The biggest decision you'll ever make is what career path to follow. The decision you make coming out of high school will effect the rest of your life. There are thousands of people out there who work in retail stores or auto body shops who spend their days wondering if they would have been happier as dentists in Mississauga or a river guides on the Colorado. Don't let that be you. Let yourself feel the weight of this momentous decision and if you find that it's too much, don't be afraid to visit the experts for help with career counseling.

Career counseling is a relatively new profession. While there's a certain social stigma attached to counseling or therapy, don't let that keep you from seeing a career counselor. Career counselors are trained to analyze your personality and skill set and to help you figure out what it is that you want to do with your life. A counselor might be able to help you discover that your obsession with gold bullion prices would serve you well as a bank funds manager or a stock broker or a business journalist, whereas you only considered it as a hobby before.

The important thing to realize before going in for career counseling is that your counselor will not size you up and then tell you what you should be doing with your life. You may want it to be that easy, but this isn't a decision that someone else can make for you. Your counselor will get you to do exercises and homework and research and answer questions on your feelings about everything from sewage pumps to how your family would react if you told them you were going to pursue your dream career. The point of all of this is to gently prod you into your own realization about where you want to be in life.

The decision about which career path to follow, however, is only half the battle. Once you've decided you want to become a film distributor or a cattle stockman or a pipe fitter, you can't just turn up and take the job. In most cases you'll need training, and in all cases you'll need to know where to look for jobs in your field. Your career counselor can provide you with this information. He or she can give you requirements for a career in Toronto CD replication and tell you which schools teach it, which gives you a starting point.

So how do you find a career counselor? Most high schools have one, although they're rarely up to the standards of real professionals. Comparing them is like comparing high tech automatic waterers to an old bucket. Better choices are career counselors who work for universities, job banks, or for professional employment services firms.