Career Choice is a big decision
Career Choice is a big decision. My observation as a career counsellor has been that students tend to base their career decisions on existing trends. The top trend currently and rightly so, is joining the Tech Industry. But it is also an industry which is seeing massive layoffs.
Everyone wants to earn more, we want a stable career, we want to grow in our career. So, isn’t choosing to join the most growing industry the right step forward. How are we going to determine that!
What is my passion?
Foremost, according to me is to access your interest. When I ask students, what are your career goals, they do reply that they want to earn a lot, live a comfortable life, travel the world or start a business. But when I ask them that what fields interest you, or have you thought what business you will start, they are mostly clueless. This is because they have not given enough thought to the same. They are not mostly aware of various career options as well.
I strongly believe that one’s passions should guide their career choice. Mostly the students who are interested in performing arts, creative arts, creative writing or culinary arts face this challenge of distinguishing their passions, interests and their career choice. The parents of these students ask me, “ Can one choose this as a career?, Isn’t this a hobby?” Will my child have a financially stable life if these are their career choices ?
These concerns are valid.
The Right Approach To Make Your Career Choice
The approach I adopt to guide a student, ascertain how passionate they are about a career of their choice is to ask them to make a career journal. Once they start writing down about their interests, it brings much better clarity on whether they are fully prepared to choose these as their careers. Of course when one begins a career as an artist he might earn lesser than a coder. So, is he needs to ask himself is he truly prepared for this challenge.
It is extremely important to think about this. Also, it’s extremely essential to understand that one can make a change in career choice as well. Mostly, students are worried that they will waste time, or will be left behind if they make the wrong choices. Also, it is incorrect to associate happiness and satisfaction from work to the money one makes.
I believe how much happiness one gets from the money they make is highly subjective. Also, I introduce the concept of saving and investing as well so that they understand how important it is to generate wealth. And making money only through your salary is not the only way to increase your income.
The easiest way to assess your interest is to ask yourself , which work will excite you to go to work everyday? What will give you an opportunity to showcase your talent? This is the first step.
Conclusion:
In my experience, one can’t learn if one does not try. There are many ways that can be employed to make the right career decision. I will be discussing the same through the month of April in my career series for the Blogchatter A To Z 2023.
So, keep watching this space. Do share your experiences as well. How did you make your career choice?
To know about various careers, you can login to my website : EduCareer Guide .
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How much happiness one gets from the money they make is highly subjective.
It surely is. Because how are content creators like us who mostly write for free doing it so passionately and consistently otherwise, right?
I agree children should be encouraged to explore their interests before deciding on labels such as doctor, astronaut etc. The rage right now is AI and a lot of children think that should be their career choice.
It is often found that students in the 10th grade often look to taking up the science stream irrespective of whether they have the aptitude for it. As you so correctly point out it is important to find your passion first. If a student takes up what he is passionate about and has talent for it success follows automatically.
Guiding students to give importance to their passion for selecting a career is the best one can do to help the youngsters. Your students are in safe hands!
I’m so glad you’re guiding students to find their passion first. Of course you can switch fields but if you begin with a solid understanding of what you want, the next steps are easier.