Choose a Career

Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions of a students’ life. This is one of those decisions that sticks with us for the rest of our life, and much more than that, it shapes up the kind of life we will live. Considering the heavy weightage attached to this decision, it becomes rather imperative that a career decision must not be made with a half-hearted or casual approach, nor should it be taken lightly.

Many a times, people (students and parents) do the mistake of not thinking it through about what career they would like to build for themselves / for their children. Mostly, people think that career decisions should be given a serious thought only when one is through with their educational qualifications and is ready to join the work force. What people fail to understand is that career decisions are taken much before that and the first step to choose the right career is choosing right stream in class 11.

HOW TO CHOOSE A CAREER

It is important to understand that choosing a career does not mean simply deciding upon the ultimate career profile. Rather, it is a continuous procedure and a student must choose a career at every step of the way. Whether he / she is deciding a stream in class 11, whether he / she is contemplating what course to pursue in college, whether he / she is deciding to pursue a post graduate degree, or whether the student is planning on what career profile to get into.

Therefore, one can follow the following steps to choose a career:

• Firstly, know your capabilities. What are you good at? What are your strengths? What is your aptitude? What is it that you do that doesn’t require unnecessary additional effort and you succeed in or perform that task quite naturally with much ease? If you are not quite sure of your inherent strengths then it is very imperative that you take an aptitude test and personality test to know your true potential.

• Secondly, draw a flow chart of your academic qualifications. What have you done? If you are a working professional then what has been your educational background right from the stream that you selected in class 11 to your last degree. If you are a class 11 or class 12 student then what stream have you chosen for yourself? If you are a college student, then what course are you pursuing currently and what stream did you have in school? Once this is clear, then co-relate your academic status with the options available to you. For example: If you are a class 12 student who has taken humanities stream, then what are the career options and course options available to you? If you are a working professional, then what are the career options that can be explored with your educational background?

• Thirdly, match / connect your capabilities with your academic status. For example: if you are a student of humanities, then you have multiple career and course options available to you. A person can choose from a myriad of careers in humanities. But not all of these careers will be the best fit career for an individual. This is because each career option requires different aptitude and personality combinations. That is why, it is important to connect one’s own capabilities with ones academic qualifications. This can be a little tricky as even though one may be able to figure out one’s aptitude and personality through psychometric tests like aptitude testing and personality assessment, however, it becomes quite a task to match ones strength with the requirements of the hundreds of career options available in the market. This is why the role of a career counselor is so important. A career counselor will not only be able to help you with your psychometric assessment, but, he / she will also be able to provide you with a proper career plan based on an analysis of your capabilities and correlating it with the career and course options available in the market.