Why Career Planning is an Important Factor for Future?
Career planning is a very important factor for the future that most students and their parents tend to neglect. Especially, Indian students are worst hit by this unfortunate phenomenon for several reasons. Consequently, they’re unable to get a dream career and fulfil life goals.
There’re several reasons why Indian students lag in career planning. In this article, we’ll discuss why career planning is an important factor in life and how to go about it.
To understand career planning and its importance for the future, it is necessary to comprehend what is exactly the definition of career.
Definition of Career
The definition of the term ‘career’ can be found in the following words. Career means the progress and actions taken by a person throughout their life. It relates to the profession that a person practices for a major part of their life, including the positions they hold, the success they achieve and the resulting social status.
It is clear that progress, action, profession, position, success and status are important elements of any career, from the above definition.
Most people falsely believe that career signifies only their professional life. That’s a myth. Instead, career encompasses every area of an individual, regardless of where they live and what they do.
By this definition, you can clearly understand the significance of the term ‘career’.
Therefore, let’s see why career planning is an important factor for the future.
Importance of Career Planning for Future
Career planning is an important factor for your future because it decides the entire course of your life. And here’re strong reasons why it’s important.
Lack of Awareness about Careers
· India needs 1.4 million career counsellors for 350+ million students. Currently, we have less than 10,000 professionally trained career counselors.
· 90 % of CBSE schools have made it mandatory to have counselling wing.
· Market size for career assessment and guidance is over INR 5,000 crore in India alone and is continuously evolving.
· Around 85% of students are concerned about which option to choose for higher education.
· 92% dont get any career-related guidance from their schools.
· That’s where Career counsellors come into the picture.
Unless you plan your career, you’d most likely fall into those vicious traps and opt for courses that don’t suit your academic and personal interests.
Career Planning Can Avoid Joblessness
Here’s a classic scenario. Once upon a time, any person that held a Master in Business Administration (MBA) was welcome to join any large corporation in India. In today’s scenario, 93 per cent of MBA graduates have no employment or work on jobs that don’t pay well.
The reason is simple. These students opted for an MBA course without planning. Instead, they seem to have done an MBA for some fake ‘prestige’ the degree holds. Hence, they did an MBA from substandard colleges and couldn’t acquire skills one would expect from the degree holder.
The same holds true for engineers. About 80 per cent of engineering graduates don’t have jobs because they don’t have proper skills. And nor is there such a high demand for engineers in the job market to justify over a million engineering graduates every year.
Proper career planning, therefore, helps you to stave off unemployment due to lack of demand for your skills or degree.
Career Planning Prevents Financial Losses
During the financial year 2017-2018, Indian students took staggering Rs.140 billion as loans to finance their studies. Of this, Rs.30.36 billion was to finance studies in medicine, Rs.30.48 billion on engineering, Rs.22.63 billion for nursing courses, Rs.13.66 billion for MBA studies and Rs.42.90 billion for assorted courses.
The Indian Banks Association (IBA) says, most of these students are unable to pay loans due to poor salaries and high-interest rates. Regardless of the reason, these graduates will be unable to get a loan in future due to slower or non-repayment of education loans. Their credit scores have taken a heavy beating due to such repayment issues. Furthermore, interest on student loans continues to grow when repayments are late for any reason.
In simplest terms, this translates as a financial disaster for students or individuals that don’t plan their careers. This financial setback can severely affect future plans too such as wedding and buying own home.
Career Planning & Mental Health
India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) finds that unemployment is the reason for 2.5 per cent of all suicides in the country. Other than suicides, unemployment also has severe mental problems. You can easily avoid these undesirable effects on your own life through proper career planning.
In India, employment goes hand-in-hand with status. Therefore, to ensure you enjoy a good status in society and rise higher along financially and socially, career planning is extremely important.
Career Planning Helps Understand Job Trends
Another reason why career planning is an important factor for the future is the ability it provides to read and understand job market trends that pay well. When you start planning a career, you’ll definitely have to consider what are new and emerging professions. And identify the scope in these upcoming professions.
When you stay in line with trends, the chances of your skills going redundant in the job market are lower. Often, an upcoming profession or career option holds better, long-term promise than so-called prestigious ones. By identifying emerging career options, you are future-proofing your career. Or ensuring your skills remain relevant till you retire. And such skills also allow you to venture into entrepreneurship.
In Conclusion
Before concluding, I’ll emphasize that career planning is important yet a highly underrated part of a person’s life in India. In the above article, I’ve shown how lack of career planning can affect your entire life. Unfortunately, in India, most educational institutes are unable to provide career counselors to students. That’s due to two main reasons: the acute shortage of career counselors and exorbitant salaries the position fetches in the private sector. In such scenarios, parents play the role of a career counsellor. And they usually prefer their children to study for careers that have the prestige label.
