Many young people are confused and even lost while growing up, not knowing what to do in the future. Career planning will guide you to spend your time and effort effectively on figuring out what your passions are. Career planning will help you to effectively and precisely determine your interests, strengths, and unique characteristics, and help you to gain insights and develop an in-depth understanding of the structures and trends of various industries.

After you have developed deep knowledge of both yourself and the industry through career planning, you will be able to effectively and clearly determine your career goals, and design suitable career paths to achieve your dream career. With your dream career identified, you will have a clearer sense of direction and increased motivation. While in university, you can then focus on preparing the knowledge, skills, and experience required for your future dream career. Having planned your career like this, you will avoid meaningless career changes in the future and achieve greater success accompanied by greater personal fulfilment.

Not necessarily. Personality tests are just a tool for understanding one’s personality in an objective and scientific way. A good personality test helps to increase self-awareness. However, self-awareness can also be increased through other means, such as effective self-reflection. Determining what careers suit you is best achieved through a comprehensive series of exercises designed to help you thoroughly understand both yourself and your external environment. Such exercises go well beyond the scope of a personality test.

To fully understand yourself, you need to understand not only your personality, but also your interests, values, and capabilities etc. To get a better understanding of your external environment, you need to conduct an enormous amount of research on industries, companies, and various careers themselves. It is hard to decide what careers will suit you until you have developed solid understandings of both “yourself” and the “environment”.

Effective career planning should start as early as possible. In North America, most high schools provide students with career planning services to help them make decisions about which universities and programs might be good fits for them. If you didn’t do any career planning in high school, you should certainly start during your university studies.

Starting career planning after entering a workplace is late. Your first job plays a significant role in your career journey as this is the first position and industry that you will have experience with. If your first job turns out to be something that does not align with your career goals and paths, you will most likely have to put in extra effort in the future to make corrections.

Unfortunately, what we’ve seen is that most overseas Asian university students don’t have a sense of career planning — they don’t know what they want to do or what they can do. This usually leads to a lot of stress and confusion upon graduation. Effective career planning provides a strong sense of direction and purpose for both your studies and work, helping you raise your confidence level while pursuing your dreams.

Both undergraduate and postgraduate students in North America find it difficult to look for internships during their busy studies. With all the assignments, quizzes, midterms, final exams, and essays, they’re not able to relax during the term. As a result, many of them won’t start looking for internships or jobs until they’ve graduated. When they have breaks, like summers, they often choose to go back to China or travel abroad to get recharged rather than work as an intern.

What many students don’t realize is that summer is the best time for internships. During summer break, students will be able to invest more time with fewer distractions, and more employers look to hire summer interns. Students can find out their interests and specific industry opportunities through an internship. This knowledge will help them determine which specific skills and areas of study they should focus on in the coming academic year. This will help students increase their employability when they start looking for full-time jobs because local employers value students who have already accumulated relevant internship experience and will give them priority during the hiring process.

It is also worth mentioning that the Canadian government encourages overseas students to gain internship/CO-OP experience. Overseas students can work 20 hours per week during their studies or work full-time for 4 months during the summer. Therefore, we encourage all overseas Chinese students to seize summer internship opportunities, in order to make their full-time job search an easier process upon graduation.

As big data plays an increasingly important role in economy, streams, such as Data Science, Computer Science, and Applied Science are used more widely in various fields. Therefore, Data Analysts, Computer Engineers, and Programming Developers have been very popular positions in recent years. The key requirements for these occupations usually include strong mathematics and computer backgrounds, strong analytical thinking, and data analysis skills.

Research has shown that there are serious talent shortages in these areas, both globally and in Canada. Because of the high demand for these skills and short supply of talent, graduates with these academic backgrounds are able to get relatively high starting salaries even for their first jobs. Driven by the demand for artificial intelligence (AI) technology, some science programs/majors are becoming increasingly popular and offer very promising futures, including Computer Science, Management of Information Technology, Software Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, and Statistics.

With respect to business and commerce streams, Finance, Accounting, and Economics have always been popular. In Canada, graduates from these majors are particularly favored by various industries, especially by the Financial Services and Consulting industries. The fact that some students start working towards designations, such as CFA, CPA, and FRM, can help give employers a better understanding of their professional capabilities. Plus, if students can develop leadership, organizational and communication skills at school, they will certainly have better career prospects.

Choosing a major is similar to choosing a shoe in the way that it has to fit you. Although having a degree in a popular major may make it easier for you to find a job upon graduation, you will probably find it hard to complete your degree because you are not interested in the subject. You also need to consider that trends are not eternal. A popular major now might not be popular down the road. Likewise, a major that is unpopular now might become popular later on.

When you study an area that interests you, you will be better able to excel and devote more time to your work. The more time you put in, the better you will be. When you do eventually graduate, you will be more likely to start a career that allows you to leverage both your interests and your skills. If you study something that interests you or for which you have a talent, you will probably find your career more fulfilling and achieve a stronger sense of accomplishment.

Therefore, the self-discovery process is a very important component of career planning. You need to understand your characteristics, interests, strengths and, most importantly, your passions. This knowledge is of paramount importance in choosing a meaningful and practical career direction and goal to pursue. This career positioning process  can help you decide what schools or majors you should choose in order to best prepare for your targeted industry, career, and jobs, rather than relying on the popularity of a major. In fact, we have seen many students who have spent four years of undergraduate or longer (graduate studies) studying so-called popular majors/programs, only to have to change majors or careers later on because they simply didn’t like what they were doing.