Career Advising; An Academic Advisor's Guide,
Virginia Gordon, Jossey-Bass, 2006.
Reviewed by Donna Vinton, Ph.D., University of Northern Iowa

Those outside of the field of academic advising frequently do not realize its complexity. They may see academic advising as not involving much more than reading a college catalog and scheduling a series of courses.

But there is far more to it than that. Academic programs include not only sequences and requirements, but also exceptions and substitutions. Students arrive at the advisor's office with varying degrees of self-knowledge, occupational awareness, and decidedness about career directions. Given rising tuition costs, students—and their parents—want to know where the college degree can lead and how their time in school will pay off after graduation. Aside from the demands of the job itself, the field is complicated by the fact that those who enter the field as professionals come from a variety of backgrounds and areas of educational preparation.

Virginia Gordon has undertaken a huge task in writing this book. The current and developing literature of career advising, the expanding sources of career information, and the increasing rate of change in occupations and the world of work all create a profession that could not be completely mastered by reading a shelf of volumes. Yet Gordon has managed to provide a comprehensive and coherent framework for understanding the work involved in the field that can be useful to both novice and experienced career advisors alike.

Gordon begins by making the case for integrating academic and career advising and outlining the range of competencies required to perform effectively as a career advisor. She then proceeds to outline a three-step model for the advising process—INQUIRE, INFORM, and INTEGRATE.

The first step, INQUIRE, involves determining what kinds of information students need, whether those needs are spoken or unspoken. Gordon distinguishes general areas for career-related problems and provides questions the advisor can ask to tease out specific student needs and concerns.

The second step, INFORM, requires not only providing information, but also knowing what information is needed—about personal interests and skills, options for study, and occupations—and how to find and use such information. Technology makes the process easier and more difficult at the same time for both student and advisor. Thirty thousand hits on Google for the career field a student wants to explore may be more confusing that helpful, and sources can range from accurate and authoritative to biased and misleading.

The final step is the INTEGRATE phase, blending what the students know—about self, academic options, and occupations—into a unified whole so they can begin to implement career decisions. This chapter is very dense, but provides a broad overview of theories and resources that provide a basis for conversation with and by professionals in the field of career advising.  

To the experienced advisor, at first glance what Gordon has to say may seem too simplistic. Information provided on considerations for advising students from multiethnic backgrounds or the overview of career theories, for example, may seem far too glancing and superficial. For the novice advisor, the information may seem too much and too little at the same time, a tantalizing and even frustrating view of all that is required to be an effective career advisor.

Yet Gordon's intent was not to provide a comprehensive text that would create experts through the process of reading the book. Recognizing that readers of the book may fall on a continuum of such skills and knowledge, she provides tools for engaging with the content in varying ways.

For novices, she provides an overview of the field that clearly shows the value and importance of the profession they have entered and an introduction to the skills and knowledge required to be an effective practitioner in it. For experienced advisors, she provides checklists, resource suggestions, and case studies that could be used by both advising departments and individual advisors as a basis for professional development activities.

More importantly, perhaps, she provides "talking points" for helping others to understand what the field of career advising involves and why effective career advising is important. In addition, Gordon's lists of ways for career advisors to become involved across campus and to share their expertise beyond the walls of the advising office are useful for those in postsecondary education—both inside and outside of the advising field—who are concerned with removing functional silos that may get in the way of serving multiple and intersecting student needs.

Finally, aside from use by career advisors, this book might also be helpful to administrators who would like a quick way to become familiar with current thinking and concerns in the field of career advising and to develop vocabulary for assessing and improving the advising programs in their institution.

Virginia Gordon has a long, respected career in the field of academic advising. Career Advising; An Academic Advisor's Guide is a valuable addition to her work and to the literature of the field.