Facing difficulty in choosing what's best for you as a career? And heard a lot about Career counseling but don't know what is it?
Here are the answers to your questions. Know everything about career and vocational counseling.
This blog is all about career and vocational counseling. This will help you to get an insight about this domain of counseling and understand what actually happens in career counseling. So after reading this you can take help from a certified career and vocational counselor and choose the right career path for yourself.
Welcome on board.. Happy reading.!! 😃
What is Career Counseling?
Career counseling is a process of helping individuals know themselves in terms of educational and occupational exploration, leaving to career planning. It is a process of self-knowledge, one's own aptitude (which are abilities of that individual), interests, personality and intelligence (not always measured). These are the number of factors those influence our career development. Career counseling is a process that helps us to know and understand ourselves.
Career counseling includes a wide variety of professional activities which help one deal with career-related challenges. Career counselors are the counselors or psychologists who hold a certificate or diploma in career counseling along with a Masters degree or more. A person who only holds certificates in this area is not completely eligible for the job as in you need to have a minimum of masters degree in psychology or counseling to be able to do a proper counseling session. The knowledge in the field of psychology is important here, and only certificate courses cannot give you enough knowledge about this field. So it can be said that this is an add on certification to a proper degree in psychology or counseling.
Difference between job, vocation and career:
Vocation is our innate skills, where a job is something we do to earn money. Career is a series of heavily related jobs, it is the area of interest of one's. People do jobs and make a career with skills they have. So, simply with the help of vocations we build our career path by doing jobs. Job is actually very commonly used word instead of career. But in deeper meaning, both are differentiated with a thin line. Job is anything we do to get something out of it (mostly it's money). As an example, a job can be any work done by us from fixing a machine to writing codes in the office to get a remuneration out of it. But, when it comes to career, it has a slightly different meaning to it. A career is a series of jobs done in the area of the individual's interest. If an individual is interested in coding in computer languages then by doing so in a series, setting goals in that, getting promoted and appreciated for the new jobs done he builds a career. That individual never restricts himself in the same job rather tries to achieve more and more in that area. Here money or any remuneration works as incentives. The career is build with the skills of that particular individual which are innate or acquired in nature.
Difference between Vocational Guidance and Career Counseling:
Guidance involves personal help given by someone. It is designed to assist a person to decide where he wants to go, what he wants to do or how he can best accomplish his purpose; it assists him to solve problems that arise in his life.
Vocational guidance helps to increase our skills. Vocational guidance is a facilitative process, a service rendered to the individual to aid him choosing and adjusting to an occupation.It helps an individual to choose an occupation, prepare for it, work on it and progress on it.
Career counseling is the process of helping individuals know themselves in terms of educational and occupational exploration. Though the terms are used interchangeably, in career counseling it is to find one's interest and to make a career in that area.
Need for Career Counseling in India:
Nowadays, the need for career counseling is increasing in India. it became a necessity for the students to know themselves, to grow and flourish in their lives, due to wrong guidance, conformity to others and parental pressures. Wrong guidance can be very harmful for any child while deciding what to do next or what to study. Conformity means adhering to something without giving a thought to it. Conformity towards others is one of the main reason for the emerging needs of career counseling. Psychologically we have a tendency to follow others. And as an adolescent or child we are habituated to follow our parents, elder siblings or seniors. So, when it comes to the situation of decision making we tend to do what others are doing or asking us to do. In this way many of us end up following others and taking up courses or career paths which are actually not suited for us. As an example, we can see that, there is a state of saturation in the field of engineering and also job opportunities in engineering. This is because, few years back, a good amount of college going population took up engineering as their career paths, and since then India has been producing lacks ans lacks of engineers every year. Some of them are not getting jobs or switching their field. This happened so massively because people back then blindly followed others and took up a career path without giving a thought. This phenomenon is called conformity and due this conformity many are facing challenges in their careers. The last reason, as we all know, India is a country where parents decide everything for their children. Even if the child is not interested in something parental pressure makes them do that very thing. It has been seen that, those children change their field or domain of work later in life. So these are the few reasons, which are leading to an increase in the need of career counseling in India. And not only the children also the parents can get ideas about unconventional and new careers which in a way helps the child choosing his/her career.
Lastly, I would like to say as a psychologist and also a career and vocational counselor, visiting a career counselor can really help you to choose your path despite of having many obstacles and pressures in the environment. The counselors are there to help and you are just a step away from seeking it. Though I would like to let you know that, we don't choose anything for you rather we help you in the process of choosing your career path. At the end, the decision is all yours as it should be and not influenced by anything or anyone.
I hope this piece helped you in understanding what career counseling is and how a career counselor can help you. In the next part of this blog I'll continue with the Psychometric tests done in career counseling, what are psychometric tests, and how the sessions happen.
If you have any queries please write in the comment section, will be happy to answer.
Thank you for reading. See you in the next post. 😃
~ Angira Gupta
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