Assessments Can Help

What makes you unique - what's your "brand"? What are your interests, passions and motivated skills, goals and objectives, personality type and non-negotiable needs? All of these are components in exploring what YOU are about and how that can "sync up" with some pretty exciting career choices.It is very commonly seen that one of the major issue students encounter once they pass their exams is the confusion in selecting their further studies. They become overwhelmed and somewhat lost in finding the right match.

Most don't even know what the areas of their interests are. Due to lack of counseling, they put little effort into their overall interests and did not receive enough marks because at the time, they had not yet identified their area of interest. Therefore they cannot obtain admission into their desired colleges. At this time they are very upset and uncertain about what career to pursue. Career confusion and indecision, often resulting in career apathy, seem to be common for many people. Yet finding a career direction or focus is remarkably simple...it's really all about YOU..

Students should attain basic knowledge about a profession before deciding to take it as their future career. Hence proper Career Guidance or Career Mapping can help students/individuals to build confidence and can give awareness of new career possibilities learning and work opportunities including civic, leisure, and promoting the balance of life and work. Educational, vocational, and school counselors provide individuals and groups with career, personnel, social and educational counseling. The purpose of the school counselors is to assist students of all levels, from elementary school to postsecondary education. Students and those who are about to undergo the challenges of getting jobs and experiencing a new life after formal education, would benefit greatly from career assessment.

As trends are constantly changing, anyone can easily go online on their own time to take a variety of tests to determine their career competencies rather than making an appointment with their respective school's career services or guidance counselor. These online career assessment tools are beneficial to discover and introduce new careers to those who wish to build their career. Through career assessment and mapping, those who are new to the working life will find a clearer path for starting their new work life.

There is much consensus that high quality counseling throughout life is a key component of education, training and employability strategies. This is why Europe is known for becoming the world's most dynamic knowledge based society since the Lisbon Council (2000) {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon_Strategy} and Commission's Memorandum on Long Life Learning (LLL) by 2010. Services which refer to assisting individuals include "Career Guidance, Career Assessment, and counselling services" of any age and at any point throughout their lives, to make educational, training and occupational choices and to manage their careers

Some of the major including activities are:

- To assist students activities within schools to clarify career goals and understand the world of work

- Personal or group-based sustenance with decisions about initial courses of study, further education, courses of vocational training and initial job choice, job change, or work force re-entry

- Computer-based or on-line services to provide information about jobs and careers or to help individuals make career choices; and services to produce and disseminate information about jobs, courses of study and vocational training.

Basic purpose of any career assessment tool for career guidance and counselling in the context of LLL can be summarized as follows:

    Guidance helps to build confidence and to empower individuals as well as making people aware of new career possibilities, including civic, leisure, learning and work opportunities and promotes the balance of life and work
    Achieves a better match between skills, interests and qualifications on the one hand and available job opportunities on the other
    Helps to improve the allocation of labor across regions, industries and occupations in the face of labor supply and demand fluctuations resulting from technological and structural change
    Makes a key difference between the successful and unsuccessful implementation of active labor market programmes
    It promotes employability and adaptability by assisting people to make career decisions both on entering the labor market and on moving within it.

Career assessments are a hot-hot topic for job search and career development. Counselors communicate with students individually, in small groups, or as an entire class. Career assessments are one tool to assist in uncovering these clues about ourselves. For the success of students they consult and interact with parents, teachers and schools administrators to develop and implements strategies to help students succeed. A career assessment is a standout tool that can help identify possible avenues on a career path for a student/employee. This enables a person to make better career decisions, market themselves to their best advantage, save their precious time and avoid spending money on the wrong education or future.

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