Job Counselor Works for Others

Career counseling can cost several hundred dollars, which is a lot of money--especially if you are unemployed.

But thanks to the efforts of Barbara McGowan, those in need of such aid can have several sessions with a trained counselor and take a comprehensive test to reveal hidden interests--all for as little as $20.

McGowan, a psychologist now retired from private practice, is the founder-director of the AWARE Advisory Center for Educational and Vocational Counseling at the Santa Monica YWCA.

She and her staff of teachers, social workers and counselors volunteer their time to help clients clarify existing skills and goals or discover new ones, determine if further education is needed and develop a plan of action.

Clients of all ages come from as far away as Riverside to take advantage of the low cost. They are requested to pay $5 for the first session, but the fee is not mandatory. For $15--AWARE’s cost--clients take the Strong Interest Inventory test, 300-plus questions covering occupational and leisure-time preferences and personal characteristics.

“Our purpose is to help you decide on an occupational direction regardless of where you are in that process,” McGowan says. “Some people may need to go back to school and get special training. They may come in knowing they want to go in a certain direction and not have the qualifications. So we do quite a bit of educational counseling.

“Most of our clients are people who have had experience working,” she adds. “They may feel they are not doing the work that pleases them.”

The creation of the center, which is open Mondays and Wednesdays on a walk-in basis, was inspired by McGowan’s own story.

Having dropped out of college to marry, she went to UCLA to earn her bachelor’s degree in psychology in the mid-1950s after the youngest of her three children started school. After receiving a master’s degree in clinical counseling in 1960, she began working at the campus’ Student Psychological Services and taught a popular UCLA Extension course on group counseling for women.

“At the time, women were saying, ‘I want to get out and do something more in my life,’ ” she recalls. “A great many didn’t know what they wanted to do or where to begin.”

McGowan met some of those women when she attended lecture programs held by another organization called AWARE (the Assn. for Women’s Active Return to Education). She often found herself counseling women after the meetings, until, she says now, “I decided there should be a place to counsel women.”

The AWARE Advisory Center opened in January, 1973; McGowan earned her doctorate nine years later, her dissertation a study of women’s transition from homemaking to professional life.

Today, as many men as women use the center’s services. “I think we provide a setting in which people feel they’re being heard as individuals in what amounts to a crisis in their lives,” McGowan says. “The answers are in the client, not the counselor. We help them find the answers.”

One former client who agrees is Barbara Holden, who thought she had gotten “off track” in a film-industry career that included positions at Creative Artists Agency and Aaron Spelling Productions. After she took the Strong test early last year, a counselor suggested real estate.

Holden reacted negatively, she recalls, but then reconsidered--and is now a sales executive for a real-estate company in Brentwood.

“I would never have thought about it at all,” she says.

“But a lot of my history coincided with real estate. I’ve always loved architecture, and my family built homes. They got me to step outside of the stereotype I had about real estate agents. I’ve done tremendously and I’m having a blast.”

* This occasional column tells the stories of the unsung heroes of Southern California, people of all ages and vocations and avocations, whose dedication as volunteers or on the job makes life better for the people they encounter. Reader suggestions are welcome and may be sent to Local Hero Editor, Life & Style, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053.