Vocational Themes? What are you talking about? Vocational what? Please, speak in English, or Spanish, but whatever the language, keep it simple! This month we are keeping it basic.
Think of vocational themes as career pathways. Simple enough? If you have been a Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor (VRC) or an Employment Consultant (EC), you have likely heard the term quite often. So often, in fact, that its meaning can become muddied over time. Let’s clear that up right now!
A vocational theme is a global pattern of expressed and verified interests observed consistently and reliably throughout Discovery. Vocational themes:
- occur across environments,
- appear throughout a person’s life activities, and
- may be strengthened by a person’s skills, personality, and preferred conditions.
In other words, vocational themes are areas a job seeker persistently gravitates towards or shows a preference or proclivity for. This preference might come from lived experience and already be well-established. For job seekers with a narrow bandwidth of job experience, vocational themes might result from an EC providing exposure experiences for the job seeker. Identifying vocational themes is both a responsibility and an exercise in observation and critical thinking for the EC.
Naming the Vocational Theme
Determining vocational themes requires a bit of detective work. Pay attention to clues, sort through all the information you learn, develop a list of other informants, etc., and then translate this information into broad themes for your client.
Vocational themes have specific characteristics that are valuable when attempting to identify or name them. An EC will have more confidence naming a vocational theme when these specific characteristics are present:
- They are broad. When identified broadly (e.g., nature), a vocational theme applies to many jobs, many environments, and uses varying abilities and skill sets.
- They can be named using one word, several words, or a short phrase.
- They are not job titles or job descriptions (e.g., mechanic versus transportation).
- They are evidence-based and are clear about why a particular theme was selected.
If you find it difficult to name vocational themes, despite your best effort, you may want to peruse the 16 career clusters and over 900 positions found at the Occupational Information Network (ONET). Since the career clusters are used to help job seekers match their work interests, skills, and abilities to different work environments and specific jobs, they can sometimes inform your identification of a theme as well as opportunities that might flow from that theme.
For every position ONET lists on its website under each cluster, ONET provides details about the necessary knowledge, skills, abilities, prerequisites, and projected salaries for that position.
Why the Vocational Theme is Important
The purpose of vocational 
theme development is to improve direction and alignment. Identification of several vocational themes helps to create directional parameters for eventual job development. Vocational themes allow an EC to stay within specific lanes and construct a tangible bridge or link to optimal career opportunities from what was learned about the job seeker throughout Discovery.
One of the primary outcomes of thorough and high-quality Discovery is that eventual job development leads to fitting employment. When employment is “fitting” and meets both the needs and preferences of a job seeker, greater job retention is likely. Job retention, which reflects job satisfaction, creates a highly motivating experience. Vocational themes help to ensure goodness of fit.
From the Field
“Too often in the past, job development hinged on rapid-fire determination of an individual’s interests, and then divining a few job ideas … Because so many people with serious disabilities often only get one or two chances at community employment, the process we use to identify potential jobs must be rigorous” (Griffin-Hammis, 2011).
The data is clear! An ongoing challenge for employment services is related to industry placement. The practice of naming vocational themes and subsequent adherence to those themes improves job placement. Perhaps most importantly, it benefits the job seeker because job development honors all that has been learned throughout Discovery. Vocational themes, once established, must be held upright.