“My name is Sunita. I am a management student of I.J. Pioneer High School. I choose my education based on holistic career counseling approach. I did not know what to study even after SEE. I got the opportunity to take the Psychometric Assessment through my friend. Assessment was the set of questionnaires that recommended me the list of jobs that I can pursue. I didn’t understand the Psychometric Assessment Result for the first time. Fortunately, to clear that confusion, Career Counselor took the group discussion session. That time I get to know that the recommended list of jobs appears based on my personality, professional orientation, interest and vocational tasks. The assessment doesn’t cover my physical strength and socio-economic backgrounds. However, the individual counselling after the result was more than I expected! After that session, I felt more comfortable to pick the education for a career that best fits me according to my interest, abilities, values and economic perspective. I am really glad that I have the logical reason to pursue an education track that I chose. I knew so many of my seniors who continued their education without understanding themselves clearly and studying further based on the SEE (Secondary Examination Education) grade and change the subject later. Fortunately, I did holistic career counseling on time and made the entire plan sitting with the experts to reach my destination. Otherwise, I might have been an unsuccessful story for my juniors. “
According to British Association of counseling, they term counseling as the process by which a person having a problem or needs to make a decision is facilitated to identify, explore, and examine alternative courses of action and their possible consequences.
Career counseling is the process, generally focusing on issues like career and education confusion, career goal, and career plan where career counselor and counselee sit together and discus about the career and education track and explore the individual career potentials, make career and education plan, and solve other career related problems through question answer approach and psychometric tools and techniques. Career Counseling session can be done either in a group and as an individual.
In every country, youth face the challenge of deciding on a career path and starting their professional lives (Athanansou, 2008). In Nepal, there is also an urgent need of career counseling for youth to choose best fitting career according to the individual interest, abilities, values, and socio-economic prospective and job demands. In our society most of the youth tend to choose the career and education according to their friends and relatives suggestion and also use to follow the trend. Most of the research shows that pursuing a career based on individual interest and abilities leads personal satisfaction and professional success.
Choosing a certain career is one of the important decisions of one’s life which is often tedious. Knowingly and unknowingly a wrong career decision leads to live the 40-50 years of life with the profession you don’t like.
One of the career counseling beneficiaries, Pratima Tamang’ told us that “One-hour session with career counselor played the revolutionary role to add more excitements in my life. I was unknown about my career potential then. Now that I am under proper guidance, I decided my career and education make a career plan, know the responsibilities of the chosen career with the help of career counselor.”
That’s why career counseling for youth and adolescents is the beneficial to decide the best fitting career, explore the potential, design the career life and to have a successful and happy life.