Career counselling and other career development support needs are exponentially growing at a very high demand across the world. There is a huge need for professional career experts as the catalysts for all career-building processes. Like all other essential human needs such as food, water and oxygen, there are 3 more essential social needs for every human being in this world till the last human in this world is alive. The health care, educational needs and career development supports.
“India has 350 million students -- the biggest student population in the world -- need at least 1.4 million career counsellors”
As per the IC3 2018 reports, the above calculation is just the story of India which holds just 17% of the world population. And the upcoming global need of 9 million career counsellors is add on apart from the above count. No wonder people are confused by cliché words about career counselling poured into the market by the product seller companies across India and other places. Let us first understand what is what before getting into any sellers gimmick anymore.
What is Career Counselling?
The terminology itself is focused for people who are confused about their career path, academic plan selection and career changes. The client has a problem which needs immediate attention and support here. A career counsellor will understand the situation and scenarios first and help the client to get a self-awareness with or without the help of psychometric tests followed by exploring opportunities matching to solve the career confusion and worries. The counsellor will help the client to set the goal and usually here will be the termination of career counselling.
Some Myths and Facts
Myth 1 :- It always need psychometric tests
Fact :- All career counselling cases don’t need a psychometric test. Cocoon type product companies made this kind of pushing pressures in counsellors just to ensure their products are being sold more by this way. However, around 75-80% of career counselling activities only need psychometric tests and rest can be handled without those tests.
Myth 2 :- It is all about dealing with students and their higher studies.
Fact : - It is an absolute bigger myth. Only 17% of career counselling needs are in school students’ career path making segment and 14% for higher studies as well as college selection. The remaining 69% of market needs are untapped and falling into other categories.
Myth 3 :- Learning some psychometric test interpretations are enough to become a Career counselling expert.
Fact :- Psychometric tests are just like medical diagnostic tools and those can never give you a complete career solution. A counsellor needs to understand the 360-degree career development process to help their clients in the systematic 4 step ways. Learn it well to become an expert. Now you can guess why many so-called career counsellors are not getting reviews from clients nor referral business even after long years of trials.
Myth 4 :- A google search is enough to do a comprehensive career counselling even if the counsellor got the psychometric test report of a client.
Fact :- The process is more important and that needs the 4 step process of career counselling and the psychometric test is just one out of it which can even go wrong in 20-25% of cases if the other steps are not properly executed by the counsellor.
What is Career Coaching?
Many players in the market are just creating a mythical belief in people that a career coaching certificate will build them as professional career counsellors. In those cases, either they do not know what are differences between career coaching and counselling or they are selling wrong courses to you. Yes, You will realize this fact if you look closely to their program outlines and commitments.
Career Coaching is not to handle any problems but to deal with the existing goals whereas career counselling is to deal with a career problem or confusion. It is same as a person goes to the gym to build the six-packs and another one person going to reduce obesity. Goals and problems are to be dealt with differently and hence the career coaching process itself is different.
Ideally, a career coach doesn’t need to know the entire career counselling process at all and it is always an add on to know counselling steps and tools. The psychometric tests are not necessary for a career coaching but motivational and continuous evaluator tools are necessary to use in this process of coaching.
In another way, career counselling needs the skills of a professional counsellor and career coaching needs the skills of a coach. Else it would be like a loco pilot is flying an aircraft thinking that the pilot word is the eligibility to operate aircraft too. When you are going to join a career coaching certification program next time, do remember to check these differences
What Is Career Guidance?
This is a much wider terminology with comparatively less technical knowledge requirement. A simple way to explain this term is the way how you understand a librarian from a good library. The librarian will help you to list down the various kinds of books, features and availability. It doesn’t mean that the books suggested are going to be suitable for the reader’s needs but can satisfy some queries of the reader. It can be considered a search engine activity as well. For example, an expert career guide can help when a person is looking for some good courses in visual communication, places where the admission for the relevant courses are available and even about the job opportunities. A good career guide can be a direction marker at a complicated junction.
This work doesn’t need any counselling skills or coaching skills but a good amount of analytics, organizing skills and continuous information gathering is a must for a career guide. This is one of the major demand in career development for school and college students. Now you won’t wonder why companies are not offering career guidance course certifications whereas government organizations, as well as affiliated institutes, do offer those certifications. The companies never talk about these high demand courses as there are not much products selling involved in this category or it can be just a one-time booklet or excel sheet based product or even google search can do this job better.
The other side of this certification terminology is that, so many career guides started to offer career counselling and career coaching without understanding the processes and differences between all these verticals. Many labelled career counsellors are just conducting career guidance instead of standardised career counselling process delivery and claims as those are career counselling activities.
What is a Career Mentor?
Last but not least, this is another terminology which is misinterpreted in the market by many private organizations in their market acquisition games. Ideally, a career mentor is a person who must be experienced in the profession(s) in which he or she is mentoring. Practically if we look, a person can be experienced almost a dozen of career segment and not more than that. You can guess how an agriculturist mentoring for rocket scientist or a motor mechanic is mentoring a surgeon. In other words, to become a career mentor, the history of real-time experiences are to be considered and not a certification that can avail in a few classroom or online sessions. However, a good mentoring certification can help you to understand the process of mentoring and not a complete mentor for all careers. I am really waiting to find a complete career mentor anywhere in this world as some people claim to be.
