Choosing the right career is one of the most important decisions you will ever make in your life. It can affect your happiness, income, health, and personal growth. However, finding the best career for you is not always easy. There are many factors to consider, such as your interests, skills, values, personality, and goals. How can you make a wise and informed choice? In this blog, I will share with you five effective steps to choose the right career that suits your needs and aspirations.
Today’s India is an ocean of opportunities, thanks to our booming economy currently the 5th largest in the world and still growing fast. As a result, career options are not just limited to conventional ones like engineering, medicine, MBA, Law, and Chartered Accountancy. Courses in media, advertisement, performing arts etc. are now most sought after.
Another heartening aspect to note is the advent of sports as a career option due to the high level of sponsorship, the introduction of various league competitions and the growing international achievements of Indian sports persons. Cricket, Boxing, tennis, and badminton are some of the prominent ones as other sports are quickly catching up too.
You all are aware of how IPL has transformed cricket into a lucrative and highly paying career option. In our country, sports were never considered as a career option earlier and parents normally would not encourage their children to participate in sports activities in school for fear of it affecting their studies. But the time has come now to change this mindset.
1. Family influence: Many parents decide on what their child will pursue as a career without even consulting the child. Some of them want their kids to achieve their own unfulfilled dreams while other parents fall prey to the competition that they develop with their relatives, neighbours, or other parents.
2. The impact of social media influencers: social media provides a massive platform for career guides and gurus to connect with the younger generation helping them make career choices. But there is a concerning aspect - not all of them are qualified or certified in this field. So, there is a risk of some of them doing more harm than good to the young ones by giving them unrealistic and wrong guidance and information.
3. Influence of Friends circle: Classmates bond together over a discussion on career selection quite frequently and this is where new ideas or options may come up in your mind. You may abandon your earlier career dream and choose a new one.
4. Family’s financial struggle: If one happens to belong to a family which is struggling financially, then this very aspect can become the main driver in career selection as the priority in the mind of the student will be to build up a steady & secure career to discharge the financial responsibility that he may inherit from his parents.
So, in a nutshell, the current career opportunity scenario in our country is quite healthy and it is likely to remain robust in the coming years as well.
The process of career path selection for a youngster is not simple in our society as there are many influencing factors which frequently dominate over the individual student’s own choice. So, let us explore the crucial ones here:1. Family influence: Many parents decide on what their child will pursue as a career without even consulting the child. Some of them want their kids to achieve their own unfulfilled dreams while other parents fall prey to the competition that they develop with their relatives, neighbours, or other parents.
2. The impact of social media influencers: social media provides a massive platform for career guides and gurus to connect with the younger generation helping them make career choices. But there is a concerning aspect - not all of them are qualified or certified in this field. So, there is a risk of some of them doing more harm than good to the young ones by giving them unrealistic and wrong guidance and information.
3. Influence of Friends circle: Classmates bond together over a discussion on career selection quite frequently and this is where new ideas or options may come up in your mind. You may abandon your earlier career dream and choose a new one.
4. Family’s financial struggle: If one happens to belong to a family which is struggling financially, then this very aspect can become the main driver in career selection as the priority in the mind of the student will be to build up a steady & secure career to discharge the financial responsibility that he may inherit from his parents.
There is an awakening in the younger generation today to follow their dreams and not succumb to the age-old practice of a monotonous professional life which destroys the creativity and the brilliance of individuals.
Many novels have been published and movies like 3-Idiots have been made on this theme, immediately striking a strong chord with the huge young population of India. As a result, there has been a big stir, a major shift in the thinking process of the students as regards their career choices.But a word of caution here - ‘Follow your dream’ is a great idea but ‘follow your dream blindly’ is a very bad idea. For every success story of following one’s dream, there are probably hundreds of failure cases as well.
For those who have a passion for various performing arts like dancing and singing, numerous talent hunt shows have mushroomed on many TV channels. These become conduits for a rapid rise to unexpected stardom and fame for a few, whereas many would suffer from painful dejection from disqualification.
Bollywood is probably the harshest or most challenging in terms of testing the resolve of the young aspirants who leave their homes in pursuit of their long cherished dream. They wait day after day, month after month and year after year with unlimited patience and persevere in agony hoping to get a breakthrough in a movie one day which would change their lives forever.
But, only a very handful of them tastes success following the footsteps of their worshipped heroes. The remaining aspirants do not realise their dreams, in the process spend their or their parent’s hard-earned money and the precious formative years of their youth. Finally shattered, many such innocent young dreamers get lost forever in the massive ocean of mankind.
So the point I am trying to make here is, making the right career choice is very important. Agreed, you should follow your dreams, you should not become a money-churning robot, you should have a work-life balance and should pursue your creative interests. But instead of making a blind leap of faith, you need to make an informed decision on whatever you want to do, considering several aspects.
So, what are those aspects that a student should consider while choosing a career path?
1. First comes your dream/desire, no doubt about it. If the desire is very strong to pursue a certain profession, then you should do sufficient groundwork to understand the real aspects of that profession like what the job prospects are, earning level, competition & career growth rate, job satisfaction level etc.
2. Financial stability is critical to success and happiness in life as much as other factors. So, having a long-term financial goal for yourself would be a good idea. Your responsibility may include looking after your parents or managing your younger siblings etc. So, you should be very clear in your mind as to what level of earning will be suitable for your lifestyle and your responsibilities.
3. What kind of work-life balance do you desire? Different professions have different styles of functioning e.g., a doctor is expected to attend to an emergency in the wee hours, in oil exploration work or merchant navy, one may have to spend months at a stretch in remote areas or high seas away from his family, whereas a teaching professional has very well-defined working hours etc. So, you will need to determine if you are ok to adapt to the lifestyle associated with the profession that you have chosen to pursue.
4. Networking: Reach out to knowledgeable people who are working in the profession that you desire to pursue and gather relevant and valuable information from them through regular interactions. Their insights are extremely valuable to develop an understanding of many aspects of the profession right from job prospects, the scale of earning, career growth options, level of competition, workplace challenges etc.
5. Visit a well-qualified/reputed education consultant. They are the ones who can share with you all possible career options in the area of your interest, the type and level of educational qualification you should aim for and the reputed institutes to target getting admission. Take an aptitude test as it will immensely help you know your areas of strengths, hidden talents/skills, areas of improvement etc. Subsequently, you can work on these to make further improvements and become better prepared to follow your career dreams.
In conclusion, choosing the right career is a crucial decision that requires careful planning and research. By following the five steps I have outlined in this blog, you can find the best career for you that matches your interests, skills, values, personality, and goals. Remember, your career is not only a source of income, but also a way of expressing yourself and contributing to society. Therefore, choose wisely and pursue your career with confidence and enthusiasm. I hope this blog has been helpful for you and I wish you all the best in your career journey.
You can check out career related videos in my YouTube Channel as mentioned below.
Below is the link to access my published books.
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