6 Things Successful Career Counsellors Do To Have a Rewarding Career Themselves

Helping others is its own reward. It feels incredible when you’ve helped someone arrive at a decision, guided them along the way, and it turned out to be a life-changer for them. This, precisely, is what career advisors do: give students and professionals career-related advice to help them attain glorious results. But how do advisors achieve glory in THEIR career?

Things All Successful Career Counsellors Do

1. They always remember their real purpose

Being a counsellor is a vocation – you do it because you want to help others and make a positive difference to their lives. As your vocation grows into a business, it’s easy to lose sight of this purpose and start focusing wholly on making money, taking on more clients than you can handle, and treating counselling like an assembly-line production. That can be your undoing.

2. They build their own niche

Career planning and advice is a vaster field than many people realize. Counselling a student who just got his Class 10^th results and his trying to choose a stream is nothing like counselling a professional in his/her 30s who wants to change careers. Winning counsellors work on building a niche (or multiple niches) and train themselves to excel at these choices. They don't take on a client they wouldn’t be able to serve well, even if there is plentiful payoff involved.

3. They rely on research-backed assessment

While sound intuition is a great bonus for a career counsellor, you must have a foolproof fallback plan. A research-backed, carefully developed assessment/test is indispensable for understanding your clients' aptitude, personality and fitment to a career. An excellent example is the well-researched psychometric test developed by CareerFutura, a leading career guidance company in India. The test has been scientifically designed in consultation with educationists.

4. They see their clients as people

You are in a people-oriented business and your clients are people, not cash cows. A career counsellor who is not attuned to the needs of his/her clients, doesn't have the capability to empathise and guide, and is unwilling to devote time to understanding a client's individual situation, demographics, learning styles and thought process is unlikely to make progress.

5. They associate with domain leaders

To become a successful career counsellor, you must either have a strong acumen for entrepreneurship or let domain leaders bolster your skills and help you build your practice. A lucrative golden mean is to take up a franchise opportunity under the umbrella of an established brand. For example, if you associate with CareerFutura, you’ll get access not only to their brand name and comprehensive assessment tests, but you’ll also stand to benefit from the streamlined business operations that come with a leading organisation. This means, you can devote your energies to your true passion: providing career guidance to a growing community of students and working professionals.

6. They constantly hone their skills

As a career counsellor, you’ll be advising people on one of the most important aspects of their lives. It’s imperative to stay updated with the latest in your niche(s), especially in education, the corporate world, and human resource development. A good career advisor attends networking events, conferences and workshops and goes in for certifications and courses that can sharpen his/her skills. For instance, the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) in New Delhi offers a diploma in guidance and counselling.

The career franchise business is a rapidly growing field in India, with abundant opportunities to marry your penchant for helping others and your entrepreneurial ambitions. All the best!