Career Counselling or career guidance is a program created to help candidates choose, change or leave a particular career based on their capabilities and interests. It is available at any stage in life.
Choosing the perfect career is the most significant factor to most individuals in their adulthood while leaving and getting into a new one can be stressful. This is where the career counsellor helps you. Considering your taste, preferences, and potential they are the person to guide you through the correct path.
Here in this article we will take you through the major differences between free and paid career counselling sessions. You will get to know the benefits and disadvantages too alongside a brief guide on how Edumilestones can help you with it.
What is Career Counseling?
Career development is a lengthy process and there are a number of factors influencing the same. The factors include your interests, potential, values, background, personality, and circumstances. Career counselling is the method that will make you aware of the working world and its structure and help you make educational or career decisions. As already denoted, career development is a life-long process. Situations are likely to change throughout and you will need to make decisions accordingly. Career counselling programs not only provide you with advice regarding the decisions to be made now but it educates you with relevant skills that can be of help in the future too.
Career Counseling helps you out with different segments, the major ones being:
- Helps you analyze your core strengths and weaknesses and what to want out of your life and education.
- Makes you understand the factors that influence your career development like your personal interests, abilities, and values.
- Also helps you to understand the work trends, identify the next steps, and create a plan accordingly to reach your goals.
- Helps you to gather valuable resources of career information.
Always keep in mind, the career counsellors will help you out with the above-mentioned pointers. But, they will not be doing the following: Tell you exactly what to do or which particular course you should go for.
‘When do I need Career Counseling’, if this question strikes your mind, keep reading!
When does a Person Need Career Counseling?
Anyone can seek career counselling including freshers, experienced professionals, and even alumni. The sooner you start making career decisions, the better it is for you to get ahead. Below we have highlighted the most significant causes of seeking career counselling:
- People with no career goals often find it difficult to make a stern decision for them. A career counselling program helps them understand what are the major career options they can go for based on their capability and interests.
- Students tend to be confused between two areas of interest. Instances indicate, there are quite a few cases where a particular student had different subject interests and ended up getting confused regarding career options. This is where career counselling helps them to resolve conflicts and analyze which one they actually want to pursue.
- When people are clueless about their own interests and potential and don’t know how to proceed with career options, career counselling helps them to come out of this confusing situation.
Gain detailed information about career counselling and the processes by clicking here.
Sounds interesting? Planning to go for a career counselling session? I appreciate that. Now, if you are wondering if there are free counselling sessions available, let me break it to you, yes there are! We will discuss in detail below what free career counselling is and what are the major advantages. And yes, disadvantages are there too! Nothing is ‘free’ after all!
What is Free Career Counseling?
Students, working professionals, and even freshers are free to seek free career counselling services. Free Career Counseling is an assessment of their qualifications, experience, and abilities to suggest the most worthy next step regarding the career options. It mainly involves a set of questions that the candidates need to answer.
Based on the evaluation, the next step is suggested. However, candidates seeking a detailed analysis of their respective career developments, need to go for a paid career counselling service.
Free Career Counseling: Advantages and Disadvantages
Free career counselling serves you with certain benefits. However, a free session might not always turn out to be fruitful and therefore has few disadvantages as well. The table below highlights these pointers in detail. Take and look!
Advantages:
- These sessions are free. You can take the assessment test for free or interact with the counsellor without paying any fee.
- Free career counselling sessions are quick and don’t involve a lengthy procedure.
Disadvantages:
- There are high chances that you might not be able to find a qualified counsellor for free. Usually, top-tier professionals charge a fee. The session being free of cost, the counsellor might not take it seriously and help you achieve the best results.
- In free sessions, chances are high the counsellor won’t spend much time with you. The set of questions in the assessment might not be sufficient to analyse the exact person in you and hence the suggestion may not turn out to be a successful one.
- The short time span is sometimes not enough to guide the candidate exactly in the right direction.
So you see, nothing is achieved for free in this world. Free Career Counseling programs are effective only for a limited period. Making a strong career-oriented decision needs you to have assistance from professionals that come with a paid career counselling service.
What is Paid Career Counseling
A paid career counselling helps you to get in touch with a professional who takes you through a series of tests, and activities to evaluate the inner strengths, interests and come up with a suitable career plan. The counsellor will surely not tell you to exactly go for this course or that career path.
However, they will help you to understand yourself better so you can pick the right option for you. Whether you are at the beginning of your career or in the middle looking for a change, sessions with professionals will benefit you in millions of ways!
Paid Career Counseling: Advantages and Disadvantages
As already pointed out, paid career counselling offers you plenty of benefits. However, there can be few disadvantages as well. Take a look at the table below.
Advantages:
- Paid career counselling sessions help you to get connected with highly skilled counsellors who conduct the entire process seriously and help you achieve the desired results.
- Paid career counselling sessions help you to get a detailed evaluation of who you are exactly and what are the potential career options lying ahead.
- The counsellors spend more time with you in the paid sessions. After assessing your personality, interests and background, the counsellor assists you with your career plans. You can pick accordingly considering what interests you the most.
- Paid career counselling has additional benefits to offer you. You might get specialized reports after the session.
Disadvantages:
- Although fees are affordable, at times some professionals charge high prices.
- The process can be a bit lengthy as it involves detailed analysis. Therefore, it is vital to have patience.
- It is a bit difficult to find a skilled counsellor suiting your needs. However, this is no more a disadvantage as Edumilestones brings at your service the opportunity to interact with qualified counsellors fitting your requirements.
Despite the limited disadvantages, paid career counselling is an excellent option for candidates who are struggling with career choices. Now that we know what free and paid counselling programs are, let’s take a quick look at the differences!
Differences between Free and Paid Counseling Programs
Free counselling programs mostly consist of quick assessment tests that are designed to understand your areas of interest and expertise. Eventually, it suggests the next step. The process is short-lived and doesn’t take much of your time. However, you don’t get to interact with an expert through free counselling programs, and therefore the scope of discussing your queries is restricted too. Many websites across the internet offer you free counselling assessments that you can take. As the reports come out, you are free to move forward with the next step.
If you are casual at the moment just and just want to take a look at options, free counselling sessions are of great help.
Paid Counseling programs give you the chance to interact with professionals and discuss your queries. These sessions are much detail-oriented and lengthy where the counsellor involves you in a series of tests and activities to get to know you better. After the assessment of your qualities, he gives you a suitable career plan and the available options as per your tastes and expertise.
If you are fully career-centric and looking forward to choosing the right path immediately, paid counselling sessions are for you. Even if you are a fresher or a professional looking for a change, you are free to seek paid counselling services.
Career Counseling with Edumilestones
Edumilestones, the highest-rated career counselling platform in India, helps you interact with professionals and sort out all career-related queries. You will find above 2200 career counsellors across 100 cities in India for students, and working professionals. You can even take the psychometric career assessment test that will help you make firm decisions related to your career. Want to know more? Take a look at the steps.
Step 1: First you need to go to the website www.edumilestones.com.
Step 2: The page "Find Career Counselors near You", shall appear.
Step 3: You will get options to pick from: Career Counselling for students, professionals and abroad study. Pick the one according to your needs and then enter your location.
Step 4: You shall find the list of eminent career counsellors on the screen. You will have the option to view the details. Then go ahead with the "book an appointment" option or request a callback.
Step 5: The final step includes getting connected to the counsellor and having a great session!
In case of any queries, reach out to our team through the "chat with us" option available.
Visit this link to know the full details.
Wrapping Up
I hope this article was helpful to make you understand the core differences between free and paid career counselling programs. Always be focused on the decisions you are going to make!
