“We think our fathers’ fool, so wise we grow. Our wiser sons, no doubt will think us so”.

These golden words of Alexandre Pope holds true for every generation. Change is the only constant in life and it is very true when it comes to education and career selection. Every generation, has a common job that every parent want their child to pursue. Before few generations, it was government job, last generation was engineering and medical and this generation is MBA. Kids of all these generations have been perplexed about why all parents direct their kids towards the same jobs. What parents are actually looking for is a stable and happy life for the kids and hence, they motivate their kids towards the career, they feel has the most career opportunities.

But what is a stable life? Is it just a job that fetches good salary or does it require something more? Statistics reveal that, from an era when hobbies, skills and jobs where considered separately, to today when people are discovering career options based on their skills and hobbies, the work satisfaction is increasing and hence there is an increase in the happiness quotient.

So, what sort of job can ensure you a stable and happy professional life? A happy professional life is nothing but a place where a person gets to do a work, which he likes doing and where he can innovate and make significant contributions.  Today, every company puts in a lot of effort to make the work place a place where people like to come and work happily. The reason behind this effort is the changing social
expectation. It has been seen that a person performs better when he is
free and happy.

Many people believe that it is very difficult to find the right profession for them. But, contrarily, it is not that difficult. It is all about taking small right steps at the right time. The seed of future happiness and satisfaction has to be sown today. People who have clarity of what they want to be in future and work towards it from today, don’t only reach there early, but also have a better sense of achievement.

Having said that, this journey towards a happy and content future has several important milestones. We should meet the requirements of each milestone before moving ahead. All these milestones cater to our dreams and play significant role in our life. Out of these, the most important milestones are course, college and career. These three vital ‘Cs’ have the maximum impact on our career and life.

Let us discuss these three Cs individually.

First C: – Course Selection: Course selection is the most important milestone in one’s career.  It is the first step towards your future identity. For some people, it is very easy; they have always been in love with a subject or field and they know that it is the only thing they want to do all their life. But, for most of the people, life is not that ‘black or white’. Most of us get confused, when it comes to choosing something that we’ll have to stick to all through their life. If you are confused, don’t worry! It’s very natural to get confused and even the most successful people of our time, got confused when they were young.

One can easily pick-out the right course for them by considering a few factors. The most important factor is passion. When you have passion, even a difficult task seems easy. All courses have their own hardships, passion in the field can keep motivating you to achieve more and more. Another important factor is your aptitude. All courses require certain amount of skills and attitude towards looking at things. Aptitude tests can let you know which field matches your profile and can direct your passion. Once you know your interest and passion, and you know that you are fit to tackle the challenges in a course, you can select the course and move to the second milestone.

Second C: – College Selection: Once you know your skills and interest, you will need a platform to polish yourself and prove your acumen. A right college provides you with this platform. It not only empowers you with knowledge and wisdom, it also works towards helping you refine your dreams and finding the career that is best for you. But, is it easy to find the right college? It is not as easy as it is considered! In a survey recently, 70% of the students reported that ranking helps the least in finding a right college.

College selection is a multi-layered process. One should start by looking for certain important factors like courses offered, faculty, infrastructure, placement history, medium of instruction, etc. A right college is a cocktail of all these factors. Due to abundance of colleges, it becomes difficult to find the one college that can fit your profile the best. Hence, it is advised that you should start this process early and then take a well-informed decision.

Third C: – Career Selection: Out of the 24 hours in a day, we have 16 productive hours. And, in our professional life, we’ll be investing more than 9 hours daily in the career we choose.

Hence, career selection is the process where you have to choose the work that you’ll be doing almost half of your life. There are many career options related to every course and you have to find the one career that gives you the chance to follow your passion and exhibit your skills. It is the most important milestone because, if you go wrong here, all your efforts in the first two milestones will be futile.

Let’s take help of an example to understand this milestone clearly. Imagine you like writing and reading a lot and hence you choose B.A in English literature as your graduation course. You find the college that has some famous writers and literary experts in the faculty and has a huge library and also hosts many literary gatherings every year. After completion of your graduation and master’s degree, you get the following career options: content writing and digital media, paper media and journalism, publication industry or teaching.

All though, paper media and journalism can offer you a comparatively higher pay package initially, it might not be the right choice for you as you won’t get enough scope to follow your passion and exhibit your creativity. The best option for you in this case will be going for content writing and digital media, where you’ll have a large scope of showcasing your writing skills and knowledge.

From the above example, we understand how important these milestones are and that you can find the right career by just meeting these milestones in the right time. Career counselling and guidance can help you tackle with these milestones effectively. A professional career counsellors can hand held you through the complete career selection process by finding your strengths, weaknesses, interests and passions. They can help you in finding the right college and getting through the admission process smoothly. They can then inform you about all the career options open for you and let you know about the pros and cons of each one of them, so that you can take an educated decision. This makes counselling the 4th important “C” in the career selection process.

To sum it all up, your journey from being a student to a happy and satisfied professional is like a voyage, where happy and satisfied life is the destination. Course is your ship, which takes you towards the destination, college is the port that prepares you for the long journey and empowers you to tackle all the obstacles and career selection is the
ship’s steering wheel that takes you towards the destination. Career guidance is a small compass kept on the ship’s deck board that keeps guiding you towards the direction in which your destination lies.