Career Counseling as it is, is designed to assist an individual on the basis of various tests and surveys, in finding the suitable career path as well as figuring out the types of jobs this individual will succeed in. Effective career counseling may help an individual to start preparing him- or herself for taking up a career while still being a student. Moreover, effective career counseling makes an individual aware of the numerous career choices and helps an individual to better understand his- or her own suitability in various fields. As a result, an individual is knowledgeable of the existing alternatives and has all the necessary information to make a choice for oneself. The aim of this study, however, is to determine what kind of career counseling programs are available to students, and whether career counseling results in the increase of students’ job satisfaction.

Before making any judgments or identifying any thesis on the topic of the effect of early career counseling on career satisfaction, it is important to study the field of students’ career counseling itself. Not only will this bring up the main concepts of the above subject, but will enable to identify the guidelines allowing to give answers to such questions as the appropriate career counseling timing and an effect on the level of the gained job satisfaction. The effort behind the above statement is to consider such variables as motivation, career decision making, effectiveness and need for career counseling programs as effective tools in the process of distinguishing the level of career satisfaction in regards to early career counseling.

Researchers Scheel and Gonzalez (2007) acknowledge that within the school counseling profession there is a growing expectation that counselors affect a positive influence on the academic performance of their students.  Counselors are tasked in doing so via personal, social and career counseling.  As a result of this awareness, Scheel and Gonzalez attempted to determine the specific attributes of school counseling that might be responsible for students improving academically. Specifically, the researchers attempted to develop a model of academic motivation they felt would be effective when applied to school counseling procedures. Researchers concluded that the results of the study supported self-efficacy as a focus to increase both academic motivation and students’ level of involvement in school counseling.  Most crucial to students initiating seeking help from the school counselors was the perception that there were fewer road blocks to their future goals.  This result alone, only serves to further validate the need for counselors to focus on a given student’s self concept.

As a conclusion from the above study, it can be projected that if school counseling aids in students’ academic improvement, so can early student’s career counseling aid in getting acquainted with individual characters, personality preferences and motivational factors. There is a high potentiality that such early awareness may help to omit certain hardships and result in increased job satisfaction.

When going back to the acknowledgement that school counseling has means in influencing students’ academic performance, another study becomes useful. It brings up different variables which students find the most motivating in reaching academic excellence. Van Etten, Pressley, McInerney & Liem, (2008) employed an inductive/qualitative approach to understand variables that may affect academic motivation for college seniors. Essentially the technique is process of questions generated (open ended) and responses reviewed until there are no longer any informational gaps. The results of this study showed seniors did indicate that earning good grades and the goal of graduation was of their primary concern during their senior year.  Additional variables that affected their motivation were grouped into two categories: internal and external factors.  Internal factors included students’ personal characteristics such as social class. The external category included social factors such as course related characteristics which included class size, smaller class size promoting motivation and larger decreasing motivation.  Other social factors indicated affecting motivation were instructors, family members, peers and the general college environment.  The most interesting result of the study was that seniors indicated neither overly easy nor overly difficult tasks were motivating but rather that moderately difficult tasks were most engaging. Taking in consideration the above results, it is useful not only for school counselors, but to career counselors working with students as well to consider those motivation factors in order to encourage students in mutual participation in the search for future goals and objectives.