A career, as we know, is a job or profession, that a person does to earn a living, for a period of time or for a lifetime.
As individuals with different personalities, our potentials, strengths, abilities and interests varies.
The fact that a parent is successful at a particular job does not guarantee the choice of that profession as a career for their children.
Time has proven again and again that the choice of career for students based on parental sentiment or peer influence can be devastating.
The world today is filled people who either hate what they do, or who feel trapped at a job, all because someone somewhere made an unguided decision about the choice of a career.
Sadly, this in turn tells on their productivity at such jobs, and the output of the organization as a whole.
There is therefore a need to take seriously the process of career choice for students, to avoid these embarrassing situations.
Confucius, a wise man, puts it in a saying that goes thus: “choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
What is Career Counselling?
Career counselling simply means advising, guiding or educating a person on what career to choose.
It entails giving “professional” help to a person who seeks to choose a career.
A career counselor, thus, is a person who is trained to give professional counsel to persons who want to choose a career.
Why the need for career counselling?
Students, especially young people, are naive about what obtains in the labour market, requirements for particular professions and what they are capable of doing in life.
In order to avoid living a wasted and unfulfilled life, there is a need to guide them on choosing a career of their own.
There is also a need to help them avoid a distorted judgement in this process, so as to help them choose a career for the right reasons.
When is career counselling needed?
Career counselling starts from childhood. The first persons around a child to study their areas of strength and interests are the parents.
When careful attention are paid to these details, parents are able to help their wards develop their areas of strength.
Career counselling begins at such tender age while asking questions about what they have a passion for and helping them align their areas of strength with their passion.
It must be noted that a parent is supposed to guide their child into choosing his or her own path, rather than impose their choice of a career on them.
When sincere, unbiased parental guidance is put in place at this early stage, teachers and counselors will not have much work to do, when it is time to counsel the children on a career path, the course of study and subjects to offer, in pursuit of such career.
How is career counselling done?
The key process for counseling involves the following:
Observation
Teachers, parents and counselors are to observe the students. This might have to do with a sum of their skills: in academics, extra curricular activities and social interactions.
This helps to give a clue on what they are good at, what they love doing, or what they need to develop on.
Interaction
One of the biggest mistakes parents make, is choosing a career path for their wards without seeking their opinion.
Choosing a career without a conversation with the students involved often leads to a career disaster.
There is a need to interact with the students or persons in question, to ask about what they have a passion for and their thoughts about a profession in the future.
The results of this conversation, along with the observations, will help determine what advice to give on their choice.
It must be noted that choices, interests and opinion of the children can change over time, owing to various factors, like a new discovery of a potential for instance.
Hence, multiple conversations will be beneficial, before logical conclusions are made.
Giving professional counsel
Having taken keen observation and held necessary conversation with the students, professional counsel, based on these findings, can now be given to the students.
This entails telling them what career they can do based on their area of strength, their passion and skills, and advising them on what they must improve on, in the course of a choice of a career.
They must also be educated on available career options in different fields, and job opportunities for different career choice.
Bottomline
A Child is like an unsharpened pencil. When we give them career counsel, we sharpen and shapen them rightly to write on the blank pages of time.
We must know that how well these pencils write is a function of how well they have been shapened and sharpened.
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