“Career Guidance is a facilitative process, a service rendered to the individual to aid him in choosing and adjusting to an occupation”. An example of career guidance is a meeting with a consultant who helps people figure out what a good job would be for them based on their skills and qualifications.
Most of the students after S.S.C.E are in a quandary or uncertainty over what to do. Some students may be brilliant in Maths and Science will not take the streams which will get them jobs in the medical and engineering aspects. There are vocational streams in every field and they do not want to task themselves of studying, remembering and even practicing experiments where they can achieve a degree in science, commerce, Engineering or Arts.
Most often their horizons are limited because of Technology and various gadgets. The generation of today rather be engrossed in screening, videoing on videos that come up on different apps. A sight of distraction and no focus.
In today’s world, if one is a graduate, they can achieve a job in any field. Being pampered or even blackmailing their parents, they want to go into recreational streams and feel the liberty to enjoy life. Only the most brilliant and decisive students want to achieve degrees akin to their parents or senior peers, like doctor’s children want to be doctor’s, engineer’s children want to be engineers and so on. Vocational trade will carry on their parents’ trade. Most of the other parents who do not work in the professional world will want to go for vocational streams. Boys go on the ship after the course in Food and Beverage Management. Career can be of any sort but are associated with the computer age and technology career streams are usually Diplomas or courses for a shorter period of time than professional degree. Stepping aside from the line of career, one may also think of choosing a vocation to marry or stay single or even join to be a priest or a nun is choosing or deciding on a vocation one would like to be.
Vocational can be religious too, many do not want to follow as they are not spiritually minded and consciences. A religious vocation is a special gift and call from God that is received in faith and discerned in prayer. For men, there are a number of vocations in the Catholic Church. The best known is the vocation to the priesthood as either a diocesan or a religious priest and for women a sister or a nun.
Career guidance is beneficial for the individual as well as to the society. It helps an individual by providing assistance in solving problems relating to choice of career occupational change and adjustments from the standpoint of society, it is one of the means of achieving proper utilization of manpower.
Indirectly, it helps in raising productivity and in minimizing unemployment and underemployment.
Vocational guidance is the last resort for average students. In every school there are counsellors who choose the course and vocations for the students. They have counsellors even in colleges for different specialties and hence could choose the profession one wants to achieve.
To summarize vocational guidance is an aspect of guidance having focus on the problems relating to vocational life. Guidance services are therefore a constellation of services concerned with educational, vocational, personal, social or health aspects. Such labelling has been done for practical consideration.
Mary Pinheiro