5 Benefits of Career Counseling

5 Benefits of Career Counseling

There are many benefits of career counseling to consider. It’s easy to feel confused when it comes to what type of career path to choose. With so many choices in jobs today, career counseling can be a step in the right direction as far as pinpointing what career to focus on. Having a professional advisor to assist with deciding what strengths and talents can be developed into a solid career is the role that a career counselor plays. Career counseling has many benefits for anyone who is starting out with a new career or in the midst of a job change. Here are five benefits of career counseling.

Testing to Determine Strengths and Weaknesses

When you engage in career counseling, you will most likely be working with a trained professional who can provide you with various aptitude and career assessment tests. These tests are designed to match your natural skills, strengths and abilities with key components of specific careers. You will also be able to determine what weaknesses you may have so that you can avoid working towards a career that will only lead to frustration. Having this information ahead of time can be invaluable when choosing what career path to take.

Goal Setting for Greater Results

A large part of the career counselor’s job is to guide you through the process of goal setting in your career endeavors. The career counselor can help you identify the steps needed to reach important goals along the way as you explore new career options or make changes in the career you already have. This can be a major benefit for you if you struggle with reaching goals or making changes, as you will be accountable not only to yourself, but to another person.

Identifying Choices in Careers

Whether you are new on the job market or have been going through the process of switching careers mid-life, you may be amazed at the full range of career options available today. While this may be positive, it can also be overwhelming. A career counselor can assist you with focusing on one area of a career path that works best for you so that you save time and efforts by working on realistic career goals that are right for you.

Educational Support and Guidance

As you start working with a career counselor, you may encounter many careers that require specific training or education. This process can be made more pleasant by sharing the experience with a supporting career counselor who can help you along the way with support, resources and tools to help you achieve the training you need to be successful in your new career path

Sadly, career counseling is often overlooked by students, institutions and parents alike. It is a mistake that can prove costly, for it is sound counseling that leads to well-informed, correct career decisions !

Career Decision Making – A self help method

We live in the 21st century, a techno world, a progressive economy world, the world which is offering us a plethora of choices to live with. We all know some of the choices require a little thought or reflection—like the choice of what to eat for breakfast — while others, demand rigorous deliberations like choosing ones’ career. The question here is, do we really think career decision is a serious decision and requires deep reflection? Unlikely!!!

Many experts have experienced that whenever the career decision is taken, the youngsters’ mostly are dependent on their examination marks. This is so because they work towards achieving some eligibility criteria to enter into a course. In this process they forget to ask themselves some very core and relevant questions, these are:

Who am I? What am I interested in? What am I good at? What is important to me?

The answers to these questions are pieces to a larger puzzle, i.e., “What do I want to do with my life?” Where do I fit in??

You must know that choices are rarely ever made in wholly black or wholly white, all good or all bad, clearly right or clearly wrong. Choices are actually quite complicated and multi-dimensional; prisms through which no two people will see the same world. In that case, we must make predictions and assumptions and, at times, take great leaps of faith. There is no guarantee, of course. Even the most thoughtful decisions have been known to backfire. A choice is, most often, nothing more than a best guess—a hopeful step in a new direction.

So, when faced with a career choice dilemma, whether big or small, how can you make sure you’re approaching the situation with the appropriate level of consideration? How can you ensure that yourguess is truly the best that you can do? Below are a few points to remember in your decision-making process.

While taking decision you must NOT be:

1. Making an intuitive decision: “It feels right.”
2. Making an impulsive decision: “Decide now; think later.” Don’t look before you leap.
3. Making fatalistic Decision: “Whatever will be will be? I will not get anything which is not in my luck.”
4. Play-it-Safe Decision: “I like human biology, but I can get a job in IT easily.”

While taking decision you must know

Every choice shapes your reality and is a reflection of who you are, what you value and what you want.

It is unrealistic, and unhealthy, to suppress emotions completely, it’s helpful to understand how they influence your behaviours. Do not take career decision solely makes the adults around you happier.

Anxiety and urgency almost always have a negative impact on decision-making. Don’t let a ticking clock push you into a choice that you haven’t properly evaluated.

There are always more options. When you trap yourself in limited thinking, you fail to see the real opportunities. Don’t place artificial restrictions on yourself or on the possibilities the world has to offer.

