Five Most Crucial Points to Consider while Planning Career
Selecting a Career is not just about
selecting a subject stream or courses or deciding about taking a job. Career selection is more about acquiring
knowledge, Skills and right behavior to spend life with. Your career will
define your identity “Who you are” and will direct rest of your life. It’s our
decision today which will make our life Joyous or Miserable, organized or
misleading, satisfactory or unacceptable. Let’s see how to get it correct and
certain
1.
Differentiating/ Understanding Career Path,
Career Milestone and Career Destination
Research data shows that most of the students make career
decision at least 3 times till they pursue post graduation. First at Class 10th to decide the subject stream,
second time after class 12th for
selecting courses and third time after Graduation either for choosing a job or
choosing a post graduation courses. Though decision at each stage is critical
but if someone fails to choose right stream after 10th, he/she will
end up making wrong choices thereafter.
The core issue in the process of career selection is to be
more concerned about career path without deciding or thinking much on Career
destination. Students after 10th ask same question to teachers/parents/experts
i.e “Which Stream Shall I choose after
10th – Medical, Non-Medical, Humanities or Commerce?” Sometimes even parents also seek answer for
the same question. Asking question about career path is like someone on a
crossroads asking you “Shall I go right, left or straight?” Will you answer
this question? Before answering this question you must be asking him “where you
want to go?” because before suggesting path we shall know the destination. If
that fellow himself is not sure about destination and insisting you to tell the
path without revealing the destination. You will surely find this irrational.
Similarly suggesting career path (streams) to these young ones without knowing
their career destination. To understand it better let’s see the example
Career Destination
– is deciding on to become Finance Manager
Career Path – Is to
choose Commerce stream to reach your Career Destination
Career Milestones
– are graduation, post graduation, entrance tests.
“Selecting a right Career Path is important which is only possible if
you know where to go i.e Career Destination”
2.
Differentiating Genuine Interest, Infatuation & Ability
Identifying genuine Interest in career and differentiating
it from infatuation towards a career must be done while making career selection. Sometimes
even if a student reflects surety about getting in to a career, it’s difficult
to differentiate his interest from his ability. It can be infatuation towards a
specific career due to some obvious reasons like power, fame, money, ease of getting
success in that particular career. It’s natural to get infatuated towards some
fancy careers based on some unrealistic assumption. There is nothing wrong with
this if infatuation triggers an
individual to put efforts to get close to that career. If someone is able to
transform his desire into his actions to reach to the destination, infatuation
converts into genuine interest. We can differentiate these factors by seeking
answer to few connecting questions.
For example, If some student aspires to become a chef,
firstly it’s important to know why he/she wants to become chef. A reasonable
answer of this shall be followed by next question i e. “ For how long he/she
has been thinking seriously about becoming chef? “
The further connecting question shall derive information
about student’s efforts by asking question like
“Do you Cook? Which all recipes you make ? What do you do to learn
cooking?
If student hasn’t done anything significant in last 3 yrs in
learning, reading or experiencing cooking, it’s just an Infatuation.
But if he/she has started cooking (regardless to what they
cook) or started assisting mother in cooking or started following few Chefs through
blogs. Youtube, TV channel, this shows they student has genuine interest in
becoming Chef.
When you identified genuine interest, now next step is to
identify ability required to be successful in area of interest. Ability is to
have some inborn traits or skill set to perform that work efficiently and with
ease. If ability gets coupled with genuine interest then it becomes the Perfect Career Choice.
Going further with above given case study if that student
with genuine interest to become Chef also possesses great sense of taste, great
sense of smell, and good fine motor skills, , means he has also ability to
becoming a great Chef in future.
Selecting a Career based only on Infatuation is like castle in the air. Ability becomes foundation and genuine interest becomes support factor for building premise of a great career.
3.
Do not be the part of a herd on the basis of trends.
Most of the students opt for
career based on statistics about most chosen careers. Commerce, management, law
etc. streams witness enormous admissions in a specific period of years and
that’s called trend.
Trends sometimes become
misleading and risky. To understand this we need to understand simple rule of
economics – Law of demand & supply. Based on trends if everybody opts for
engineering in current times, this will lead to a huge supply of Engineers in
future. If in the time lag b/w current and future demand doesn’t increase proportionality,
the price( wage/salary) of an Engineer automatically will go down. There can be higher
chances that supply would not get consumed which ultimately lead to
unemployment.
4.
Academic performance defines
Career – A Myth
Grades today have become the foundational reason of
selecting a stream. If someone scores high in Science or Maths he/she must go
for PCM, If not then Commerce or Humanities. PCM or PCB becomes the first
choice based on favorable grades whereas humanities become the last. Till 10th
students study all subjects but after 10th they will specifically
choose set of subjects to pursue higher education till graduation or post
graduation. If students are not comfortable with the subject that have chosen, they will be
struggling hard next five to seven year to cope up those subjects.
Research shows significant percentage of students changing
their subjects in Graduation or post graduation. They shall choose career based
on their Traits, Skill Sets, Personality and abilities not just reflection of
grades.
5.
Be Self aware
Each one of us is unique. Everyone has his/her own interests,
values and aptitudes that set up him/her apart from others. Our Personality
type, interests, values, and aptitudes make us better suited for some
occupations than others. Irony is most of us are not much aware of self and
find it difficult to do self assessment. One of the best ways to have better
view about self is to take help of Career Counsellor/Coach who will administer
variety of self assessment inventories to help you have an Informed Career Choice.
Don’t let the throw of dice decide your Career. It must be done
cautiously and shall be driven by approach of balancing intuition with facts.
Manish Sharma
Career Strategist
Director
www.school2campus.com
+91 9815320232
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