Selecting a career is an uphill task and most crucial decision

in ones life. Occupation of a profession of a person determines his

mode of living and economic prospects. Moreover, a particular
working atmosphere and service structure influences attitude and
behavior of an individual. A particular line of work is the focal way
to accomplish goals, materialize ambitions and realize dreams in
the twisting and meandering life course. Therefore, appropriate
information and guidelines are mandatory to select a vocation
according to ones aptitude.

Educated parents, relatives and peers, teachers of educational

institutions, experts in career planning, various websites and mass
media are fountains of information that can help students in
choosing occupations according to their inclinations. However,
students of the Developing Countries do not have apposite
awareness about different professions due to non-availability or
less availability of credible information about vistas and prestige
attached with various fields of work. Resultantly, due to ignorance
about contemporary upscale horizons in these backward countries,
many educated people move like rudderless boats in selecting
careers and frequently change their occupations.

Lack of awareness about career planning has grave

implications for the future of the candidates. Time and again
changing of profession results in wastage of energy and resources.
Education and experience gained for one profession become
useless after changing the row of employment. For example,
several doctors and engineers in the developing countries join civil
services through competitive examination. In bureaucratic service,
they get opportunities once in a blue moon to use their medical
knowledge and engineering expertise.
 It seems that their career is determined by fate than by
choice. Thus they are slaves of the environment and are driven by
its waves rather than permitting their passions and determination to
dominate over fate. A doctor becomes a bureaucrat while an
engineer becomes a businessman. In this way, a lot of states’
resources to train professionals went down the drain. As these
backward countries already face shortage of such experts;
therefore, change of profession also results in internal brain drain.

Changing of vocation also generates frustration in the

educated people because of comparison with previous professions
and looking for future avenues in the new service. Some people do
not adjust and get satisfaction in the new fields and return back to
their parent professions. When they compare their professional
training, skills and educational progress with their previous
colleagues, they feel chilling frustration due to fear of lagging
behind. These turncoats are prone to indulge in criminal activities
leading to drug addiction, damaging of determination,
psychological illnesses, etc.

In the Developed Countries, the kids are directed properly at

institutional level; therefore, they choose professions according to
their tendencies. Career planning institutions of these countries
conduct seminars to guide the learners. They also carry out career
planning tests to judge capabilities and aptitudes of the students.
Through these assessments, experts direct the new generations to
choose professions according to their mental propensity to develop
apposite faculties. While in the developing countries such direction
at institutional level is negligible. Therefore, the students remain
ignorant about suitability of professions, scope of careers,
admission processes, available institutions for a range of subjects,
cost of adopting a particular business, social esteem pinned with
different professions, etc.
 In the well-lined countries, children are being encouraged by
parents and teachers to take decisions independently. Such positive
encouragements instill self-confidence and self-reliance among
them. Paradoxically, in the developing countries social pressures
and established cultural values are driving forces that compel the
people to change their line of work. In many cases, decisions
regarding career and marriage are imposed by parents without
considering liking and disliking of offspring. Ignorance of parents
about aptitude of their siblings and new learning horizons result in
imposition of decisions regarding career of children. For example,
in Pakistan parents of talented students want to make their children
doctors or engineers without considering bent of the children
towards arts, literature, accounting, social sciences, etc. Such
practices act as stumbling blocks and mount failure probability of
such students in educational and practical life manifolds.

In Pakistan, the students especially face problems at

matriculation and intermediate level. They choose pre-medical or
pre-engineering subjects and those who fail to get admissions in
medical colleges and engineering institutions are left with few
options because they do not know about variety of available
educational opportunities and learning avenues. Some
professionals appear in competitive examinations and join
bureaucracy.

Culture of restricting and selling information is also a major

barrier in the way of carrier planning for students. Majority of the
public sector educational institutions in the UDCs are not in a
position to properly guide the students while the private sector
institutions exorbitantly charge fees that is beyond the reach of
majority of the students. The students are left on the mercy of the
academies to fleece them.

Uneducated parents fail to guide their siblings in career

planning. For such students, the public and private sector
institutions are the only source of information. This happens in the
countryside where poverty-stricken masses are living. If some
talented and hardworking person gets an opportunity to get good
marks in matriculation, he fails to get guideline whether to opt pre-
medical or pre-engineering. After passing intermediate
examination, majority of those who fail to get admission in
medical colleges or engineering institutions lack awareness about
rest of the available career opportunities.

Mass media is the chief source of information but our media

do not provide appropriate programs about career planning.
Similarly, our educational institutions and instructors lack proper
capacity to guide the upcoming generations about career planning.
Thus lesser the opportunities to attain information about career
planning, greater are the chances of frequent change of profession.
“There is a saying that a person spends much more time choosing a
car than a career.”

In order to preserve state resources and for appropriate

human resource development, the Developing Countries should
establish career planning institutions by taking inspiration and
guidance from the Developed Countries. Career planning can be
included as subject in educational institutions to create
consciousness among the students vis-à-vis significance of
selecting a particular profession at early stage. Moreover, these
backward states should launch a herculean media campaign for
guiding the commoners to choose a vocation according to their
bent of mind. By educating parents to let their offspring to take
independent decisions in choosing a profession will develop self-
confidence and self-reliance in the upcoming generations. The
UDCs have failed to properly direct their youth in career planning.
If they will continue to tread on the same indifferent path, they will
not be able to make any headway in the welter of the contemporary
melting pot.
 Written by

Freelance International Columnist, Poet and Author of the

Books "What Plagues Pakistan?" and "Live Balls of Fire"