How do Career Counsellors help their clients ?

The constantly fluctuating unemployment rate in India is a threat to youngsters. Besides, you might have heard the news that multinational companies like Google, IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Spotify, etc have fired thousands of fresher and even experienced employees just through official emails. This isn’t a really good start to 2023.
Career counselors have become life saviors worldwide to cope with these situations. Career counsellors are proving their worth, from guiding school students and graduates in kickstarting their careers in the corporate world to helping senior working professionals with career transitions.
All these happen through implementing the right career counseling techniques. Below is a list of professional duties undertaken by career counsellors to help laymen make informed career decisions.

Pre-counseling

Pre-counseling is a kind of introductory session where career counselors and candidates meet each other. In this session, the objective of counselors is to understand the candidates’ concerns. By having a friendly conversation, the candidates feel more comfortable understanding career counseling and what will happen next.

Career assessment

Career assessment is a popular technique used to understand the candidates’ skills and aptitude level. Different types of career assessments focus on certain areas, such as personal interests, personality traits, emotional quotient (EQ), etc. According to the concerns, counselors also can opt for multidimensional assessment providing well-defined and accurate analysis.

360-degree profile analysis

You may be obsessed with a certain career option, but it may won’t be a suitable path in the longer run. To resolve this, one should get into a career that aligns with one’s values and purpose in life. In the 360-degree profile analysis, counselors focus on the candidates’ personal thoughts, beliefs, personality traits, culture, and mindset.
By combining the results of 360-degree profile analysis with career assessment and pre-counseling sessions, the most accurate career options come to the table.
Experienced career counselors don’t just tell you the list of the most suitable career options. But they also help candidates discover their underlying talents, passion, interests, and skills.

Developing action plans

Career counselors use certain tools for developing courses of action for candidates. The development of action plans includes a list of the steps to succeed in the chosen career path and accomplish the short and long-term goals.

Using technology-based tools

Can you imagine a career counselor doing all the assessments and analysis manually? It’s close to impossible. Without technology-based tools, career counseling will become tedious for both candidates and counselors. These smart tools develop assessment reports, highlight suitable career options, showcase the latest facts and figures, and much more. This helps career counselors in providing accurate analysis to candidates and helps them at the highest level.

Post counseling support

Only well-trained and experienced career counselors are known for conducting post-counseling sessions for the students. Counselors often check their candidates’ performances periodically. This ensures that the candidates aren’t getting derailed from the right path.

How should a layman chart his own career path?

At some point in life, whether during school/college or even mid-life, an unwanted thought pops up in most people’s minds; “Where the hell am I going with my career”?
Your brain doesn’t have an auto-correct for this. When your career seems to experience constant failures, it’s difficult to know what to do next.
Does this sound depressing and overwhelming? It’s time for you to learn to map your own career path.

Step 1: Forming a comprehensive career roadmap

The first step to evaluating the right career is creating your career roadmap. First and foremost, you need to list your preferred career options and the steps required to achieve them.

Step 2: Evaluating the requirements

After you’ve created the list of your dream jobs, evaluate the required skills, training, certifications, and experience necessary for achieving them. If you’re looking towards highly competitive career options, you may have to add some additional skills and certifications to beat your competition.

Step 3: Conduct self-research

Once you have completed the above two steps, it’s time to research your dream job roles comprehensively. You need to make time to read the blogs, news, and information about your preferred fields. To get a clear picture of how your dream job role looks in reality, you can opt for job shadowing opportunities (these opportunities are only available for certain job roles).

Step 4: Widen your skillset and knowledge

Now comes the most challenging part, evaluating the skills and knowledge required for progressing in your life. To expand your skillset and knowledge, please take all the necessary steps, such as reading books, attending seminars, taking online courses, etc. If you’re working somewhere or still studying, ask for performance reports or at least performance reviews from the seniors.

If you want to clear the obstacles and speed up the process, knock on the doors of mentors. Having a good mentor behind your back means you’ve gained a huge asset in life. A mentor will become your support
system and teach you valuable life skills.

Step 5: Setting achievable goals

The bigger goals are often luring, but they can be unrealistic and difficult to accomplish. To keep yourself on the right track, you must learn to set smaller goals that will push you to achieve the bigger ones.
For example, your smaller goals would be to learn different programming languages with the aim of becoming a full-stack web developer.
This way, keep setting smaller goals throughout your life while keeping the bigger picture in mind.

Step 6: Networking is your hidden weapon

Networking shouldn’t be overlooked, but many people still do not know much about networking. Networking propels you beyond your industry borders and increases your visibility. Networking with like-minded people adds value to your life and you learn from their experiences and mistakes. And if your networking game is top notch, you’ll bring numerous hidden opportunities for yourself to the table.

Will you ever take a road trip without knowing the exact destination? Taking help from career counselors and mapping the right career path is the same as using GPS on road trips. You need to be flexible and adaptive in your life, and good things will indeed knock on your doors.

Best of luck for your career!