CAREER GUIDANCE
Career Guidance
Career guidance refers to services and activities intended to assist individuals at any point
in their lives to make educational training and occupational choices, as well as manage
their careers.
When choosing a career, it is important to consider your interests, abilities, skills,
personality traits, values, dreams and aspirations, knowledge, gifts, talents and ambitions.
a) Interest – An interest is something that intrigues or motivates you. Interests can
be developed through class work participation in school clubs or community
organizations, volunteer work or activities with family and friends. Reading books
and watching movies e.g. visit national park – curious about wildlife.
b) Abilities – Your natural capability to carry out a task based on natural skills,
training or any other attained qualifications. Also referred to as aptitudes.
c) Skills – These are abilities that have been learnt.
d) Personality – This refers to the combination of qualities that describe your
character, traits and behaviour e.g. talkative, quite, empathetic, practical.
e) Values – These are the underlying principles and standard of behaviour that helps
you determine your priorities and enable you to make decisions. They are the
things you believe to be important in the way you live your life and influence your
choice of friends’ spiritual life and the way you use your spare time. When the
choices you make support the values you hold, you are satisfied and fulfilled.
f) Dreams – These are envisioned or cherished desires or ambitions that an
individual holds based on his or her aspirations. It is an individual’s vision.
g) Gifts and Talents – These are the natural abilities or skills that an individual has
and which give him or her capability to perform e.g. sports, athletics, music.
h) Knowledge – This is information, facts and skills acquired through experience,
training and education. It is the theoretical or practical understanding of a given
subject.
i) Ambition – This is a strong desire to move from your current position and
achieve something more. Career ambition describes a desire to move upwards in
the career or professional ladder.
CAREER PLANNING AND SELF-ASSESSMENT
Career planning should be an on-going process where a student or a trainee identifies his
or her interests and abilities explores the options aligned to those interests and abilities
makes a choice and subsequently plans how to achieve the given choice.
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The career planning process takes the following stages:
1. Know yourself
The combination of your interests, skills, abilities, personality traits, values and
talents make you unique. In assessing and knowing yourself reflect on the
following:
- Your goal for the future and the desired job
- The positive aspects in your character and the need to further build them and
- The undesirable aspects in your character and the need to continually work to
improve on them.
Make an assessment of yourself..
2. Explore the available options
Find out more about the following – the nature of the job that interests you; the
training and education required and the skills to develop in order to achieve your
desired career goals. Research on the variety of careers, occupations, market
trends, opportunities and emerging careers in your desired career path.
3. Decide
Upon exploring some options, you are now ready to make a decision, combine
what you have learned about yourself with what you have discovered about your
options and the job market.
From your shortlist of options, decide which occupation interests you the most
and select one or two alternatives to fall back to.
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4. Take action
Take action by setting achievable goals.
The career plan should address the following questions:
- How you intend to get to where you want to be.
- What actions you need to take including the subject clusters to take; the study
habits to nurture and skills to develop.
- When? Outline the timelines you give yourself to achieve short term, medium
term and long term goals.
21ST CENTURY SKILLS
For every career path one takes, every student must be armed with content knowledge,
essential skills and expertise in his or her chosen field. Alongside technical skills one
requires, transferable skills or soft skills. Examples include:
1. Communication skills: these refer to the skills you require in order to share
information, ideas and experiences with others. They include written and verbal
skills.
2. Problem – solving skills: employers engage people who are solution oriented.
3. Adaptive skills: these are skills that are required in order to meet the demands of
the working environment and get along with others.
4. Teamwork skills (collaboration): this is the ability to cooperate and work with
others to achieve desired goals.
5. Creative thinking skills (innovation): this is the ability to look at a task or an
idea in a new way.
6. Leadership skills: employers engage candidates who can successfully interact
with colleagues, clients and others. Leaders should put other peoples concerns
first.
7. Time management skills: time management ensures that the organizations
resources are optimally used.
8. Self-motivation skills: this is the ability to do things without being influenced or
coerced by other people regardless of the prevailing circumstances.
THE ROLE OF PARENTS IN CAREER CHOICE
Parents and guardians contribute significantly to the career path their children choose to
take. The parental influence stems from the educational institution where they choose to
take their child, as well as their belief about what constitutes success.
The contribution of parents and guardians to this process is based on their personal
beliefs, experiences and socialization. Sometimes they unconsciously want to actualize
their unrealized dreams through their children.
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Your career path can be impacted by decisions made in early life with regards to the
schools you attend, the subjects you take, or the decision to go to the university or
college.
Each individual possess a unique set of skills, aptitude and abilities, distinct from those of
their parents and siblings.
In terms of career choice, the parents should:
- Guide (not dictate) the decision-making process.
- Support the child’s decisions.
- Give the child the freedom and time to discover his or her skills.
- Motivate the child to develop and achieve.
- Encourage the child to pursue his or her interests and ambitions.
- Instill a responsible attitude and positive outlook in life and
- Instill an attitude of self-belief by being positive; always offer positive
criticism, because a parents’ words have a great impact on a child’s life.
Career Pitfalls to avoid
1. Choosing money above everything else. This may result in a feeling of uncertainty
and lack of fulfillment.
2. Pursuing a career that your parents choose for you. Follow your interests and
passion. Do not allow your parents to actualize their dreams through you.
3. Picking a career at random: make informed choices.
4. Choosing the college before the course. This should not be done at the expense of
professional skills and interests.
5. Relying on the word of mouth e.g. “There are no jobs in that career”.
Such statements should be validated through career research, whereby data is
collected, analyzed and interpreted in order to explain trends in careers.
6. Peer pressure: this is pursuing the same interests as other people in one’s social
group in order to be liked.
Career Pathways and Fields:
A pathway is a step-by-step growth in skills, knowledge and experience and with
examinations in every stage to prepare a student to attain the highest level in a career.
The subjects that are offered at the secondary school level are categorized into 5 groups
ie Compulsory subjects, Science subjects, Humanities, Technical subjects and humanities/
Arts from which a candidate chooses a minimum of seven 7 and a maximum of nine 9
subjects.
A minimum of mean grade of C+ is required for admission to a degree program, C- for
diploma, (with some exceptions) D+ and D for craft certificate and E for artisan
certificate courses.
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The guide book has classified careers into two broad fields:
a. ARTS and Social Sciences
A social science is a branch of education that investigates human activities, their
social relations, why people act, dress and live. It is also referred to as humanities
or liberal arts. It has a wide range of courses that a student can study.
In this career guide, the following are the main career options in this field:
- Law
- Education (Arts and Sciences)
- Business, marketing and entrepreneurship
- Art, media studies and communication
- Hospitality
- Humanities.
b. STEMAF (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Agriculture and
Fisheries).
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