Selecting a career is not an easy task these days. From choosing the right stream to selecting the best college and course, everything is about securing the best rather than aligning oneself to what suits one better. If you ask any science student what he/she wants to pursue as a career, 9 out of 10 times he/she would say “IIT”. This points to the trend that students are not interested in pursuing engineering, rather, they want to pursue IIT, like it is another career discipline altogether.
Broadly, there are two ways how students make their career choices. One, they identify their ‘interest’ and set off in that chosen path. Two, they choose what is popular and what their friends are going to do. Neither of these approaches take into consideration the critical elements that significantly influence career decision.
However, a positive change is beginning to take place, especially in metro cities where people understand the importance of choosing the right career. Maybe it is the advent of technology or a general mindset change, but one can sense an increasing focus on getting it right.
Students today are ready to walk an extra mile to find out reliable and authentic information about their dream colleges and programmes. They are visiting colleges, talking to alumni, talking to students, talking to faculty and placement cells, reading online reviews, and thus, setting a popular culture of ‘due diligence’.
Students today understand it is imperative that one’s ‘aptitude’ is in line with their ‘interest’. This is especially crucial for careers that demand high skill proficiency, such as the ones based on talent — culinary arts, performing arts, sports, and so on. Students who wish to make careers in acting, choreography and designing, are already taking professional courses, freelancing on projects and getting a taste of what lies in the future. This is an excellent approach to choose the right career — working in the domain to see if you are cut out for it. One can take up projects and internships during summer holidays and get insights into a field, which no information in the world will ever provide. Further, with this short experience, students will be able to decide if the chosen path is their true calling or not.
There are much deeper questions that one must answer in one’s quest to finding the right career calling. At the end of the day, a student must know himself/herself inside-out to find the right alignment with a career. Ask yourself: “Am I interested in this field?
Do I want to do it for the next 50 years of my life? Does it go with my personality? Do I have the required intelligence to make it big in this field? Can I deal with the work pressure in this domain?” Introspection can help you make a decision.
One can also approach career assessment, and more specifically, online assessment centres that make it easier for students to decipher their true interest and match it with other critical elements. With a career assessment test, one does not have to worry about personal bias or human error during testing. So do what you are cut out for, work hard and make it big.
The writer is founder and CEO, MINDLER (www.mindler.com).
