Selecting a specific career is more than just aptitude and personality testing. In order to balance all the dreamy and ambitious aspects of an individual with the practical limitations, Career Counseling is ideal. The biggest dilemma which makes the students approach a counselor occurs when either they have no clue about their career-based aspirations in life, or they are not being able to pursue their goals, even if they are interested in a distinctive career.
In both these cases, the role of a career counselor is to enable the students to find their overall personality, attain their emotional well-being and discover their true potential.
The Necessity of Career Counseling in this era
A student can easily get bewildered by the limitless possibilities yet contained opportunities which life has to offer. This is where Career Counseling plays its role and also helps in governing the part a student has to play in order to survive. Some of the necessities of career counseling are listed below:
- It helps students to discover and pursue various career options.
- It identifies their strengths and weaknesses with respect to their current profession or course and provides them with a career alternative which they would be suited for.
- It makes sure that they feel free to speak about their struggles and obstacles and put their opinions upfront when it comes to what they would like to pursue.
- The transition from one genre to another becomes a less stressful event when career counseling is involved.
- It boosts their confidence to change their scope of career domains by entailing them to an experienced mentor.
How it actually works?
We cannot truly decipher the limit of the human brain. Every individual has his/her own sets of unique abilities, which include both strength and weaknesses. These characteristics can be identified using the tool of career counseling. A career counseling session can acknowledge the pros and cons of the different educational options for the students in order for them to make an informed choice regarding a risk-free career path in life. It can boost their morale and help them choose a field wherein they can tune in their skills and their job expectations, which will ultimately result in their successful career development. A career counseling program generally constitutes of the following steps:
- Career Awareness – This is concerned with helping a student understand about the various career choices, skill sets needed in each career, and the expressway to lead to contrasting careers etc. Career awareness can be achieved via seminars conducted in schools or by a counselor who guides the student one step at a time.
- Being Insightful – This involves understanding an individual’s abilities, interests, aptitude, and personality. A psychometric career assessment offline or online test can be conducted to evaluate this.
- College Readiness – Once the student is acquainted with the face to face discussion with his counselor, the final step is to guide the student towards college short listing, form filling, application process, college admission process, and entrance exams etc.
Career counseling has its own benefits. It enlightens students and gives them clarity of mind so as to discard any confusion regarding their career choice. It saves their time and efforts by catering to their realistic goals in life. It determines their strength and weaknesses by administering their determination and providing them with educational guidance and support. It enables them to identify the steps needed to set goals for greater results. If the students get to discover their inherent strengths and take the assistance of career counselors to guide them towards making the best fit out of the career opportunities, they will be unstoppable. All they have to do is inculcate the faith that they have every single molecule that takes to create something massive out of a simple thing.
Career counseling India- A revolutionizing platform
Every single day, one technological manifestation is becoming obsolete as another tries to take its seat. The future entails unprecedented growth and multitudes of business opportunities for the upcoming generations. India stands at the verge of this huge transformation and as magnanimous initiatives are being applied by the Ministry of India, it has become obligatory for the students as well as the professionals to come up with the right choice of career, so as to explore new career fronts. The responsibility to set up proper Career counseling mechanisms in India starts with the government. Besides that, a legion of other professional bodies, training institutes, individual schools, universities, private practitioners, development agencies and non-profit organizations are also responsible. Society, in whole, has to ensure this collective responsibility.
Change has always been the only constant. Hence, in order for career counseling to adapt to these changes, students must acquire the appropriate skillsets which will guide them and help them flourish in the changing times. Moreover, it is also the duty of career counselors to work efficiently so as to shape up their client’s future by facilitating them with innovative ideas which will not only make them employable but also help them in becoming all the more adaptable in the near future.
Kyra is a Hiring Director at Alliance Recruitment Agency – Best Agency To Top executive management recruiters. She specializes in helping with international recruiting, staffing, HR services and Careers advice service for overseas and international businesses.