Why students need career guidance?
Today, there are more than 250 profession alternatives, and we need career assistance to determine which one is ideal for us. Here are some reasons why it's crucial for pupils.
A counselling service called career guidance was created to assist students in selecting the best career path based on their academic and professional preferences. It is a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the potential job alternatives based on the knowledge, skills, information, and experience.
There is a lack of awareness and knowledge about the many profession opportunities available to children in India once they graduate from high school. The practise of consulting a career advisor is seldom ever practised.
A recent poll found that 93 percent of pupils were only aware of ten or fewer professional alternatives, such as engineering, medical, law, finance, and information technology. In contrast, there are currently over 250 different professional paths available. In other words, the majority of students have very little knowledge of a wide range of professional alternatives.
Get help from a career counsellor
A career advisor or counsellor is skilled at analysing students' skill sets and areas of interest and making thoughtful recommendations that take the best of both worlds into account.
In order to determine the elements impacting a person's professional interests, abilities, and values, the career adviser uses career interest or aptitude tests as part of the discovery process. In essence, a career advisor helps each student develop attainable professional goals.
Finding resources and sources of career information, tips for writing resumes, methods for preparing for interviews, and the fundamentals of networking are all advantages for students who seek out professional assistance from a career counsellor.
India needs more than a million counsellors.
The ratio of counsellors to students, which is generally thought to be 1:250, is 1:3,000 in India, which represents a significant gap.
However, it also creates a significant potential for career counsellors, especially given that 93 percent of Indian schools lack a specialised professional counsellor.
The 350 million students in India require at least 1.4 million career counsellors to match the ratio of students to counsellors that is considered to be appropriate around the world, according to the Annual International Career and College Counseling Conference, which was held in 2018.
In order to address the gap left by counsellors, we must immediately develop policy, systemic, and infrastructure alignment. This is crucial to help students choose the correct careers, resulting in a productive, diverse, and distributed workforce that supports the development of the country.
Here, innovations and technical advancements will be crucial.
Counsellor education and licencing
To develop more than a million counsellors in India, training and certification of counsellors is another essential component.
This will solve the acute deficit as well as quality and uniformity. If school administrators, principals, and instructors are included as part of the training strategy's surrounding ecology, it may be more successful.
What's way ahead?
One of the most important adjustments that can be made to our educational system is to include career counsellors who are knowledgeable in guiding candidates towards their ideal profession in all career guidance programmes.
The mainstreaming of counselling should emphasise a 360-degree, "future-ready" approach outfitted with cutting-edge tools and technologies to include all stakeholders in the counselling process, including teachers, students, and parents.
By giving young people the opportunity to contact with industry specialists who can serve as the greatest "practical" career advisers, the industry may also play a significant role in assisting young people with their career aspirations.
As an illustration, a doctor may meet the students at the school and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of being a doctor with them. Experts from other industries, such as engineering, retail, or even the military forces, can also visit schools to inform children about the advantages and difficulties of their respective fields.
As an alternative, student visits to businesses can be quite helpful in giving them a perspective on various industries. Additionally, it makes it possible for educational institutions to easily engage with business.
In India, the moment is right to spread the word about career counselling and coaching. Every school and institution should have qualified career counsellors on staff who can plan company visits and hold frequent sessions with students about various career options.
The future success and happiness of kids, families, schools, and the community depend on career guidance and counselling in this area!
