Career development is a process throughout the students’ educational journey of self-assessment, career exploration, making life-changing decisions and implementing it. career development of students, long term engagement with the Industry and placements of students for internships and final jobs is an important process in Ahmedabad University. The Career Development Centre at Ahmedabad University builds and nurture industry engagement and provide services, re-sources & experiences to its Students and faculty which helps them achieve their academic & career goals.
The Centre helps the students in taking informed decisions about majors or careers and guides them to have a clear goal and provides guidance and assistance in reaching it. The center provides facility for Aptitude, Career and Psychometric Test to help students identify their skill and competencies. This in turn is used to help students work on their areas of development.
We at the Centre have been using the Pearson’s My Choice My Future(MCMF) self-assessment tool. MCMFmaps an individual’s dominant personality traits to suitable career clusters. This has helped us to guide the students to understand their personality better and to make an informed career choice. It has been very helpful in career counseling and helping the students prepare their Individual Development Plan [IDP]. It also helps to identify the key development areas of a student to perform better.
The Career Development Centre has trained Career Counsellors who design a comprehensive, developmental program to assist students in making and implementing informed educational and occupational choices. A structured career guidance and counselling program develop a student’s competencies in self-knowledge, educational and occupational exploration, and career planning. Career guidance and counselling helps students acquire the knowledge, skills, and experience necessary to identify options, explore alternatives and succeed in society
In the beginning of the program the students undertake the MCMF test, based on the results and the inputs from the career counseling session, they prepare their IDP. The student monitors his / her development journey with the help of their faculty mentor.
An IDP is a tool that helps students, assess their current skills and strengths, create a plan for developing and enhancing skills to help meet their academic and professional goals and communicate with their mentors about their goals and related skills
IDP is essentially a planning document that identifies what ones goals and objectives are for the upcoming year.
The purpose of an IDP is twofold. First, it ensures that the students maintains the current level of proficiency through continued learning and developmental activities. Secondly, the student charts a career path by identifying new knowledge, skills and abilities to pursue, as well as learning activities needed to reach the established goals.
The best goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. Setting goals can helps an individual be more intentional about the experiences one has in their graduate education and training, and can provide key steps in the right direction to the individual.
