SPM Results - Good or bad it may NOT determine your future career path

It is the time of the year when all Malaysian 18-year olds are receiving their end of high school public examination results, better known as Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia or SPM. Yup, SPM is often viewed as a high school student's future decider, as in the direction they will take where their career path is concerned. For the excellent achievers, there will be not much problems for them to decide what career to take up. Usually it would be the average and below-average students who would face more issues in deciding the career path they want to take.

However, as I was scanning the newspaper this morning, I noticed that some excellent achievers are also faced with the dilemma in deciding their career path. Often, the traditional career choices would be medicine, law and engineering. These career choices often give the idea to students and their parents that they would provide job security, big bucks and the so-called glamour attached to them. Out of the three reasons, most likely job security would be true and the latter two are most likely just disillusionment due to very stereotypical views about the said careers.

Choosing a career path after leaving high school is never that straightforward as most people would perceived it to be. Even for excellent achievers, let alone the average and below-average achievers. In fact, in the real world out there, many people I know are pursuing careers they would NEVER EVER dreamed of doing. But there are also people I know who are pursuing their careers of their choice.

At the end of the day it boils down to TWO most important factors when it comes to choosing the right career path after SPM - they are PASSION and INTEREST. If these two factors are not present when deciding a career choice, then it is better not to pursue it, as it is just a waste of time and effort, which are better off being used to pursue a career of choice. 

Big bucks would often be THE pull factor for a particular choice of career but without passion and interest, it would be just a job an individual would love to hate but he/she does it because of the money. This would defeat the purpose of spending the time and effort being trained for the job. Sad to say from my observation, this is the reality in the Malaysian job market today, a severe mismatch of job talents in many industries and areas of expertise, not to mention in the civil service.  Also, there are still some industries and areas of expertise that are not being properly explored, developed and be matched with the right talents.

At the end of the day, ideally all of us should be doing what we have passion and interest most, but if it doesn't turn out the way we hoped it to be all is not lost yet. Giving it the benefit of the doubt, there could be a silver lining behind those grey clouds hovering over the career/job we might hate doing.

And to those SPM-ers of 2010 - congratulations to all of you, all of you deserved a pat on the back for all the hard work you have put in regardless the results you have obtained. I hope all of you will have a successful future in the career of your choice.