While making stream / career decision, you should

Build trust: Trust in yourself, trust in others, trust in the Universe. Have a little faith that everything will work out well, whether or not the future looks exactly the way you had imagined it. Remember that change is constant and you have the resources to manage whatever comes along. Your choices have consequences that shape your reality; you always have the opportunity to make different choices in the future and create a new reality for yourself.

Be a Planner: Tell yourself that your strategy is based on a rational approach with some balance between the cognitive and emotional: “I am the captain of my fate; I am the master of my soul. Remember that a well thought-out choice is never wrong, no matter what happens. It might be tempting to blame yourself when things don’t turn out the way that you had anticipated, but this accomplishes nothing. Don’t dwell in regret. Simply accept the lesson and move on. Take what you’ve learned with you and use it the next time whenever you face a difficult choice in your career or elsewhere in life.

Steps to make rational choice

1. Identify the Decision to be made

You need to decide on the stream choice after X and course / college after XII

2. Know Yourself

This is the most important step in stream/career choice decision making.

Assess what you are best at, good at and not so good at. (Know your Aptitudes, which are your inborn talents that help you to learn certain tasks and activities easily and quickly)

Evaluate your interest (check whether your interest is a deeper interest and connect to any activity you are best at and most importantly matching to your potential you are born with)

Know your Personality, the personal quality that would influence your career progress.

3. Career Exploration

Gather more and more information about careers, speak the people who are working in that particular career.

Having chosen one of the options, you can begin developing and implementing a plan of action

You must remember:

Career Decision-Making Is NOT:

• A linear step-by-step process
• A once-in-your-life process

Career Decision-Making IS:

• Lifelong
• Time consuming
• Worth every minute!

Career decisions: The role parents play

When choosing my career, should I chase high income or professional growth? Should I take the best institute or the best course? Should I consider market reality or what I can do well? These are some of the very common questions asked by youngsters across the country. To resolve it, they look for viable and authentic answer from the adults around them.

Important surveys conducted around the world show that personal goal and parental support play a key role in determining successful career decisions.

As we know there are three key steps for career decision making and parental help is much warranted in all of these. Lets’ discuss how one should go about it. The steps are:

1. Developing self awareness: Knowing the potential that one is born with.
2. Making informed decision: Exploring the world of work and selecting the one that is best for the individual.
3. Implementing timely: Taking decision and acting on it.

How Parents can help

Help your son/daughter to take a reliable psychometric assessment

A standardized and reliable psychometric assessment helps in decoding the student in terms of Inherent Aptitudes and Personality Traits. Read the Report or the output of the assessment carefully and look for skills in the report and connect it to the daily activity of the student. Acknowledge the personality traits and site some examples from your own experience. For example if she has got highest aptitude for three dimensional thinking (Visual or Spatial aptitude), help her to connect that with her problem solving skills in geometry of physics. If she has got alertness as one of the improvement area in personality tell her that how this trait makes her commit silly mistakes in her tests and exams.

Similarly for the areas in which she is strong, tell her what she has accomplished, learned and explored in that area.

Listen for interests

Help her to evaluate and reach to a conclusion about her interest. Is it a deeper interest or a floating one? Example: if she is interested in medicine, ask her some pertinent questions about the daily activity that a surgeon does.

Ask her, what career does she think that you want her to pursue?

Be honest! Keep your cool! Explore what perceptions led to that conclusion.

Most students don’t know enough about the World of Work to make an informed decision about their career options.

How Parents can help

Develop career curiosity

When you watch a movie or come across someone in a certain career role, ask: “What do you think it’s like being in that line of work?”

Embrace the information age

Make information available, but don’t push it. Today there are books, articles, websites abound with all the information that one seeks.

Model good networking skills

If you talk to your friends who talk to their friends, you might be able find someone who works in the career field your student is interested. Coach your son or daughter on how to learn from that person.

Action Plan: Many students take good decision after knowing them fully but are quite bad in implementation!!

How Parents can help

Blast from your past!

Talk to your son/daughter how you got in job.

Remove the mystery!

Talk about your experiences with passing the entrance, studying, job hunting etc. Discuss the experiences of your friends or relatives. Talk about how the process has changed in the last few years.

Graduation? Ask Why, first! And then Where or When…

There are many reasons to go for graduation and then for higher study for specialized knowledge, for prestige, for networking, and sometimes for higher income. Encourage your son or daughter to be a good consumer by choosing a graduate program carefully.

