Career counselling

Career counselling at PHC is structured guidance that starts from measurement rather than from opinion. That distinction is the whole of why it sits on a psychology practice's website and not on a consultant's.

Almost everybody facing this decision has already collected plenty of opinions. Relatives have views. Teachers have views. The market has a loud, changeable view about which fields are worth entering. An aptitude and vocational assessment adds something none of those can: a structured measurement of what you are actually good at and what kind of work environment fits how you are built, administered with internationally validated instruments and interpreted by a qualified clinical psychologist.

The sessions that follow work with that report rather than around it. You go through what the results do and do not say, set the findings against what is realistically open to you — the subjects available, the entry requirements, the family situation, the money — and work out what the next decision actually is. Often the useful outcome is not a career but a shortlist, and a clearer sense of what to stop worrying about.

What it is not: it is not a placement service and PHC does not find you a job or a university place. It is not a test that tells you what you are destined for, and any service that describes itself that way is overselling what these instruments do. It does not promise an outcome. And it is not a substitute for therapy where the difficulty is not really the career — which happens often enough that it is worth saying on the page.

PHC is an assessment-first practice, and on this service the assessment is not a preliminary — it is the thing being bought.

1. An initial session.We ask what decision you are facing, what has already been ruled in or out, and by whom. For students this conversation usually involves a parent as well, and it is worth agreeing beforehand who is coming.
2. Aptitude and vocational assessment.Aptitude and career assessment is the testing stage: which instruments are administered, how long it takes, who administers it, and what the written report contains. That page answers what am I buying; this one answers what happens with it.
3. Structured guidance sessions, in clinic or online.A standard session is 50 minutes. The sessions work through the report, the options actually available to you, and the decision in front of you. If a session runs beyond 50 minutes and your psychologist has the time, you can extend by an hour at an extra fee — you are told what that is before it happens. Minor overruns of one to five minutes are not charged. Fees vary by service: how fees and booking work.
4. Reviewed, and referred where the difficulty is elsewhere.Sometimes what surfaces is not a career question at all — exam anxiety, a family conflict about the decision, or something that predates the decision entirely. Where that happens you will be told plainly, and offered the right route rather than kept in the wrong one. See every therapy.

At PHC, career counselling is used with school and college students choosing subjects or a degree, with university students questioning a choice already made, and with adults considering a change of field.

It is also used by parents who want the decision taken out of the argument and put on a measured footing, which is a legitimate reason to book and a common one.

It is not the right service where a learning difficulty has never been assessed and may be shaping what looks like a preference — learning and achievement assessment is the route there, and it is worth ruling in or out before any career conclusion is drawn. It is not the right service where the real difficulty is distress rather than a decision. And it is not a service that will tell you what to do, which some people find disappointing and most find a relief.

No psychologist's supplied profile names career counselling as a modality they practise, so this page does not print a name. Every clinician card on this site is drawn from what that clinician wrote about themselves, and we will not manufacture one.

What is true of the whole team: every psychologist at PHC holds a minimum postgraduate qualification in clinical psychology and completed over 800 supervised clinical hours before joining, and PHC's assessments are administered and interpreted by qualified clinical psychologists rather than by administrators. Who you would see is decided at the initial session. See every psychologist at PHC.