Mr Devender believes, “Career Counselling is a Crucial Profession”

Mr Devender K Saini, is an experienced career counsellor with 8 years of diverse and rich professional experience. He has been connected to various start-ups, NGOs and corporate sectors and has guided thousands of students through his efforts. He has done his graduation from Kurukshetra University in the field of Bachelors of Engineering. After graduation, he started working as a software developer with a company named CIM Global. However, his passion for education drove him towards an entrepreneurial journey of starting an education start-up. In October 2008, he started Educon Education which provided career counselling, coaching for engineering entrance examination, conducted career fairs, workshops, seminars, group counselling and admission counselling. Currently, he is working part time on his start-up and full time as an IT manager for a Consultancy Project Management in CIM Global.

We at CareerGuide.com interviewed Mr Devender to know his views about career counselling in India.

Mr Devender’s journey to becoming a career counselling is itself an inspiring one. He belongs to a small town Narnol which is situated in Haryana. He was always short of guidance in the city when it came to selecting the right career path. He even used to work in his father’s shop. However, he got access to some educational magazines through his school library from which he used to get information about different careers. Although it was limited information, it helped him to understand the problems faced by students while selecting their careers. That was the time when he decided to help as many students as he can for career guidance. While in college, he remained secretary general of Student’s body for 2 years. During this time, he conducted various career fairs for his fellow students. This brought him closer to the journey of becoming a career counsellor

A career counsellor needs to be very patient to understand students as well as parents.

When asked which tools he uses for career guidance, Mr Devender very clearly mentioned that he is associated with CareerGuide.com for a long period which provides him several tools in the form of tests to help the students. Along with that, he has his own set of psychometric tests, multiple intelligence tests, several exercises which support him in undertaking career guidance. Further he added that major tool is to understand what the student wants to do and what is his capability. Understanding the talent of student can provide further support to the career counsellor in guiding the student correctly. He believes that a career counsellor needs to be very passionate while interacting with the students. Also, there is need of having a deep domain knowledge about different careers and examinations. Mr Devender suggests that patience is one of the key attribute for career counsellors which helps them to answer the questions asked by students and parents.

Parents need to be counselled along with the children for the right selection of career path.

He is a staunch believer that parents should be a part of career counselling. He said that a student could be extra ordinary in academics, extra-curricular, sports or other things, but what they lack is the right guidance on how to pursue their career. If the decision is given in the hands of students, they might select something which is not in accordance to their talents. Parents become torch bearers for the students and also they are the major decision makers. But, in majority cases parents have limited knowledge of different career options and they push their children according to their knowledge. This is the reason why Mr Devender believes in starting the counselling with parents rather than with the children. The first need is to convince the parents and aware them regarding the potential of their children. This collaboration of students and parents in career counselling can result in selection of right career path for the student

There is need to have feelings to contribute to the society to become a career counsellor.

Mr Devender believes that career counselling is a crucial profession. Like a doctor uses several tests before giving a diagnose to a patient, a career counsellor also needs to patiently put the child to different tests which can highlight his potential. He thus advises newbies in career counselling to explore the talent of students properly before providing the student any guidance. For becoming a successful career counsellor, there is need to have feelings of contributing to the society since this effort makes a great social impact on the lives of students.

It is highly important to remain updated about different career option coming up these days.

He says that these days many new career options are coming up. Trends are changing regularly which creates a need for the career counsellors to remain updated. He believes in taking information from different sources such as online websites, blogs, books containing career information and educational magazines. In addition, he remains in touch with certain groups on LinkedIn which provides him valuable information about new courses and career paths. He suggested the audience to read several newsletters and educational information that is available online through different mediums. Some of the websites recommended by him are Silicon India, education section of newspapers such as Times of India, news channels such as NDTV and magazines similar to Business Today which gives valuable information about new trends that are taking up in the country. These sources also provide information on the scope of different career paths. Although he has great experience of working in career counselling field, he admires Mr Parveen Malhotra, a renowned career counsellor for actively helping thousands of students in fulfilling their dreams. He considers Mr Abdul Kalam as his idol. He believes that there are many things that are an inspiration from the life of Kalam Sir and the learnings can also be implemented in our lives.

CareerGuide is a great platform for students as well as career counsellors.

He is currently working on a global project STEMset which aims at imparting STEM (Science, technology, Engineering, Management) education to the students. He thinks of reaching maximum students through his efforts. He also recommended CareerGuide’s work and appreciated what this platform is doing for the students and career counsellors. He finds CareerGuide.com a great network of career counsellors where there are more than 1000 counsellors available for students located in different areas of the country.