How to think about career counselling in a post-Covid world

The ongoing pandemic has caused unprecedented economic disruption and unemployment worldwide prompting both a financial and a humanitarian crisis Career counsellors need to now focus on how they can provide effective career counselling for the postCovid worldAbhishek Gupta Founder and CEO of High School Moms HSM and International Alliance of Counselors and Educators INACE suggests what one should be mindful of hereonAt the outset it is important to understand that career guidance helps learners understand their strengths and weaknesses and then match them with their skills and interests so that they can get the best suitable career choice The pressure to make career and higher education choices is a nervewracking experience for most learners Career counselling enables students to manage their careers and move from a general understanding of life and work to a specific understanding of the realistic learning and work options that are open to themAs society is trying to come to terms with this global crisis technology inevitably has emerged as our knight in shining armour in many ways Nicholas Picic a USbased lecturer rightly pointed out our new Covidrelated glossaries have forced us to learn and get crash courses in a number of unanticipated fieldsfrom biology and immunology to statistical rhetoric government operations and civics This pandemic has shown us the power of technology exposed cyber security risks and helped businesses develop new ways to use data effectively It is now time for students to up their game in order to expect greater job opportunities or alternate career options in the postpandemic worldGone are the days when medicine and engineering were the only two options that students were presented with The pandemic has compelled us to turn to virologists yet virology has been a neglected area The field is a rapidly evolving branch of medicine with immense relevance to medical studiesConventional subjects like zoology botany and physiology have been left back in the race by the domains of microbiology biotechnology biochemistry and other applied programmes The amalgamation of biological and medical sciences in these applied programmes has made them very much sought after in recent times among the student community who are looking for alternatives to medical sciencesCareers in computational biology have also emerged to be promising in recent times Computational biology is basically the study of physical principles which are the part of biological phenomena and processes Statistics say that this is exceptionally a great time to start a career in computational biology With a relevant degree students can work in the commercial academic and government domainsAs the pandemic spread across India most of the processes went online generating huge amounts of data across sectors This has led companies to develop more sophisticated algorithms creating a need for more data science roles With the world starting to open amid the Covid19 pandemic the number of jobs available in data science is seeing an upward trend in India as we inch closer to providing vaccines for everyoneCoronavirus is turning our world upside down It has shown us how fragile so many of our political systems are and how dependent our normal lives are on things that we take for granted This is where career guidance comes in as it is essentially a set of tools that helps people to think through how they live their lives manage their worklife balance and so onThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoeverAlso Read lsquoFB Twitter can curb fake news if they want torsquo