Choosing the right career is extremely important as anyone would willingly testify. It decides the course of your life. A career defines your wealth, happiness and social status. Therefore, there’re several factors to consider while choosing a career.
Unfortunately, most students and their parents aren’t even aware of what this simple word ‘career’ actually encompasses. Therefore, let’s start by defining this term- career.
Understanding Career
One of the near astute definitions of career says: “A person’s progress or general course of action through life or through a phase of life, in some profession or undertaking.” There’re three distinct words that stand out in this definition: progress, action, and life.
This means a career is an action that helps your life progress.
That’s Not All
Further, the definition also includes the words ‘profession’ and ‘undertaking.’ Understandably, a profession concerns your education, skills, and work. However, the term ‘undertaking’ needs some more explanation.
The word ‘undertaking’ also implies responsibility, enterprise, promise, pledge or guarantee. This means, a career also involves responsibility towards ourselves, family and society. An enterprise that helps us achieve set goals.
A promise to people- whether employers or customers that we’ll satisfy their requirements to the best of our ability. A pledge to society through our personal actions and guarantee of our integrity in all our actions.
In simplest words, the term ‘career’ defines all elements of your overall personality.
Given this complex nature of the term ‘career’, what are the factors to consider while choosing one? I’ll explain through this article.
Factors to Consider while Choosing Career
There are several factors that you need to consider while choosing a career. Because a wrong decision can play havoc with your life and have disastrous consequences on self, family, and society. Therefore, remember these points while choosing a career.
Never Chase Prestige
The first factor to consider and Rule No-1 while choosing a career: Never chase prestige. It can land you in serious, all-round and lifelong problems. The bane of Indian society is that parents choose careers for their children. And prestige influences their decisions. Hence, millions of students opt for medicine, engineering and management courses, often at universities and colleges of dubious distinction.
The results: Media reports clearly point that nearly 55 percent of doctors in India remain unemployed. Among engineering graduates, unemployment rates are as high as 90 percent. Studies reveal, 93 percent of Master of Business Administration (MBA) graduates can’t find jobs that match their degrees. The reason is simple: they lack skills that match their qualifications.
The majority of these students have taken huge education loans and are now facing repayment problems due to unemployment.
Look for Trending Careers
Instead of looking for so-called prestigious careers, students should look for trending ones. How does one find trending careers? The answer is rather simple: read newspapers and news websites.
In recent years, Artificial Intelligence Big Data Analytics and Digital Marketing are emerging as trending careers in India. In fact, several excellent courses in these three fields from very reputed institutes are available.
Understandably, you won’t find digital marketing, AI or Big Data Analytics course just next door. However, a proper search on the Internet will reveal some superb institutes in your city.
Versatile Careers
A prestigious, traditional degree usually doesn’t offer several career options. However, trending careers such as Digital Marketing does. For example, a digital marketer has eight different career options, which are perhaps the highest among these trending new careers in India. Contrast these with career options available to medicine, engineering and management graduates.
There’s no point in opting for a degree where career change is very difficult or even impossible. Therefore, one of the factors to consider while choosing a career is versatility. A degree or course should be flexible enough to allow you to choose between employment, entrepreneurship, and freelancing. As well as part-time work for a side income, if necessary. Most trending careers such as digital marketing offer this versatility where others lag.
Future Scope of Career
The future scope is yet another factor to consider while choosing a career. In India, a lot of careers began booming a couple of decades ago and are on the wane now. Therefore, look for careers that have an excellent future scope or your degree could be redundant by the time you graduate. This would lead to a sheer waste of your time, effort and money in doing a course.
The Indian economy is witnessing rapid digitalization. It’s not limited to eCommerce only. In fact, everything from financial transactions to booking bus and train tickets is now increasingly done over the Internet. Therefore, we can safely conclude that India’s future is digital. A career in any digital technology such as digital marketing, AI, Internet of Things and Data Analytics, among others, has an excellent future scope.
Cost of Career
French thinker Henry David Thoreau says that the cost of anything is the amount of life you pay for it. This means the cost of a career isn’t limited only to the time, money and effort you spend. It also involves other factors such as job satisfaction, progress in career, financial growth and lots more. Therefore, determine what career will cost you ultimately. And whether the expense is worthwhile.
If we see trends worldwide, most students look for short-term courses that qualify them to get well-paying jobs immediately upon graduation. And they fine-tune their skills continually while working. Therefore, look for careers where you’ll not spend a lifetime to recover your investment on a course. Courses that offer several career options are the best if we go by the current global trends.
In Conclusion
Needless to say, choosing the right career opens doors to all-round well-being such as mental, physical, financial, social and personal. Wrong career choices do exactly the opposite. Millions of Indians suffer from depression due to wrong career choices. Therefore, it’s better to consider these factors when you’re choosing a career. It’s worth remembering, a decision based on facts is always better than one based on prestige or prejudices. After all, it’s your life.
Add Comment