Career guidance and pandemic (English)

The ongoing pandemic has caused unpredictable economic disruption and unemployment worldwide,prompting both a financial and a humanitarian crises.Vocational and career counsellors should now focus on how they can provide effective cereer counselling for the post covid world.One should be mindful of available opportunities.                             At the outset,it is important to understand that career guidance helps learners understand their strengths and weakness and then match them with their skills and interests so that they can get the best suitable career choice.The pressure to make career and higher education choices is a nerve-wracking experience for most learners.Career counselling enables students to manage their careers and move from a general understanding of life and work to a specific understanding of the realistic  learning and work options that are open to them.                  As society is trying to come to terms with global crises,technology inevitably  has emerged as our knight in shining armour in many ways. Our new Covid -related glossaries have forced us to learn and get crash courses in a number of unanticipated fields-from biology and immunology to statistical rhetoric,government operations and civics.This pandemic has shown us the power of technology, exposed cyber security risks,and helped business, develop new ways to use data  effectively. It is now high time for students to expect greater job opportunities or alternate career options in the post-pandemic world.                      Gone are the days when medicine and engineering were the only two options that students were presented with us.The pandemic has compelled us to turn to virologists,yet virology has been a neglected area.The field is a rapidly evolving branch of medicine with immense relevance to medical studies.                           Conventional subjects like zoology, botany ang physiology have been left back in the race by the domains of microbiology ,biotechnology, bio chemistry ,and other applied programmes .The amalgamation of biological and medical sciences in these applied programme has made them very much sought after in recent times among the student community who are looking for alternatives to medical sciences.                                         Careers in computational biology have also emerged to  be promising in recent times. Computational biology is basically  the study of physical principles which are the part of biological phenomena and processes.       Statistics say that this is exceptionally a great time to start a career in computational biology, with a relevant degree,students can work in the commercial, academic and government domain.                                      As the pandemic spread across India,most of the processes went online,generating huge amounts of data across sectors.This has led companies to develop more sophisticated algorithms, creating  a need  for more data science roles.With the world starting to open amid the Covid -19;pandemic, the number of jobs available in data science.Demand in this field is showing  an upward trend in India as we are inch closer to providing vaccines for everyone.                            It is also a good sign that number of national institutes are opening up to provide distance education to common  students. Bhopal based national institute of law started many certificate course in online mode for the benifit of secondary students.                                              Now we can say  career guidence is an essential set of tools that helps people to think through how they live their lives,manage their work-life balance and so on.