Dear Students:

The career guidance and counselling is one of the major areas of neglect in our society in Pakistan. Most of the time, the students take advice or opinion from their peers, friends, relatives, parents and acquaintances who themselves are not fully aware of the career opportunities in the country.

Unless you know what careers are there at present and what careers are coming up in the future, you cannot possibly decide your course of education. Most of the educational institutions do not bother to know about the quantum of jobs at the various levels, the level of education and skills required, and the attitude, aptitude, approach, accomplishments as well as intelligence level of the students who could qualify for those positions.

As a result, the students spend a good deal of parents' hard-earned money on receiving education or technical training that does not land them into a career job or a job of their liking or they fail to get a good job. It has also been observed that many a time the students obtain one degree after another without any linkage between them. That leads to nothing but waste of money, time, energy ending up with frustration for the students as well as their parents.

-----A student must and I repeat must decide about his/her course of education or vocational training while he/she is still in high school. Students must have alternate career plans. If you don't get admission into a medical college, or engineering college or business administration college what will be your next choice and next choice and next choice. That will save you from frustration and failure to get what you so badly wanted.

-----Before you decide whether you should go to a medical college, engineering college, or business administration college, financial and accounting college, teachers training college, or provincial and federal public service, you must go through 3 most significant tests of immense value i.e. aptitude, intelligence and personality tests at a reliable testing institute. The test results would at least give you a fairly good assessment of your mental faculties and would help you decide what profession would be the most suitable one for you.

-----You should take advice for choosing a career from a knowledgeable and experienced practitioner of the same profession that you desire to study for and the practioner should have advanced in his career and should have known what takes it to make a successful career in that profession. Only a successful practitioner would give you the right advice.

-----You also need to read, at least every Sunday, major English newspapers carrying advertisements of various employers for various jobs for various levels. You can make a fairly good estimate of what jobs are available and what jobs would be coming up by the time you pass out from college or university.

-----You should visit the various 'Jobs' sites on the internet and read the job description, education, skills, experience, etc. of the job that you would like to study for and make a career in it.
-----You have to strike a balance between your inate abilities and inherent faculties and the jobs available in the market. The closer you are, the better.I would like you to carefully read the following excerpts taken from the website of UNESCO as a helping tool for you.

........"Good career guidance can also help decrease the gap between education and un/underemployment, on the one hand, and productive livelihoods on the other and is thus considered an effective means of improving the status of TVET in the public perception. Today, people should expect to make multiple career changes throughout their lives and continually upgrade their skills.

The importance of establishing a quality career guidance programme is particularly important if today’s learners are to successfully adapt, and continue to adapt, to future labour market challenges.UNESCO has been working to raise awareness about the importance of career guidance and counselling to increase the effectiveness of national technical and vocational education and training programmes." Source: http://portal.unesco.org/education/

If you need clarification of any part of this text, please post your comments on the blog and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Wishing you a wonderful life and the best of every thing!

Mumtaz A. Piracha
President
Resource Management Group
Karachi - Pakistan

"The best way to predict the future is to create it." said the world-renowned management guru Peter F. Drucker

Favourite Link

http://career-advice.monster.com/