- What Is Career Counselling?
Career Counselling is a process that focuses on helping one understand one’s own self, as well as work trends, so that one can take an informed decision about career and education. Career Counselling helps manage a diverse range of problems such as low concentration levels to poor time management, trust issues with family to non-agreement between parents and children on which career to choose.
In order to understand Career Counselling a little better, let us look at its most important elements:
1. A Qualified Career Counselor.
A genuine Career Counselor is the essence of right guidance, which is why he/she is the most important element of any career counselling process. Career Counselor are experts in psychology, which means that they should hold at least a post-graduate degree in Psychology/Applied Psychology, and/or a diploma in Counselling Psychology. Career Counselor who give guidance for a particular field, such as engineering, management, hospitality, etc., must be experts in the concerned domain.
A good Career Counselor is a problem solver, a keen listener and observer, and has sufficient knowledge of various fields to guide you in your career decisions.
2. An Agreement Of Trust And Confidence
The Career Counselling process is based on a relationship of trust and confidence between the career counselor and student. In order to help him/her, the counselor may sometimes talk about their emotional and developmental issues, which can be a little stressful. The student and the parent needs to place an enormous amount of faith in the Counselor to take care of such matters.
2. Why Do I Need Career Counselling?
All of us require career guidance at some point in our life. It helps us get insights about ourselves, our career and what we can do to improve it. Here are a few ways in which career counselling helps us:
1. Helps Pick The Right Career
Career Counsellors are experts at assessing your aptitude, personality, interests, and other aspects of you. They use this evaluation to suggest the best career options from all the available and relevant options.
2. Helps Provide Expert Resources
Career Counselling provides access to the resources and knowledge that a career expert possesses. This knowledge of Careers, their scope and the paths to pursue them are most important from the point of view of a parent and child, since most of the times, parents or guardians do not have that kind of knowledge.
3. Helps Gain Confidence And Insight
Career Counselling helps a counselee understand the hurdles in his/her career path. This knowledge helps to develop the confidence to overcome these hurdles. It is the duty of a good counsellor to provide such insight and confidence to the counselee.
4. Helps Change Unwanted Behavior Patterns
Students and professionals have habits that are hard to break, such as procrastinating, not keeping updated on latest developments in their chosen career paths, neglecting emotional and mental health, not trying to self-motivate, etc. A Career Counsellor helps break such behavioral patterns that lead to unproductive activities, both at home and in school/college/work.
5. Helps Remove Career-Related Frustration
Choosing a career can be a demanding task for both parents and children. A lack of any source of venting out emotions and thoughts may add to the existing frustration. Career Counselling provides a platform where such frustrations can be reduced, and focus is re-directed to selecting the best career options.
6. Provides A Role-Model
Career Counselling helps students connect to experts who have enough life experiences to share. They are role models who have accomplished much, and helped people in their life. This is why Career Counselling can serve as an inspiration to those who require it.
7. Helps Bring Stability In Thought
Career Counsellors can help you remain calm when it comes to taking a career decision. Counselling helps bring about focus, and maintain that focus throughout in our activities. Through proper scheduling and planning, they try and make your life more organized.
3. Who Need Career Counselling & When?
The perfect time for students to seek Career Counselling is during the ages 13-17 years (8th standard to 12th standard). This is a time of many changes taking place in their life, both physical and emotional, such as transitioning from school to college, and trying to “fit in” with peers. It is also a time when career decisions are made. This is why they need someone to guide them in the right direction at this time.
Most of our parents are actively involved in shaping our career, in fact at least 51% of Indian parents’ priority is their child’s financial success (Survey by HSBC Retail Banking and Wealth Management in a report titled “ The Value of Education: Learning for Life”). We can safely assume that our parents follow a hands-on approach when it comes to making career decisions for us. Sometimes, it works and many a times, it does not. We can attribute this to the fact that every child is unique, and it is extremely hard for parents or teachers to always recognize the child’s strengths or weaknesses, and his passion or dislikes. This is another reason why career counselling is needed.
For students in college, who are still confused about what they want to do, as well as for professionals who want to transition from their field to something they love, career counselling helps in the following manner:
Career Counselling helps them understand the career options that they have, and how to pursue them.
Career Counselling helps them understand their own strengths and weaknesses with regard to their present course or profession, and lets them know what career they would be suited for.
Career Counselling gives them a platform to voice their opinion about what they would like to pursue, as well as discuss the obstacles that they may be worried about.
Career Counselling makes the transition from one field to another a non-stressful event.
Career Counselling helps give them the required confidence to change their domain, with the support of an experienced mentor
link below for whatsapp
