With an ever-growing vast sea of career options available, high school students undoubtedly face the enormous task of choosing the right career without any future regrets for the same. Most students feel lost and confused about the prospects available to them. The pressure of choosing the right career can affect a child’s ability to focus on studies and induce unhealthy levels of stress and anxiety in students. Apart from the pressure of choosing the best career fit, there is also pressured to build a career among students. These pressures entail focusing on getting good grades rather than acquiring knowledge, feeling stuck with pursuing a career stream that doesn’t suit their interests, developing fear and angst toward their future, and developing poor mental health due to feelings of rejection in their academic journey.
Making an ideal decision can undoubtedly be an overwhelming process for an adolescent. A solution to this could be to opt for career guidance and counseling. In order to make an effective decision about your job, education, and overall well-being, career counseling is a process that helps students get to know and understand themselves as well as the prospective working environment. Choosing a major and determining what profession they want to acquire after graduation are only two aspects of career development. In other words, career counseling aims to equip students with the knowledge and abilities they need to make future career and life decisions, in addition to assisting them in making the decisions they must make right away to keep up with the constant decision-making about their profession and personal lives.
Typically, a student and parents undergo this process together, which is facilitated by a career counselor. As opposed to regular counseling, career counseling focuses on the process of career selection and performance. A career counselor is a person with whom students can talk about their thoughts, ideas, feelings, and concerns about their career and educational choices without any hesitations. They help students sort out, organize, and make sense of their thoughts and feelings; identify the factors influencing their career development; assess their interests, abilities, and values; locate their career goals; and more. Career counselors don’t direct students, advise them on their major, or suggest a career for them to pursue. A career counselor helps students, and their parents identify their strengths and innate career ambitions and helps students direct their time and resources toward fulfilling criteria for their best career fit.
A career counselor uses psychometric tools to understand the aptitudes and interests of the student and help the student and parents become aware of these parameters. Further assistance via counseling is provided to the students and their families whenever necessary. Career counseling has helped thousands of students nationwide and has proven to aid those in need of a career switch, upskilling, and freshmen. With the changing nature of work, career counseling helps provide clarity and stability that can help students realize their dreams and potentially guarantee a bright future eventually.