Choosing a career for your child !

I am reproducing my article published in the Nagpur edition of Times of India.

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Like all difficult decisions, choosing a career for your child often gets postponed until the last moment and is then somehow “got over with”. Many of us spend the rest of our life finding justifications for “career” related mistakes that were avoidable. The process appears all the more bewildering to today’s parents because during their time, there just weren’t so many choices and “listening” to elders was invariably the norm. They can’t understand how their own children could have become so precocious (and hence difficult to browbeat). Parents do deserve sympathy alongwith good advice on how to choose the right career for their children.

(1) Do not give importance to what the current trend is – rather find out what your child is comfortable with.

Many careers have been grounded because parents couldn’t wait to see their child become an “engineer” just because the neighbour’s kid was an engineer. Most careers require specific educational and psychological skills. Parents must make use of psychometric tests to match these skill sets with the personality of an individual.

(2) Study the grades that your child obtained in various subjects,

during the last few years at school!

Teach him/her some lessons yourself (parents these days are so dependent on tuition classes that they have almost forgotten the art of teaching their own children). Even a few minutes every day will give you an insight into whether he is quick on the uptake while studying “physical sciences” or “languages” or both.

(3) Never insist on the child becoming your own photocopy.

There is no law in genetics that says that children are born with the same skills as their parents. So don’t insist on the impossible. Many frustrations have their root cause in this “yearning” of parents. If a doctor’s son is a good singer, so be it.

(4) Always shortlist two or three alternatives for in-depth study.

Don’t feel bad about being so ignorant of the plethora of alternatives available and more importantly, don’t feel jealous that these didn’t exist in your time. Talk things over with concerned experts. Do not, I repeat do not send your child to do this legwork. If it had been possible for him or her to decide, why would you have been in the picture at all? Remember whatever else you may not be able to do, you can ask the right questions. Attend special seminars that get conducted. If you want your child to go abroad, going to more than one expert becomes a must. Do not presume that the so-called expert is really so. He might have read about what he is telling you, just yesterday.

(5) Choose the right college or training institute.

This could be confusing especially when you are choosing a training institute. Look for two parameters. Has the owner of the training institute successfully cleared the examination that he claims to train his students for? How are the past results of that institution? Past results never tell lies. Insist on talking to at least some of the faculties to get an insight into their competence.

(6) Choose the career that gives your child more options, later.

If he does BCA (Bachelors in Computer Applications), then the next option has to be MCA! However if he does B Com then he could do either M.Com or MCA. Obviously the second choice is better. Another good case in point could be the BBA (Bachelors in Business Administration) course. While it gives no special benefits during MBA admissions – that is the only logical path that it leads to. Avoid such “close ended lanes”.

(7) Choose a career that is expected to increase your wards’ “job-value.”

Irrespective of what many say, choose a career that you think will get him a more lucrative job. If this also happens to be what he likes most - so much the better! Most of the students choose to become MBA because of the pot of gold that they see at the “end of the rainbow” and not because they “love” business management. I see nothing wrong in this provided they are willing to go through the rigours of a good management course.

In our culture, parents are expected to mould the careers of their children so that the latter could support them, later. Don’t criticize children if they do not succeed – it may be due to the incorrect career guidance given earlier. I am reminded of what a wag once said, though in a different context - “Don’t criticize your wife too much; it may be because of these very defects in her that she did not get a better husband”.