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CAREER GUIDANCE

Compiled- By CP Kabra, Member – Carrier Guidance Cell – Akhil Bharatvarishya Maheshwari Mahasabha

1) Introduction:

Choosing a career can be very satisfying if you have made the right choice. Like the famous adage goes, if you choose the job you love, you don’t have to work a single day in your life. While doing a career search it is imperative to have the correct career information. The right career advice can help you to choose a career to suit your personality as well as your aspirations.

Career counselling primarily helps to explore and investigate various potential career options and occupations. The career counselling advisors assesses one’s interests, personality, values and skills, thereby helping one in exploring the suitable career options. A common question that often comes to our mind is why some people are more successful than the others. The answer to this question is very simple: because they chose the right career!

Nowadays, several career guidance websites & career advice resources are available on the internet. However, none of these helps to evaluate career option holistically based on one’s aptitude, psychometric profile. What counsellors teach is the right way to explore and investigate appropriate careers, graduate programs, and occupations.

2) Career counselling Flow:

The Career counselling flow mainly consist of two stages; Career Aptitude Test & One- to One counselling.

Career Counselling Flow

Career Counselling is a continuous exercise – right from childhood to till we breathe last or lead our active life. This is a continuous and on - going process due to change in eco system and also the very changing profile (needs, values, cultural, social aspects) of the human beings.

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However, for understanding purpose, we can divide this subject in to following phases:

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-Career counselling for Students (8-10 Standards)

-Career Planning from 10th Standard

-Career Planning from 12th Standard

-Career counselling for Under Grads/ Graduates

-Career counselling for Working Professionals

-Career counselling for Home Maker (Housewife)

3) Career counselling for Students (8-10 Standards)

Each child is born with a distinct set of abilities, each of whom has the potential to excel in life. For young students, this is the most critical stage and for a sound career foundation, an expert advice is of prime Importance, to help them decide the right career course.

At this stage, besides Aptitude test, teachers and parents can sense the inner interests and strengths of a child. This often becomes visible from the role play, their role models, their habits of time utilisation, etc. etc,

4) Career Planning from 10th Standard:

This should begin while you are in your school, right from your tenth standard. After having completed your class tenth, is one of the very first milestones when you decide what stream you are going into.

Students who have cleared 10th are at a cross road in their career. With the ever increasing fields of studies and multitudes of career options, students, parents and teachers are confused about the right career option. It is true that each student is born with a distinct set of abilities and each of whom has the potential to excel in life. However, the real challenge is to find the distinct set of abilities (or what we call aptitude) and suggest the right career plan to best suit a particular student. Career counselling experts have adopted a two stage approach, to provide students passing 10th standard career guidance in the most scientific way. In the first stage, the student undergoes an Online Career Aptitude Test, to holistically evaluate his/her aptitude and psychometric profile. The Online test, analyses student’s verbal, numerical, mechanical, spatial and general aptitude for different careers.

The test also undertakes psychometric profiling that helps determine preference for a particular career. The test can be taken anytime from home, office or cybercafé or any place with internet connectivity. Once the online test is taken, the student undergoes one-on-one counselling with expert counsellor who shall provide such services either by tele counselling or Video counselling .Parents and any other relative or friend/s of student can also join the session. The expert counsellor then suggests a career plan selected from different study options and based on student’s aptitude and psychometric profile. This session shall typically probe what a student wishes to pursue and suggest one or more career plans from among different career options available. This interactive session shall typically lasts between 25-30 minutes and student and parents are free to ask any questions to our

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expert counsellor and get complete satisfaction regarding student’s career plan.

For the benefit of students, a snapshot of career options after 10th standard is also shown by way of a chart. This chart should also be seen in conjunction with similar chart of career options available after 12th Arts, Science and Commerce. Also, please see note on Vocational education and Online Education given below.

In addition, students can also opt for vocational education (Job Oriented Education) after 10th Standard and earn certificate/diploma/ advanced diploma and with or without assistance of Education Provider, can get job or become an entrepreneur. Also, It is possible to study via online education to get Certificate, diploma, Degree and post graduate degree whilst continuing with your full time work.

This link shows the large options that one gets after class tenth.

http://www.career-counselling.in/pdf/Career%20Chart_SSC.jpg

3) Career Planning from 12th Standard:

Students who have cleared 12th have already joined a stream viz., Arts/Science or Commerce and hence shall need to study further either in the respective stream or go for other study options based on the stream they have already selected. Also, please see note on Vocational education and Online Education given below.

With the ever increasing fields of studies and multitudes of Career options, students, parents and teachers are confused about the right career options. Whilst it is true that each student is born with a distinct set of abilities, each of whom has the potential to excel in life. However, real challenge is to find the distinct set of abilities (or what we call aptitude) and suggest the right career plan to best suit a particular student. Career counselling has adopted a two stage approach, to provide students passing 12th standard career guidance in the most scientific way. In the first stage, the student undergoes an Online Career Aptitude Test, to holistically evaluate his/her aptitude and psychometric profile. The Online test, analyses student’s verbal, numerical, mechanical, spatial and general aptitude for different careers. The test also undertakes psychometric profiling that helps determine preference for a particular career. The test can be taken anytime from home, office or cybercafé or any place with internet connectivity.

