Do you need a career advisor to build a successful career?

Among the many types of content the Internet abounds in, the articles about traits successful people share are becoming more prominent.

Yes, there are so many ways you can slice the cake that is human achievement and shine a light precisely at personality traits such as conscientiousness, or skills such as assertiveness, or the happenstance of being in the right place at the right time. But whichever way you slice it, people will come back for seconds. Sometimes you need someone to bring out your potential, this is where a career advisor comes in.

It’s not an easy time for finding a career path and staying on it. A standard career might be significantly more segmented and spread out across different companies now than it was ten or twenty years ago. In fact, statistics show that the millennials change on average four jobs by the time they turn thirty-two. To their parents, four jobs might have been enough for a whole lifetime. But times are changing, and that is one of the reasons why we’re looking to the super-successful for a modicum of wisdom.

Who can help you see down a career path?

The people whose business success stories have been widely publicized seem like a natural choice of role models for young people joining the workforce. After all, if you’ve only recently used Handmadewritings to figure out how to properly structure an essay, you can’t be expected to figure out your whole career trajectory on your own. That’s why you look up to the likes of Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or whoever becomes the next business hero.

If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to meet some people who might not be as famous as the business giants you read about online, but who might provide you with something infinitely useful and palpable — mentorship.

Having a mentor means you get the benefit of someone’s knowledge and experience free of charge. They can cover your blind spots and warn you about the things that lie ahead, and they can give you advice that can help you steer your career in the direction you want. But while finding a good mentor is a potentially life-changing experience, other types of professionals that can help you with your career path might be more readily available.

What do career advisors do?

Like the name says, a career advisor is a person whose job it is to provide career advice to you. Even though it sounds simple, a good career advisor should be able to combine several different areas of knowledge to provide you with the best advice possible.

First, they need to have a way to assess your skills and interests. Then they need to cross-reference your skills and interests with specific demands on the labour market. And finally, they should have enough industry-specific current knowledge to propose a viable career path.

You can use career advisors at any stage of your career development. Career advisors are typically found at colleges in the career development centres. Some will work independently and be available to you further down the road, although you might call them ‘career coaches’ at that point. But either way, you can use their services virtually at any point in your career to get a new perspective, get unstuck, or find a new direction to move in.

Is career counselling necessary for success?

Working with a career advisor does not provide you with a guarantee of a successful career outcome. And you can also make a stellar career all on your own, without a word of counsel. However, career counselling isn’t something you do for hard guarantees — you do it because it can increase your chances of success.

If you’re a college student or a recent grad, you might be familiar with the practice of using websites like Writemyessaytoday for essay outlines, or mock papers you can use to compare with your own. These practices do not guarantee you’ll write a great essay, but they sure make it more likely by giving you something professionally written to compare your writing with. The same logic applies to the use of career advisors— any help from them is welcome, but it’s not a necessity. At least, that’s how it is most of the time.

How to know when you need a career advisor

In some cases, the services of a career advisor are more needed than in others. It can depend on your education profile, your profession of choice, your stage in life and career development, as well as the overall state of the industry.

For example, with education getting increasingly more expensive, it pays off to make the best possible choices as early as possible. That can include finding an internship, but it also means choosing a major. Now, there’s nothing wrong with changing majors — a third of Bachelor’s students do it – but knowing what to change to can be difficult. A career advisor is one of the people whose opinion you should look for. Especially if your ideal career doesn’t have a clear career path.

There’s also a strong reason to believe that career advisors might become more valuable soon. The world can lose 800 million jobs by 2030 to automation alone. Whole occupations are expected to disappear, and it’s hard to say if there’ll be any jobs that won’t be affected by the ongoing revolution. If you’re planning to enter the workforce soon, or if you’re already in it but you’re nowhere near retirement age, a career advisor might help you futureproof your career as much as possible. They might suggest additional skills you should acquire, or additional directions you can move your career into that will withstand the automation wave.

Even though there’s no reason to believe that hiring a career advisor would be a requirement for having a successful career, you shouldn’t disregard how helpful a career advisor can be in certain situations. If you’re at a crossroad, or if you’re having trouble finding direction in your professional life, a career advisor might be just the person you need in your corner to help you fight your way towards a better career. Especially now that you’re fighting against artificial intelligence and automation.