselling has often dealt with clients who were undergoing specific career changes in their lives, be it from post graduate education to finding employment, unemployed clients or even clients who had left the labour sector due to unfortunate circumstances such as accidents. By going into the corporate world, career counsellors need to make sure that there is a common understanding between their clients and that no conflict of interest may arise.

In order for career counselling to be successfully introduced in the mainstream corporate sector in Saudi Arabia, the career counsellors need to use strategies such as job-shadowing and use ghost projects to challenge themselves. This involves the career counsellors using hypothetical situations in organizations to find out how best they can deal with such circumstances (Torofodar, 2011). This would go a long way in preparing them and making sure they are able to deal with real life situations. Additionally, career counsellors can take business courses and attend seminars to gain important information on the workings of the business world. This would greatly improve their perceptions of what really goes on in the corporate level.