There are more certification terminologies in the market which are comparatively less famous such as career builder, career motivator, career master etc. Though the words are amazingly sensible, very few courses are showing justice to what they include in it. It is always you who is supposed to choose the right program. The sellers use their skills to convince you and the buyers are responsible to choose the right one with their own intelligence, analytical skills and learning goals.
After understanding the differences between the various terminologies, cliché words and market manipulations, now you will be able to choose the right fit program or course in a much better way. The below-given points will help you to choose the right program and certifications from the right organization.
1. Outline & Curriculum : Look at the outline of the course and understand what will you become by the end of the program. I am sure most of you will ask the tele-caller or marketing associate about these questions who are well trained to convert you and hence, do a self-analysis or ask a third expert before choosing the course. It is better to have a look at the detailed brochures instead of referring short bites, Facebook snippets and word of mouth information.
2. Certification Title : What kind of certification are you getting is the next point to be noticed. Most of the certifications issued in the market are not entitlements but participation certifications. A person attended a surgery course and a person is authorized to do surgery are different. The same way a participation certificate also does. When the issuer is not ready to take the guarantee of any future possible questions or trouble about their certificates, authority and qualifications, they will stay away from issuing any entitlements. Very few organizations are confident enough to offer you the entitlement certificate. Guess the differences between “John has participated and successfully completed the career counsellor workshop” And John is Merited to use the title of Certified Career Counsellor.” Entitlement certificates with merits of entitlements are highly valid compared to a participation certificate. It is just like your graduation award and course completion certificate.
3. Course Feedback : Many of you will get the reference and feedback videos by the marketing executives to convince you to join their certification. It is always a fair way to contact random people who had already been certified from them instead of reaching to the contacts shared by marketing persons for your reference checks. An unbiased honest feedback will always help you to choose the right place and course
4. Training Method & Model : Who trains you and how they train you are important for you to become a real expert. A pre-recorded session or non-interactive training will make you lagging in the market. Real-time activity-based interactive learning cannot be replaced by any pre-recorded or reading-based learning to become a career counsellor. Remember to get transformed instead of mugging up. The cow from the book will never eat grass.
5. Course Duration : This is a classical point that you need to understand about career counselling. A professional career counsellor who is expected to be an expert has to attend a minimum 30 hours of training and sufficient practical. The half-day or 6-10 hours of courses will help you to learn the bits and pieces for sure. But to become an expert counsellor who covered all necessary topics, you need to spend intense training of 3 full days or more. The limited hours of training may help you to understand how to administer the tests or maybe some bites of career theories only. Crash course of swimming will not be enough to attend a swimming competition that you expect to attend many times ahead.
6. Admission Qualifications : It is a myth that a career counsellor has to be a psychology graduate or above person. Though you are using psychometrics and counselling skills, you do not need to learn the depth of psychology or the theories. You need to have the mindset to help people, willingness to learn and analytic skills to understand people empathetically as well as non-judgmentally. These are the prime qualifications to become a career counselling professional. The rest of the skills and qualities are supposed to be trained during your certification training course.
7. Quality Check : Anyone attends the program can avail completion certificate and merit certificates will be available only by institutes which conducts screening for final qualifications. Check what kind of screening they take before issuing the certificates. However, there will be possibilities of disqualification in final certification for some candidates when they are not qualified enough to get the merit of entitled certificates.
8. Post Program Support : How are you supported post your courses is the next question. The organizations who consider you as a buyer will not do this much until unless you keep on selling their products. There is a window period for most of the organizations in this activity. If your institute is not in touch with you more than 3 months after the certification, guess that your purpose is over for them. There is nothing to blame in this as the higher profit motive is leading the market players most of the time. A quality organization will keep in touch with you and help you to brush up continuously, update you with useful tips and information and help you in networking.
9. Marketing Support : Most of the participants expect a return of investment after their course. In career counselling, many times it may even take 2-4 months duration to get a proper pitch whereas you need to do marketing activities in these 3 months. It is just like throwing seeds and reaping the results. Look at the support by your certification firm to know how much are you getting promoted, listed, tagged and highlighted after your certification. A group photo of final certification award is not what I mean here. Every individual participant has to get highlighted and promoted if the organization offers your marketing supports. Some firms even help you to get leads and contacts too.
10. Public Endorsement : A great way of marketing yourself is to get the support of positive parasitic marketing model from your certification firm. If you are certified and listed by apple in their website, obviously you will also get marketed digitally while apple does the digital marketing for their pages. However, this powerful support costs very less and still most of the certifying organisations are not ready to offer it. You can see a wonderful example page of enlisting and public endorsement here.
Here is a list of some highly preferred career counselling and career coaching certification courses.
