Selecting a Career is not just selecting Career Stream, it’s not just deciding graduation course, and it’s not just deciding a job. It’s all about acquiring knowledge, Skills and right behaviour to spend life with. Your career will define your identity “Who you are”. Our today’s decision is going to define our next 40 yrs of life. It’s our decision today which will make our life Joyous or Miserable, organized or misleading, satisfactory or unacceptable. Let’s make it Joyous, Organized and satisfactory considering following points while making career choice:

1. Differentiating/ Understanding Career Path, Career Milestone and Career Destination

Most of students make career decision at least 3 times till their post graduation. First time after Class 10^th  “Which Stream Shall I choose after 10^th ?”, second time after class 12^th  selecting graduation course and third time after Graduation selecting post graduation course. What if they fail to choose right stream after 10^th ? they will end up making wrong choices.

Biggest reason of all this is not selecting Career destination first rather selecting path first. Most of the students after 10^th are asking same question to teachers/parents/experts that is “Which Stream Shall I choose after 10^th – Medical, Non-Medical, Humanities or Commerce?” Even sometimes parents are also seeking answer for same question. This question is like when on a crossroads somebody asks you “Shall I go right, left or straight?” will you answer this question? Before answering this question you must be asking him “where you want to go?” because before suggesting path we shall know the destination. If that fellow is himself not sure about destination and insisting you to tell the path without revealing the destination, you will surely feel it’s foolish suggesting path without knowing destination, same ways its foolish suggesting career path (streams) to these young ones without knowing their career destination.

For Example

Career Destination – is deciding on to become Finance Manager

Career Path – Is to choose Commerce stream to reach your Career Destination

Career Milestones – are graduation, post graduation, entrance tests.

“Selecting a right Career Path is important which is only possible if you know where to go i.e Career Destination”

2. Differentiating Genuine Interest, Infatuation & Ability  

It’s very important to identify difference between Genuine Interest in career and getting infatuated towards a career while making selection about career.  Even it becomes difficult to differentiate sometimes when a student reflects surety about getting in to a career. But it can be infatuation only which is because of some obvious reasons like Power, Fame, Money, Ease of success out of that career. Most of the students get infatuated towards some fancy careers which they assume has Ease of doing, high potential & ease of earnings, Fame/ glamour attached to that career, higher potential of success. So what’s wrong with this? There is nothing wrong if this infatuation push an individual to do some efforts to get close to that career. If somebody has started reflecting his desire in his actions to reach their destination, infatuation is getting converted in to genuine interest. We can differentiate both by seeking answer to few connecting questions.

For example, If a student says “He/She wants to be a Chef”

Next question can be Why you want to be a Chef? Followed with “Since how long you are thinking about being Chef?

If you get a reasonable answer to first question and to second question you got an answer “For last 3 years”

Now next connecting question shall be “Do you Cook? Which all dishes you cook? What do you do to learn cooking?

If they haven’t done anything significant in last 3 yrs in learning, reading or experiencing cooking, it’s just an Infatuation.  

But if he/she has started cooking (regardless to what they cook) or started assisting mother in cooking or started following few Chefs on some cookery shows or started reading out recipes of some dishes, this shows they have genuine interest in becoming Chef.

When you identified genuine interest, now next step is to identify ability required to be successful in area of interest. Ability is to have some inborn traits or skill set to perform that work efficiently and with ease. If ability gets coupled with genuine interest then it becomes the Perfect Career Choice.

Going further with above given case study if that student with genuine interest to become Chef also possesses great sense of taste, great sense of smell, and good fine motor skills, , means he has also ability to becoming a great Chef in future.

Selecting a Career based only on Infatuation is like castle in the air.  Ability becomes foundation and genuine interest becomes supporting structure for a great Career Premise.

3. Why going with the trend?

Most of the students opt for career based on statistics about most chosen careers. What’s in the trend these days? If it’s engineering everybody wants to become an Engineer, if it’s Management everybody wants to become an MBA.

Trends sometimes become misleading and risky. To understand this we need to understand simple rule of economics – Law of demand & supply. If everybody today is opting for engineering and most probably will become engineer after degree of 4 years. There will be definitely huge supply of Engineers at that point of time compared to regular demand. And we all know if demand got increased marginally and supply grown exponentially high, the Price of an Engineer (Remuneration/Salary) will automatically go down. There can be higher chances that supply would not get consumed which ultimately lead to unemployment.

There can be higher chances that supply would not get consumed which ultimately lead to unemployment.

4. Only Academic  performance defines Career – A Myth

Grades today have become the foundational reason of selecting a stream. If somebody is scoring high in Science or Maths they must go for PCM, If not they can opt for Commerce or Humanities. PCM or PCB becomes the first choice based on favourable grades whereas humanities become the last. Till 10th students’ studies all subjects but after 10^th they will specifically choose set of subjects to pursue higher education till graduation or post graduation. Approx. 5 to 7 years they have to study specific subjects, if they are not comfortable with those subjects they will be fighting with their subjects for next 7 years.

Research shows there is significant percentage of students change their subjects in Graduation or post graduation. They shall choose career based on their Traits, Skill Sets, Personality and abilities not just reflection of grades.

If students are not comfortable with the subject that have chosen, they will be struggling hard next five to seven year to cope up those subjects.

5. Be Self aware

Each of use is unique. Each of has interests, values and aptitudes that set up apart from others. Our Personality type, interests, values, and aptitudes make us better suited for some occupations than others. Irony is most of us are not much aware of self and find it difficult to do self assessment. One of the best ways to have better view about self is to take help of Career Counsellor/Coach who will administer variety of self assessment inventories to help you have an Informed Career Choice.

Don’t let the throw of dice decide your Career. It must be done cautiously and shall be driven by approach of balancing intuition with facts.