Around this time of the year, along with exam fever, you would also be battling the career confusion bug. While one half of your mind would be struggling to meet the revision deadlines, the other half would be in a tizzy over the choice of career options. What do I study after Class XII? Should I prepare for BBA because everyone in my family is an MBA? I have a keen interest in fashion but I am not good in sketching, can I still be a successful fashion designer? Which are the top schools to study journalism? The questions keep pouring in as you plunge deep into a confused state of mind.

To begin with, what you are experiencing is perfectly normal. It just shows that you are serious about making the best use of your abilities. But as they say, nothing in life comes easy. So don’t look for instant solutions. Drop the herd mentality. Instead, give some serious thought and time to your abilities. Read about careers in your field of interest and speak to professionals working in these sectors. Click on www.meracareerguide.com for some online help.

The site aims to address career queries of students in the age group of 15 to 24 years. It offers information about a wide range of careers, provides assessment tests, expert chat, course planning and job hunting tips along with a host of other features.

The homepage of meracareerguide looks like a sea of links and images. Your eyes would need some time to wade through this melange. If you are here primarily for career advice, start with the career clumps. This is also listed under career options on top of the homepage.

There are about 15 broad professional groups under career clumps. Each clump has information about several related career options. For instance, under agriculture and natural resources, you can know about careers in the field of fishery, horticulture, dietetics, forestry and wildlife. Each option comes with information about the potential, traits required, work opportunities, course duration, famous professionals and questions asked by students. On the right side a blue bar informs you about institutes where you can pursue the course and their eligibility criteria. This is a neat feature as you can find a lot of relevant information about various careers in a concise format.

Another interesting section is the assessment tests. Once you take the tests you will be given a report about your abilities, strengths, weak points and list of suitable careers helping you towards an informed career decision.

Besides these two useful features, the sites has several other links. Among them is a course planner which allows you to search for your desired course by location, by level of course (graduate, postgraduate, distance) and even by institutes with accommodation facilities. On the portal you can also ask queries to experts, chat with them and look for tips to hunt for jobs.

Meracareerguide promotes the significance of the concept of skill introspection before career choice. Most importantly, the entire site is free, a feature fast diminishing in most other portals. You also get a storehouse of information on courses, institutes and careers. Though the homepage is chaotic, the subsequent links are easier to navigate.

Launched in mid-2009, the site has a long way to go. There are various areas where it can improve. There can be several more career clumps with wide career options. For instance, under media and entertainment, the site only mentions journalism. What about public relations, advertising, acting or theatre ? The same is the case with health sciences which lists only medicine and dentistry and ignores nursing and physiotherapy. Consulting experts and chatting with them seemed like a pretty good idea. But most of the experts don’t seem to be online and even after repeated attempts nobody responds to chats. There is also no mention about the credentials of these experts.

Nevertheless, this trendy site could help clear some of your career confusion. Here’s a popular adage that is the perfect mantra to a successful career — choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.

Tessy Koshy
tessy_koshy@yahoo.com