Choosing a career is one of the hardest and most far reaching decisions a person can make in his or her life. A career decision has major impact on almost all facets of a person's life both professional as well as personal. Your career decision would affect how much money you'll make, who your friends will be, what you will study and about every thing else in your life.
Although a career decision is not set in stone and people do change their career in their mid-life there is always a cost involved. The later you change the decision the larger the cost would be. This cost would include the money and time spent on training and education as well as loss of the experience you have gained till that point. It is much better to select the right career path from the beginning and as early in life as possible.
But before you select a career option you must know what are the options you have their particular advantages and disadvantages, how to go about pursuing them etc. This is where the career advice comes in. Proper career advice is essential for choosing the right career as this helps you understand the options available as well as provide you with information about how to achieve your desired career objective. Career advices are of importance for a person in every stage of his career. Let's look at the various stages of career and the importance of career advice in each of them.
- Choosing a Career Line
A career line or path is different from a particular job profile. It is much more general. For example information technology, media or computers lines in which a career can be made. Each of them would have several kinds of job related to them. Before you select a particular job profile for your career you should decide which field you want to work in. This should be based on your own interest and inclination. The importance of career advice in this stage is minimal as there are great jobs in most fields.
- Selecting a Career Profile
After selecting a particular line or field you must select a career profile. Searching through career profiles would give you some idea about what kind of jobs are available in your chosen field, what are the required skills and qualifications, what will you need to study etc. Proper carrier advice is very important in this phase as it's unlikely that you can learn all the specifics of different career profiles that you'll need to make and also inform the decision by yourself.
- Career Planning
Once you have selected a career profile it's time for career planning. In a way career planning is an oxymoron. There is little chance that you will or even can plan your whole career and even if you did, it is unlike that every thing will go as you have planned. What you can and should do is to keep your eventual goal in site and plan next two or three steps. Career advice is very important in this phase as you can see only a little ahead of you in this phase. For an example you would not have a good idea of what exactly is involved in being a database administrator and what its required qualifications and experiences are while you are in college. Hence, to effectively plan your career, career advice is essential in this stage.
- Finding a Job
Once you have decided on a career profile and have done some planning there comes the hard part, which is actually finding a job. Career advice can be help you in finding the right job and the company which is ideal for your long and short term goals as well as build your resume and prepare for and face the various tests and interviews involved in the job selection process.
- Job Change
It is very unlikely that your first job will be your last one. A time will come when you outgrow your existing job and your career would be better advanced by changing the job. The job change can be within the company or to a different company. In any event this would be a major decision with significant and long lasting impact. Career advice can help you determine when you need a change of job and what should you do next. As one wrong decision can have severe negative impacts on your career, the importance of career advice in case of job changing can not be denied.
- Career Change
Career change is much more drastic and major change than a simple job change. This should be avoided as far as possible. But if it seems that the career path, on which you are at present, is not the right one for you or you'll be better doing something else; it would be better to change it sooner rather than later. Career advice can be of importance to you by helping you decide if you indeed need a change in career and what new path you should follow.
Overall we see that the career advice is important and can be helpful in all the stages of a person's career. Without proper career advice a person is unlikely to make well informed decisions. In today's dynamic world where new opportunities and threats are constantly appearing, it's very hard to keep track of all the options a person has. This increases the importance of career advice more than ever.
