Designing A Competency Model for Counselors of Higher Vocational Colleges in Guangdong Province, China

This study investigated the current situation of the abilities, influencing factors, and job performance of vocational college counselors in Guangdong Province. Using quantitative research methods, this study evaluated the performance and competency levels of the counselors along with their demographic profile where findings revealed that the gender of counselros has a significant impact on their ability performance with female counselors having higher competency levels. To some extent, education and professional titles also affect the counselling ability since those who hold doctoral degrees and have higher titles report to perform better in terms of counselling ability. Planning ability and consulting activity was also determined to have strong positive correlated with job performance. Among the challenges faced by the counselors, they report having the greatest pressure when dealing with students’ psychological issues, with over 72% of counselors considering it their main challenge. In addition, the study also revealed the main challenges faced by counselors in their work process, and proposed suggestions for optimizing counselor ability development to promote the professional development of the counselor team. Based on the research results, the study proposed eight suggestions for optimizing the training of counselors’ abilities, including building a systematic training system, optimizing the gender and professional title structure of counselors, establishing a promotion mechanism guided by abilities, enhancing consulting abilities, optimizing salary incentives, strengthening ability development, and improving the counselor support system, in order to improve the overall quality of the counselor team and better serve students’ growth and career development.