Let your son or daughter know that higher institute is not a place to hide from the world of work! Ultimately he / she needs to be part of it by working of their own or working in an organization / Government / institute or any other work place.

Scientifically measuring Aptitudes–Personality–Interests

Since the beginning of scientific mapping of various psychological aspects in the 19th century, many strides have been made in this space of scientific measurement of psychological make-up.

Today, it is possible to correctly measure one’s Aptitudes, Personality and Interests through valid and reliable psychometric assessment. While most of the assessment instruments have been developed in the west, there are a few that have been developed in India with the context of Indian students in mind. While selecting a particular assessment, it is important to note:

• Whether the test is reliable, i.e., how stable or consistent a measure the test is, and the strength of its validity, i.e., how well it actually measures what it claims to measure.
• The nature of the group of people on whom the test was standardized which allows one to see how his/her performance on a particular test compares with that of other people.
• The technical details of the test construction and rationale. Don’t just make a superficial inspection of an instrument’s surface characteristics.

A robust career assessment and advisory program is one which adopts a holistic approach in establishing an individual’s talents and abilities and their suitability for different types of careers. It should be a conclusive program, which clarifies the confusion usually prevalent amongst the students, and recommends the most suited career(s).

Know Your Occupational Interest, Aptitudes and Personality for choosing Career

Identifying your occupational interest-aptitude-personality are most important factors in making career decision. These three aspects require critical evaluation as one remains in a career for more than 30 years of ones life.

Just because we are interested in something does not mean that we will automatically be good at it. We get interested in certain careers as we get to hear some positive and glamorous phrases like – highly demanding career, smart career to get in, people get lot of power to exert, can earn lot of money, it’s world class company etc. It is a known fact that we are most likely to excel at what we like to do provided we have the aptitude and personality for that thing. Thus, one needs to seriously think of things one have done in the past where one succeeded. It could be anything, such as:

• Written a story and it got published
• Influenced a friend to finish the projects on time.
• Designed a computer program.

Think of a certain activity which will help you focus on your Occupational interests. Take enough information from the people in the field; visit the work setting if possible or simply read more information. Know your Occupational interest.

Aptitude is nothing but the potential you are born with which in turn help you to learn any task easily and quickly. Think of anything that you do better than average. For example: solving physics problem, making poster, remembering minute details etc.

Besides learning the task involved in our dream career, we need to know our Personality as it encompasses the behaviors that make each one of us unique and differentiates us from others. If our choice of career matches with our Personality, then we become unique in our performance, which in turns helps us to reach our maximum growth. Personality traits are nothing but your patterns of behavior, temperament and emotion.  This will help you get clarity on what is your personality and most suitable occupations.

Remember career decision making is a continuous process and whenever you get stuck revisit the process.

Researchers believe that interest is mostly floating in nature. Aptitude remain constant after age of 14 and one can still enhance certain skill to compensate the area you are moderate in. For example: if you are not good in numerical aptitude, then through practice and adapting techniques from your profession, you can perform satisfactorily. But still you should avoid such careers for which you do not have an aptitude as you have to repeatedly learn these skills to be successful in the career. Like Aptitude, your Personality also remain unchanged. Your Interest is a changing factor in the life.

So, while deciding for your Career one must know about following –

1. Your Interest – whether it is your Hobby or is really your Occupational Interest.
2. Your Aptitude – where is your inborn inclination? For which Occupation your Aptitude is suitable.
3. Your Personality – What is your Personality and which are the Occupations suitable for your Personality.

One of Multinational Company in Navi Mumbai is urgently looking for –

Executive – Electrical Engineering
Ensure proper maintenance/upkeep of HT and LT electrical installation. Shall ensure maintenance work is carried out safely and timely and according to the Company’s policy and process.