11. Promo & Business Consultations : Commercial expectations of participants are supposed to be considered appropriately. The organizations which are supporting your business goals continuously after certifications will definitely help you with sufficient basic forms, fliers, tools etc. Also do check about how long they support in your business strategy making for a long time. Many organisations just finish their support by end of their training. If there are no responses or replies actively coming to you on your queries post your training completion, understand the organisation is not going to help on your business consultation assistance requirements.
12. Success Stories : Producing 1000 certified participants in a year shows how much business they did whereas how many of them have started the business and got leads are the important benchmarks of certification benefits. Watch the differences between 80 people out of 7000 certified professionals doing business after certification and 45 people out of 150 people started their business after certification. The percentage of business ROI is important while you invest and obviously, most of the marketing guys will not even talk about this ratio.
13. Psychometric Test Brand : While spending enough money to buy a car you will prefer to get your own favourite colour or brand or even stickers on it. What if you are allowed only to drive a specific car or colour? A reputed organization will help you to use your own branded psychometric test tools, dashboards, landing pages, contact details in reports and customizations as per your needs to build your own brand. It is unfair to push the counsellor to use the brand of certifying company brand tools, logos, brand names and contacts while someone is looking to do own brand building. Definitely, the courtesy may make you feel to sell their brands and you can choose it based on your marketing plans. In long-run growth plans, own brands are always the fair ideas.
14. Agreements & Business Limitations : After investing a huge amount of time, money and energy on a certification program, definitely you will be looking for getting a good amount of business through your leads, networks, relationships and open enquiries. What if you are not allowed to work with some clients you prefer to because of the certification company is already having a business contract with them? When someone teaches you hunting with promises that you have plenty of food to hunt ahead, it is unfair to stop you from hunting at specific cream resources by aggressively catching hold of those. Some companies will limit your certificate validity if you approach their existing clients. When you are eligible to do the counselling, you must have the rights to do it.
15. Renewal Fee : Really?? If you have to pay annually or biannually for renewal of your certificate, probably you are being looted as a permanent cow for giving free milk. Any reputed institute will never ask you to pay for your graduation certificate validity extension when you used your own learning skills to achieve it.
16. Lead Generation Assistance : The lead generation is one of the major aspects of business growth. Do check whether your certifying organization helps you in free lead generation to help your business grow. If you are limited with paid leads or fixed charges, then you are again in commercial boundaries. Because the leads shared with you will be shared with many other counsellors too in the same way JD and other portals do. Eventually, the conversion possibilities will become less and the organisation will still claim that they have given you plenty of potential leads. It will be technically right too.
17. Authenticity & Accreditation of Certificate : Most of the certifying organisations are private limited companies or individuals which are purely focussed on commercial aspects of finding more buyers to sell their products and certifications. Across the world, there are a few organisations which actively support on various career development program accreditations. However, there are no exclusive authorities for career counselling regulations yet. Some non-profit organisations like Global Certification Council, International Career Counsellors' Club etc are accrediting the certifications. However, those are also independent bodies targeting standardization, ethical practices and qualities of learning. In India, The National Career Services under Central Govt. of India is accrediting few organisations as registered skill provider in career counselling programs. However, a private ltd registration or MCA (Ministry of corporate affairs) registrations are not valid for any kind of academic certification authenticity but just permission or license to run a private ltd company. It is always better to have certification from organisations accredited by NCS or universities or some reputed worldwide bodies particularly if you are planning to work abroad or multiple countries or schools under various boards.
Startup Opportunities : Last but not least, career counsellors have huge startup opportunities in the market and less than 20% of the opportunities are only getting actively tapped. And that too majorly for the clients between the age of 13 to 20 years. There are more than 13 different areas which a career counselling professional can work which includes academics, corporate needs, skill development, coaching and recruitment which are not even tapped by most of the people due to lack of awareness and confidence. Eventually, these issues are not handled much as the training companies are focused on their sales count instead of your business growth in a win-win model. It is also badly backed up by the training conducted by untrained as well as inexperienced trainers in the market. Moreover, the pre-recorded sessions with low or no active real-time interactions will kill the learning thrills and effectiveness in results.
Want to initiate your own branded startup with zero or negligible investment after your career counselling? Write to us on events@ischs.in with your name, contact number, location, professional certification details to get a free consultation session from our expert.
Startup supports : Almost all people who are investing approximately 400 to 700 USD to become professional career counsellors will definitely look forward to a business establishment immediately after the course completion. Career counselling and subsidiary services are one of the most profitable and less investment required startup opportunity for edupreneurs and home-makers. Initiating a startup with the investment of your sincere efforts, enthusiasm, communication skills and growth mindset is much easy in the field of career counselling. You can even ask about the supports offered by your certification firm in terms of Startup registration, Govt authentication, GST registration and legal formalities. Definitely, a few well-reputed organizations offer these supports also to the startup enthusiasts after the certification completion and that too at no additional monetary investment.
Do you have more questions in mind about choosing a right career counselling certification of course? Do write to us on info@ischs.in or WhatsApp us on +91-9886-444-129
To know about some highly preferred career counselling, career coaching and other career development certification courses, click here