The word career counseling is considered as an intervention conducted one-on-one or maybe in a group of people generally small so that equal attention can be paid to the uniqueness of the counseling provided to the aspirants or clients by the career counselor. There are similar names such as career guidance; career coaching; guidance counseling; personal guidance; career consulting etc, but not to be confused with the wide range of related terminology they all more or less relate to similar meaning.
People often think that why should we have career counseling or what is the reason for having one?
The answer to this is very simple and easily understandable:
All of us require some guidance at some point in our life, not just to help get insight into ourselves and understand ourselves better but also for a moment to think about the field we feel passionate about and not the society.
Sometimes we believe that this particular thing is what I want to do or believe that if I take this path I will definitely exceed but on the contrary knowingly or unknowingly that path becomes the reason for not excelling cause we are not aware of our own expertise or might have a vague idea of it. More to it helps a person to understand the hurdles in his/her career path. Knowing the series of hurdles that are going to be there gives the aspirant the confidence to overcome these hurdles.
Who Needs career counseling and when?
It’s a prepaid notion that career counseling can be done for anyone at any time irrespective of age or gender. But talking about students’ point of view, it is recommended to have it when the kids are in class 9th up till class 12th. We believe that this is the age group where our childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut, scientist, etc get put on hold and we get to interact with real-life difficulties.
At this age, parents start getting concerned about kids’ financial success more than anything else, and with time their concern grows. This is the time when the children feel pressure to fit into the desired peer group, desired society norms. This age group witnesses physical as well as emotional changes at their peak. Hence, keeping all this in my mind a perfect age to consult a career counselor is at the age group between 13-17.
How does Career Counseling Work?
Career counseling consists of several scientifically developed tests which help to gather a result and tends to also help in making a better choice. We all will agree to the fact that human beings’ capabilities can never be judged, everyone on unique in his/her way in a specific field of interest, but going through a well researched and capable psychometric test which involves sets of questions on aptitude test, personality test, verbal ability test, etc will help generate a true insight of the already possessed skills a person has.
At last, we all know that at some points in our lives after getting an educational success we will still be surrounded with questions such as
- What after class 10th?
- Which stream to go for?
- What after class 12th?
- Should I take PCM?
- Should I take maths with commerce?
- Should I take humanities?
At this point what all help he has Parent, teacher or admission counselor, who is anyways will try his best to put you in a college/school where he will get the desired commission.
If given a thought, one will agree that our decision to such questions is always based on the remarks made by our teacher or friends which in the long run puts us in trouble. This is definitely the scenario where the role of career counselor and their importance comes in a role play in our lives.
