Why Should you Start Career Planning Early?

Author

Team MetaApply

Published on April 6, 2025
Career planning

According to you, what is the ideal time of starting to plan for your career? Do you think you should start career planning after 12th or after graduation? Well, if your answer is any one out of these two options then you are already haphazard. Career planning is the most crucial thing in your life. And as you are not aware of the multiple career options in life or which one is best suited for you, you can always take Career Counselling assistance. But when it comes to start planning your career, it is crucial you start as early as grade 8th or 9th at max.

You must be wondering why this early. To answer your question, keep reading this blog and you will realise why it is crucial to start early with your career planning.

Benefits of Early Career Planning

The last-minute career deal is always an expensive one. No matter how much sure you are about your career choice at the last-minute, there always remains a little doubt. Whether you could have got a better paying job? Should you have researched your options better? Would it be best to take a gap and enhance your skills? There are many questions roaming in mind at the time of career planning. But nothing like this occurs when you start planning your career as early as class 9th. Below are the reasons why you should start career planning early.

Know Yourself

Grade 8th or 9th is the best time to know your potential. By that time, you have already developed the knowledge of likes and dislikes. You may like some subject more than others or there could be a particular activity you may enjoy, which could be a great career for you. Hence, take Career Counselling in Grade 8th or 9th, you get a chance to know yourself better.

To know your personality, you must take a psychometric test. That scientifically designed assessment evaluates your strengths, interests, and personality traits based on the responses to hypothetical questions. After consulting with a career counsellor, you will know what your possible career options are and a tailored roadmap to accomplish your goals.

Set Clear Goals

Once you have taken the Psychometric Test, and consulted a counsellor, you will get a clarity of what are your career options. Taking career counselling in early days of your high school means you have the liberty of exploring various career options. Sometimes to decide what is the best suited career for you, you need to have practical experience. Hence, when you go for career counselling, the counsellors tell you what voluntary options you have.

Consulting counsellors really help you in setting short-term and long-term goals. After you have explored various fields, you can set-up your mind and according to that your career path will be drawn. Your long-term goal will be deciding what you want to be in life and your short-terms goals will be the layout and efforts to reach there.

What Skills to Develop

Another reason why you must take career counselling early in life is because you get ample time to develop crucial skills. Having career clarity in earlier days of your life helps you in not wasting much time. This means you know what your goals are and what should be your strategy to accomplish them. As we talked about setting clear goals and short-term goals, building crucial skills come under that step.

Irrespective of the field you pick in your career, there are crucial skills that you need at every level to succeed in life. These soft skills including decision-making, time management, clear communication, problem solving, and leadership. When you start career planning early, by 11th grade, you get a clarity of what your career is going to be and hence, accordingly, you can enhance the crucial skills to have a better succeeding career.

Make Informed Career Decisions

As we stated above, when you start career planning at the last-minute, there are chances that you may doubt your decision. It happens because of the time crunch. When you don’t have enough time to explore your options or even research about them, you don’t know what career is best suited for you. Without knowing your true potential, there are chances you may discover your strengths very late in life, resulting in delayed success.

Hence, it is always better to start career planning and take career counselling in your early school days. When you are in grade 8th or 9th, you are not aware of your potential, career options, and how to plan for it. But with the help of parents’ support and counsellor’s guidance, you can make informed career decisions to be successful in life.

Reduce Career Planning Stress

The last-minute career planning is the worst decision because of many reasons. However, what’s the most hazardous thing out of all is the stress and anxiety of career planning. If by class 12th or graduation, you didn’t start planning for your career or decided a path, it is going to give you great tension in life. The uncertainty of what to be in life gives the disadvantage of questioning yourself at every minute. In this, you must add the parental pressure. You either have to decide something yourself or do something decided by your parents.

To ease the process and reduce the stream selection stress, you must take career counselling. Taking career counselling in class 10th would be a better idea too. As you decide a stream only then, consulting a counsellor will help you in making informed decisions.

Ease your Career Planning Tension with MetaApply Career Counselling

As the blog comes to an end, we believe you have got the glimpse of why you should start career planning early in life. It gives you time to explore various fields, develop new skills, opportunities to pick a career of your own choice, and gain real-life experience in varied industries. Not thinking about your career early or leaving it to be decided later is where you let go off a successful career.

We understand the career planning process is an overwhelming one, and if you don’t know your true potential, it becomes challenging to find what is best suited for you. To help you make informed decisions and identify your true potential, we offer MetaApply Psychometric Test. This ₹1999 test helps you in understanding your strengths and interests. Based on the test result, our counsellors create your tailored career action plan and help you at every step of the way.

So, if you are overwhelmed with your career planning process, connect with our experts now.

Frequently Asked Questions

With each passing day, your interests change. After graduation, when the time comes to embark on your career journey, being clueless at that time is riskiest thing. Therefore, instead of being uncertain about your career choices, it is better you take career counselling and start planning about it early. As this gives you the chance to explore various options and the freedom to select a career path of your preference.

Career planning is very important for you to know what are your career options in life. After 12th or graduation, it is your time to decide what you wish to be in life. Being clueless at that minute means risking your career. Hence, to make informed career decisions and to know what you want to do in life, you must start career planning early.

The first step of career planning is self-assessment. It is crucial for you to know your true potential. To know that you must take a psychometric test. With the help of that test result, you will be able to understand your interests, strengths, values, and personality traits. This clarity helps you identify suitable career paths that align with your academic goals and strengths.

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