Mapping Career Strategically
No student has a compass guiding him/her to take a certain direction to reach their goals and carve successful careers. While school and university education is a learning journey, opting for an appropriate career is a choice that contributes to an individual’s social, financial and mental well-being over the long term. Making the right career decision; therefore, is an important aspect of a student’s life. However, it has become challenging with ever-increasing competition, massive urbanization and globalization, excessive flow of information and societal expectations.
As a career counsellor in India, I have witnessed how students today are spoilt for choice given the various career options available to them. However, this abundance of opportunities is increasingly leading to confusion and aspirations that may not necessarily match with the students’ personalities. Additionally, a huge percentage of Indian students come from semi-urban or rural landscapes who though have great potential but require a lot of hand-holding and guidance to decide on career choices that can equip them to join the paid workforce on an accelerated basis and give them the financial independence required to break socioeconomic barriers and become successful adults.
As mentioned earlier, while this career decision is a choice, it is anything but an overnight endeavour. Making the right career choice can happen only after one has learnt, reflected and understood one’s abilities, interests and potential. These parameters need to be accessed during the middle school years of a child and that is when paying attention to details of child behaviour, interest and productivity levels become prudent.
Additionally, the ongoing pandemic has increased uncertainty in the minds of the students, therefore making career guidance available to them is even more important today to help them manoeuvre through this chaos and identify options based on their interest and capability. Below are some important steps that can help a student in making the right career decision.
Starting with the career guidance early
The recently implemented National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 clearly outlined the importance of career guidance and proposed a robust career connect program for 14-19-year-old students with information, skills and access to opportunities to make a healthy transition to adulthood.
A robust career guidance planning exercise should begin from grade 9 onwards where the teachers, counsellors, parents should partner together to understand the personality of each student and start exposing them to suitable and diverse career options mapped accordingly. A SWOT analysis at an early age will further help to gauge the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities for the child and expose them to suitable options.
Helping to understand career opportunities and requirements for each stream
Selection of subjects in senior school is the first step towards pursuing a particular career; however, it is important to help students understand that there may be a vast range of opportunities available in each field that may not necessarily require study of subjects that are traditionally looked at to build a career in that filed. Take technology as an example of a career stream. Students must be educated that it is possible to build careers in tech without learning to code or pursuing engineering. Look at User Experience Designers (UX) in tech companies. Their focus is to create products with the end-user in mind and increase user satisfaction. For this, the skills needed include strong interview abilities, ethnographic experience and presentation ability. Visual designers have to be creative and strong communicators who are knowledgeable in typography and colour theory. These careers need individuals with degrees in anthropology, psychology, sociology, communication, English, art and other related fields.
Alumni Connect
Amrish Nayak, an alumnus of VidyaGyan recently graduated from Purdue University in Mathematics and will now start working in a start-up in the US. His father is a farmer and his mother a homemaker. Amrish has been a guiding force for all his juniors who like him are interested in the field of Mathematics.
There is no doubt that the strong connection with the alumni is not just a great information source, but it also helps inspire and guide future generations of students. A strong alumni network helps the students assess their higher education and career plans and make tweaks to ensure that they work in the right direction. At VidyaGyan, since most of the students come from a rural underprivileged background and are provided with an opportunity to study free of cost, their initial aspiration for higher education was limited to universities in the regions that they come from. However, looking at the success stories of some of the school’s alumni who were mentored and encouraged to apply in international universities as well as in India, and who received scholarships to continue their learning journey, has helped the students expand their aspirations.
Education cannot be limited to textbooks. Students today require the right career guidance from the right people at the right time so that they can make good choices for their careers and are prepared to handle the changing dynamics of the work culture.
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