Shubham had been passionate about teaching since childhood but could never muster the courage to follow it due to his lack of confidence in public speaking. Soon, he completed his engineering degree and was placed as an analyst in a multinational company.
His job provided him with various opportunities for getting industry exposure but he still had a persistent curiosity and interest in teaching and contemplated switching his career. However, he wanted to take an informed decision before doing anything about it. So, he decided to explore teaching through a virtual internship along with his job.
After sending in a few internship applications online, he was finally selected for a content development internship where he had to prepare video lectures based on programming concepts and other computer science subjects like the theory of computation and graph theory.
By the end of the second month of his internship, he became quite popular among students and gained confidence in his teaching abilities. Now, he knew for sure that teaching was his true calling and so, he decided to quit his job to pursue a full-time career in teaching.
Many students like Shubham, when taking the decision regarding the career path to pursue, either can’t follow their true passions due to the lack of guidance or aren’t even aware of their real interests at such an early stage of their lives. This is the reason why many of them decide to switch their careers after graduation or after a few years of doing a job.
Not happy with what they are currently doing and looking for a change in their professional lives, many of them simply go for MBAs. However, this could prove to be an expensive mistake if you do not have a perspective beforehand and later, realize that management is not your calling.
So, what should you do instead? Well, the answer is simple – do an internship! Why? When you decide to make a career shift, there could be two possible scenarios – You have a certain career path in mind to go for but you are not really aware of what it truly holds for you or you are not happy with your present line of profession but you also don’t know what profession will be the most suitable for you.
In both the cases, internships can prove to be extremely helpful in making an informed career switch decision. Talking about the first scenario, let’s say, you are currently working as a software developer but graphic designing fascinates you.
So, you quit your job and take up a graphic design position but later find out that you don’t have the right aptitude for it and the profession isn’t congruent to your expectations. You’ll feel stuck again, right? Here, taking up an internship would have been a wise choice because it requires short-term commitments, usually ranging from 1 to 6 months.
An internship lets you test the waters before you take a deep dive into an entirely new professional channel. This statement stays true for both the cases. Now, let’s talk about the second scenario. Suppose, you are doing a well-paying 9 to 5 job but your heart is not into it. You don’t enjoy your work and want to shift your career to some other profession but don’t have any direction to proceed in.
Here, internships provide you with the opportunity to explore different professions for a small period of 1-3 months. You could pursue multiple internships in various fields to get a perspective on diverse professions and experiment your way to find your true calling.
So, if you are not happy with your current line of work and wish to switch your career, do not take a rash decision and change your job or do an MBA. Think through it, research well, and explore your options with internships as they’ll let you test your abilities and check if the new profession fulfills your expectations or not.
(Disclaimer: This is a guest post submitted on Techstory by Sarvesh Agarwal, founder, and CEO of Internshala – an internship and training platform. All the contents and images in the article have been provided to Techstory by the author of the article. Techstory is not responsible or liable for any content in this article.)