IMPACT OF CAREER COUNSELING TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES ON CAREER DECISION MAKING DIFFICULTIES OF STUDENTS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Abstract Career counselling and guidance is a lifelong process. It is an inherent part of education at Schools. Career counselling doesn’t mean prescribing set of jobs or courses that lead to it. It is a process that enables students to know their interests, skills, strengths and weaknesses, so that they make an informed choice of their careers and life goals. Guidance shall go beyond curriculum. Having repeated discussions with students on diverse range of issues such as time management, concentration levels, reading-writing and analytical skills, disagreement issues between student and parents is part of guidance. This study is conducted to know whether this sort of career counselling and guidance is being given in schools, how far students are aware of it and are ready. Students face many issues at adolescent age (17, 18 years of age). At this age they have to make wise decision regarding courses to be taken in under graduation and future careers. Hence sampling units are students studying 11th, 12th grades. A reasonable study has been undertaken to assess career awareness of school passed out students, sort of guidance provided by teachers and the atmosphere fostered by top management. Quantitative analysis was conducted to analyse pretest and posttest outcomes. This study is experimental and empirical in nature. The present study is unique as it explored various career decision making difficulties, addressed them with psychometric tests and sessions. Such an empirical study was made to know effectiveness of those tools in assisting career counselling process.