Choosing right career option for hotel management students

Blog by Divya Thakur

All > Hotel Management > Choosing right career option for hotel management students

1 like

Please login to like this article.

Choosing right career option for hotel management students

Divya Thakur

Asst Professor

Banarsidas Chandiwala Institute of Hotel Management.

Everyone has a dream of what he/she wants to be, in the early stages of their life. We might have heard from a lot of kids that they want to be a doctor as their father is from the same profession. But as they grow up, they realize the changes in their interest and diversity in choosing their career path.

To choose the best option for them, one has to face a great deal of pressure from families, colleagues, education system and culture. It seems very difficult that one has to pick one career path and stick with it until he/she retire. They need a right advice to find a job that does it all: engages the talents, makes plenty of money, opportunity to grow and maintaining work life balance.

In a country, like India, where parents celebrate their child's achievements, why do over 60 per cent of our graduates feel anxious about their future?

In a research conducted on Harvard Business School (HBS), It is found that even graduates from recognized educational institutions in India face major gaps, resulting in them being unprepared for their careers.

In most of the professions, students are not exposed to internships through-out their college experience and so they are not able experiment, gain mentorship, and learn practical skills on the job. This makes the students first job the first time they have ever worked. Whereas in hospitality, students undergo six months of industrial training and sometimes vocational training, which helps them to choose their area of interest. They understand the work pressure, learn professionalism, choose the best department for them and they can fit themselves to be the master of one stream.

When students join a hotel management Institute, majorly they want to opt Food production as their career option but it changes when they join the Industry. There has been seen many cases, where students have changed and make up their mind during the training in Hotels and choose a relevant area for them, and of course develop a passion toward it. And also, majority of students keep Front office, Sales and Marketing and Food and Beverage Service as their right Choice due to Salary, lively environment and growth.

Whereas it has also been found that students treat training and interviews conducted by hotels as the most demotivational factor, in finding the right career option. The training should be planned in such a way that students are exposed to all the departments rather than putting them as per the department?s requirement. Students must be allowed to stand at reception, take orders in the restaurant, make rooms and work in the kitchen, so that they can find out the right area of interest.

The gap leads students unplanned about their future and asked to join another department in the interviews. Hotels and Hospitality institutes must train the students like Hoteliers and must provide a platform to learn skills on supervision of a staff. We must develop the personality of students and make them realize their goal, which not only suits their personality but help them to become a good hotelier too.