Career Counseling in Pakistan

This is a qualitative study that aims to identify and understand the importance, availability and practical implementation of career counseling at different educational levels of Pakistan. The importance of a career counselor and the influence on career choice has also been highlighted in the study. The in-depth interviews were conducted to collect data from 25 participants, belonging to different universities of Pakistan, having different academic and professional background. The collected information was processed after coding the interviews by thematic analysis using the software (N-vivo, ed. 10). The results from thematic analysis showed that a proper career counseling system is not available at any level of education. In fact career counseling does not exist in Pakistan in a true sense. Most students do not get any counseling at any level of their academic life about their career path. It was seen that people choose their career under the influence of their family members or due to the availability of the subjects/profession. It was also found that a career counselor must be a professional counselor, equipped with psychological, academic and professional skills and knowledge. As Career counseling plays an important role for the right selection of a person’s career path, the study aims to highlights the information of career counseling to help the educational policy makers in Pakistan. It may enable the regulatory bodies to understand the current level and importance of career counseling to shape up their future policies and practices keeping in view the findings of the study