504 The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 4 process as a long-term endeavor influenced by both planned and unplanned experiences. Next, it is important to allow identified concerns to be a starting point for further exploration. Third, they need to explore how past experiences with unplanned events have influenced current career interests and behaviors. Fourth, they should reframe unplanned experiences as opportunities for growth and learn to recognize these opportunities in their everyday lives. Finally, it is important that individuals remove or overcome any and all blocks to career-related action. In an endeavor to explain career development and choice, HLT points to various planned and unplanned experiences throughout the life span (Krumboltz, 2009). Planned experiences include events individuals initiate such as pursuing a doctoral degree, choosing a particular CES program, identifying a focus of study, selecting courses as part of a program of study, and approaching specific faculty for advising and mentorship in an effort to achieve career aspirations. Unplanned experiences include events that individuals have no control over that often lead to revised career aspirations such as influential course instructors; type and quality of advising and mentoring; and various opportunities to teach, present, and publish with program faculty. Even though “the interaction of planned and unplanned actions in response to self-initiated and circumstantial situations is so complex that the consequences are virtually unpredictable and can best be labeled as happenstance” (Krumboltz, 2009, p. 136), unplanned experiences are particularly important to HLT. In fact, it is important that individuals take advantage of these unplanned experiences as opportunities to grow—something they are less likely to do if their predetermined career aspirations are too rigid (Gysbers et al., 2014). For CES doctoral students, HLT is particularly pertinent in that although many enter programs with clear career aspirations, these career goals often remain fluid, changing and developing through planned and unplanned experiences throughout the training process. Although this drive to reach predetermined goals can serve as motivation, individuals who have made firm career decisions tend to focus on experiences that affirm their choices and overlook or fail to engage in unplanned experiences not related to their career goals (Gysbers et al., 2014). Thus, it is important that CES faculty not only encourage doctoral students to be open minded about potential career outcomes, but also provide opportunities for doctoral students to engage in formative unplanned experiences. Although CACREP provides specific mandatory standards that must be accounted for, they allow programs to exercise flexibility and creativity in how they address them (CACREP, 2015; Goodrich et al., 2011). Students can expect a specific knowledge base but also have opportunities for paving their own career path because of the uniqueness of each CES program and other factors such as preenrollment career aspirations, unplanned life events, challenges or successes in courses, program emphasis, and mentorship. Both planned and unplanned experiences involve facing challenges, leading to developmental and transformational tasks that influence the integration of multiple identities, selfefficacy, and acceptance of responsibility as a leader in the counseling profession (Dollarhide et al., 2013). From an HLT framework, these transformational tasks are particularly significant, as they can be the catalyst for revised career aspirations or the reinforcement of previously determined career goals. This highlights the importance of advising and mentoring, and the need for ample opportunities for students to engage in diverse experiences so that these transformations can occur. Planned Experiences Doctoral students in CACREP-accredited CES programs can expect planned experiences relating to coursework that integrates theories relevant to counseling, the skills and modalities of clinical supervision, pedagogy and teaching methods related to educating counselors, research designs and professional writing, and leadership skills. Although CES programs are designed to provide planned
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