Investigating the professional identity dynamic in career counselling: The socioconstructivist interview

A socioconstructivist method is used to investigate the professional identity dynamic of employees in the context of career counselling. This method is particularly well-suited because of the intrication, at the core of the client's identity, of psychological dimensions, such as values and capabilities, which are essential to career counselling. Additionally, this approach allows one to contextualise these dimensions, as biographical and environmental references emerge to give meaning and relevance to representations of the self and others. We apply the multistage investigator of the social identity method to study two specific cases, and to illustrate the contribution of the socioconstructivist interview.