Once the online test is taken, the student undergoes one-on-one counselling with our expert counsel as explained above.

For the benefit of students, a snapshot of career options after 12th standard is also shown by way of a chart. This chart is given separately for each of the stream i.e. Arts, Science and Commerce.

http://www.career-counselling.in/pdf/Career%20Chart_Science.jpg for Science with PCB/ PCMB.

http://www.career-counselling.in/pdf/Career%20Chart_Science2.jpg for science with PCM.

http://www.career-counselling.in/pdf/Career%20Chart%20HSC%20Comm.jpg for Commerce

http://www.career-counselling.in/pdf/thumbCareer%20Chart%20HSC%20Comm_2.jpg

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For Commerce (Specialization streams)

And http://www.career-counselling.in/pdf/Career%20Chart_Arts.jpg for Arts stream

In addition, students can also opt for vocational education (Job Oriented Education) after 12th Standard and earn certificate/diploma/ advanced diploma and with or without assistance of Education Provider, can get job or become an entrepreneur. Also it is possible to study via online education to get Certificate, diploma, Degree and post graduate degree whilst continuing with your full time work.

4) Career counselling for Under Graduates/ Graduates

Students who have completed their basic education up to 10th Standard and are graduates, and are now unsure of the future or need professional guidance in choosing the right career path. These needs are also identified as defined above.

5) Career counselling for Working Professionals

Individuals who are facing an uncertain future or those who are looking for a career switch and need professional guidance. This can also take the form of validating one's own career aptitude in a scientific way as defined above. It may not be out of place to mention here that to keep oneself abreast with the eco systems, one has continuously upgrade/hone his skills. .

6) Career counselling for Home Maker (Housewife)

Home maker who are looking for extra income or looking for part time career or who want to support their families, can also take the form of validating one's own career aptitude in a scientific way as defined above. 7) Career Action Plan A Career Action Plan is a road map that takes you from choosing an occupation to becoming employed in that occupation to reaching your long-term career goals. It is also referred to as an Individualized (or Individual) Career Plan or an Individualized (or Individual) Career Development Plan. Before You Begin Developing a Career Action Plan is the fourth step in the career planning process. You must complete the following steps first:

• Do a thorough self assessment

The first and foremost step in choosing your career is to figure out where your career interests are, what are you good at and what brings the best of your abilities. And this can be done by preparing a questionnaire for you with questions like

• Where do my interests lie? • What do I do well and enjoy? • What kind of personality do I have? • What's really important to me?

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• What are my values? • Where do I perform better?

• Completely explore viable career options which were identified during the self assessment

• Choose an occupation after considering all the options

8) Setting and Reaching Your Goals:

• Break your goals down into short-term and long-term goals. Short-term goals are goals you can reach in one year or less. Long-term goals are ones that are attainable in one to five years.

• In order to reach your goals, you will have to get around any barriers you may face. List those barriers and your solutions for dealing with them.

9) Career Assessment Tests-

There are a lot of career assessment tests are available now a days. One can take up these tests to determine one’s inclination towards the appropriate careers out of the vast number of available career options. The test fee varies in the range of Rs 1500- 3000/-

To figure out what your strong areas are, one of the most frequently used tools is the aptitude test. Aptitude and ability tests are designed to assess your logical reasoning or thinking performance. It’s a multiple choice question answer based, strictly timed and consists of various papers like Verbal Ability, Numeric Ability, Abstract Reasoning, Spatial Ability, Mechanical Reasoning, Fault Diagnosis, Data Checking, Work Sample etc.

Secondly, you must learn about your career options. Rarely do you have the opportunity to understand how the work world is, as it actually exists. You have to take the initiative to explore it yourself. You should begin to gather information about these careers which will include a job description, outlook for the field and required training and education. Also, one should talk to people working in that field through informational interviews. You can check with your public library as some of these offer careers planning help. Also check with local colleges and universities. Most have career development offices which may offer services to members of the community.

Next step is to choose a career is to sort out your priorities for a career. After having followed the above two steps, some of your strong preferences may start to emerge. You might learn you don't want to be in an office environment. Or you might find that your interest in art wouldn't sustain a career, so you cross those types of jobs off your list. Whatever it is that you learn about yourself, you're making important discoveries that will help you choose a good career when the time comes. This is a major component of career planning for students.

10) Conclusion:

Most importantly, keep it all in perspective: You don't have to live forever with any career decision you make in these phases of student career planning. Most people change careers several times during their lives, so the first job you choose right after college probably won't be your career 15 or 20 years from now, unless you want it to be. So don't put too much pressure on yourself to make the perfect decision, and always keep your eyes open, and use all available resources in your journey to find how to choose a career.