Case Finding: Outreach efforts to identify and offer rehabilitation services to individuals eligible and in need of them. Many consumers would never find their way into the rehabilitation service delivery system without case finding efforts.

Client-Centered Placement: This job placement philosophy emphasizes teaching job seeking skills so that the consumer can become largely independent in the job-finding process. The rehabilitation counselor serves as a "placement consultant," teaching the consumer how become a successful and "independent" job-seeker. This method is generally best used as an adjunct/aide to the Selective Placement approach.

Employability: A client's ability to successfully perform a given job. The client must be able to meet all the physical and mental demands of the job on an ongoing and continuing basis. Some clients have medical conditions, such as lower back injuries, that may be more debilitating to them on some days than others. In order to be employable in a job they need to be able to meet its demands on their "bad days" as well as their "good days."

Job Analysis: The process of studying the physical and mental demands required in a specific job. Areas assessed include major tasks and the separate components within each task (these are described with an action verb at the start of each description), physical demands required by the job, working conditions, and tools.

Job Development: The process of identifying jobs in the community that would be suitable for one or more of a counselor's clients. It involves calling prospective employers to identify job opennings and field visits to employers for the same purpose. The counselor might, for example, set aside an afternoon to visit different employers in an industrial park.

Job-Ready: This term simply means that the client is ready to be placed in a job. The client has completed any physical restoration services and job training called for in their Individualized Written Rehabilitation Program (IWRP).

Job-Seeking Skills Training: The process of helping a consumer develop the skills necessary for finding jobs, filling out job applications (including creating a resume when appropriate), interviewing effectively, and following-up interviews with a letter and/or telephone call. These skills are often best taught in a small group setting.

On-the-Job Evaluation: A work assessment approach where the client's performance on a real job is observed and evaluated. The counselor will often contract with an employer (in the competitive labor market) to provide this service for a consumer. If the consumer performs successfully ... the employer will hopefully hire the individual.

Placeability: The probability of a client obtaining or being hired for a given job. Factors such as the availability of positions in the local job market, educational level and past work experiences of the client, and interviewing skills are major factors that impact a client's placeability. A client may be employable in a job, but not placeable because of labor market factors.

Selective Placement: This approach emphasizes the responsibility of the rehabilitation counselor to find an appropriate employment situation for the consumer. Based on evaluative data and counseling with the consumer, the counselor identifies suitable jobs, schedules job interviews, arranges transportation (when necessary), and follows-up on interviews.

Situational Approach: A work assessment approach where a client's job performance and work behaviors are observed in a rehabilitation facility, usually a sheltered workshop. Work adjustment training/improvement is usually a component that follows this assessment process.

Supported Employment: Placing clients, usually with severe developmental disabilities, in competitive employment settings where they work under the oversight and assistance (as necessary) of a job coach.

Transferable Skills: In the broadest sense, any qualities or characteristics of the consumer, unaffected by disability, that may have reemployment relevance. It is sometimes possible to place a consumer with past work experiences on the basis of transferable skills rather than training for an entirely new occupation. Transferable skills characteristically center around materials the consumer worked with (e.g., fiberglass), products (e.g., automobiles), tools (e.g., computers) and business activities or industries (e.g., sales, finance). Mental and physical capabilities of a consumer also fall within the broad realm of transferable skills (e.g., intelligence, strength).

Vocational Development: The developmental process an individual moves through in making a vocational or career choice. There are a number of different theories (e.g., Super, Ginzberg) that describe this process.

Vocational Evaluation: Vocational or Work Evaluation is an experientially based assessment approach that involves giving the client real or simulated work activities to perform and observing and recording their behavior. It usually involves administering work samples and psychometric tests, and may involve situation assessment and on-the-job evaluation as well.

Work Adjustment Training: The process of helping individuals aquire the prevocational behaviors (and attitudes) necessary for successfully functioning as a worker. This typically occurs in a sheltered workshop where the client can be observed in situational assessment and worked with on a daily basis. A work adjustment counselor and the production supervisors work with the client toward developing work behaviors (e.g., punctuality, following work site rules, asking appropriate questions, accepting supervision and criticism) necessary for successful employment.

Work Samples: An assessment approach where the client is observed performing a simulated or actual work activity, usually in a rehabilitation center or vocational evaluation unit. There are a number of commercially available systems such as JEVS system and Valpar Component Work Sample Series