BE in Electrical engineering with 3-5 years of work experience in chemical manufacturing company

Reports to :Sr.Executive-Electrical

1. Ensure uninterrupted continuous electric supply to critical equipment’s.
2. Ensure effective and efficient maintenance of all HT and LT side electrical installations
3. Build, calibrate, maintain, troubleshoot and repair electrical instruments or testing equipment.
4. Analyze and interpret test information to resolve design-related problems.
5. Ensuring that there are sufficient resources of personnel, spare parts and materials to support efficient and effective electrical maintenance program.
6. Management of the electrical maintenance budget
7. Ensuring that all electrical maintenance work is carried out according to current legislation, standards and best practice.
8. Ensuring that electrical records are kept up to date, defining the electrical maintenance program, and ensuring that the program is adhered to.
9. Ensuring that those embarking in electrical maintenance work have the correct level of training and experience needed to complete the work accurately and in a safe manner.
10. Conducts power tool audits
11. To ensure electrical equipment’s and fittings are selected and installed as per Hazardous area classification requirements.
12. Support project team in design, selection and installation of PCC’s MCC’s , power distribution and protection system

a. Internally: Inter departmental Coordination, Manufacturing, Raw Material Stores, Quality Assurance, Engineering, distribution.
b. Externally : MSEB, Electrical Inspectors, Vendors, consultants
c. Proportion of time between internal and external contacts: Internal:95%. External 05%
d. Maharashtra State Electricity Board Approvals, Electrical inspector approvals
Knowledge
• Knowledge of electrical principles, using electrical tools and measuring instruments.
• Operation and Maintenance of electrical protection and isolation devices such air circuit breakers, vacuum circuit breaker, DG Set up to 1000 KVA ,22 KV substation, transformer up to 3000KVA
• MCC and PCC design and maintenance, Lighting system, uninterrupted power supply system, battery selection and maintenance,
• Hazardous area classification and ingress protection standards
• Selection and maintenance of electrical fittings, cable sizing, motor selection etc
• Applicable statutory rules and regulations
• Good working knowledge of production systems.
• Excellent knowledge of Safety, Health and Environment

Skills
• Good communication skills, particularly the ability to influence and persuade others
• Very well organized.
• Problem solving

Abilities
• ability to meet tight deadlines
• ability to remain calm under pressure
• ability to manage and supervise a team of staff

Excellent knowledge of electrical systems

Thorough knowledge of SHE processes.
Should be able to lead and guide the work force.

Budget :- 3 Lacks – 5 Lakhs P. A.

Interested candidates should send their word format resume to sanjay@atstroke.in .

Importance of Career Counselling

Every student faces the question of ‘what next’ after class 12^th and 10^th. Firstly, to decide a Career then the stream, and then, to decide the graduation course!

A 10th class or 12th class student is faced with the choice of three streams – Science, Commerce and Arts, and the only career guidance he has is the opinion of his parents, his teacher’s judgement based on his marks and the comments of his friends and neighbors.

But is that much help sufficient for a child to base the foundation of his entire career?

It is at this point that a career counselor steps in and helps the child sail through these turbulent times.

How career counseling works

Career Counseling involves scientifically developed aptitude tests, occupational interest test, personality tests and career maturity tests that helps the counselor gives the best suited career advice to the student based on his report of all the tests. Human capacities are infinite and can never be measured, nor are we to judge of what one can do. Every person has unique characteristics, for everyone has his or her own strengths and weaknesses. The key is to identify these unique qualities is through this activity “Career Counseling”.

Making an Informed Choice To Choose a Career

Career counseling sessions helps the students to know the pros and cons of the different streams and the career path it offers, thus the students can make an informed choice, and get a career assessment that helps avoid the risk of change in career path later in life. The importance of pinpointing the work cut out for each person can only be gauged when one sees the agony of extreme job misfits. Money is important, but not more than contentment. So a career counseling and guidance is needed to help organize ones thoughts and ideas on decisions. It can boost the morale and confidence and give new directions to the students which will be beneficial for the whole society.

Job Satisfaction

Choosing a career that matches one’s aptitude, occupational interest and personality itself translates into professional success and popularity. The main aim of career counseling is to help students choose a field that is in tune with their skills and their job expectations. Thus, with the help of career counseling, most candidates end up choosing the right career, and perform their level best, which ultimately helps them succeed.

Though not many schools in India give career counseling to students, if your school does not provide you professional counselors, you can always seek the help of independent counselors. It is always better to seek professional guidance rather than go for something that the whole herd is going for.

Career Masters offers Career Counseling based on Aptitude Tests, Occupational Interest Test, Personality Test and Career Maturity Tests which helps the students in knowing their inherent strengths. This information is used by the career counselors to guide the students towards their “most suitable” careers.

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