National Convention of Career Counsellors in Delhi on August 23

New Delhi, Aug 18

The All India Convention of Career Counsellors (AICCC-2025) will be held at Aerocity, New Delhi, on August 23. Organised by the Association of Professional Career Counsellors of India (APCCI), the event comes at a critical time, as demand for career guidance rises sharply with the emergence of new-age careers, even as access and infrastructure remain limited.

APCCI is India’s first non-profit professional body of trained and certified career counsellors. The one-day convention is expected to bring together over 200 participants from across the country, mostly career counsellors along with educators, researchers, policymakers, and CSR heads.

The theme for this year’s conclave is “Access to Professional Career Guidance in Educational Institutions - A Pathway to Viksit Bharat @2047.” Sessions will address policy gaps and implementation challenges in the career guidance ecosystem.

India currently faces a severe shortfall of qualified career counsellors. Against a projected requirement of nearly 14–15 lakh professionals to meet international norms, only a small fraction of certified practitioners are currently active. In government schools and rural areas, the number of students per counsellor is often far beyond recommended levels, and most schools, especially in rural regions, continue to operate without any formal career guidance services.

“This scale of mismatch is no longer sustainable, especially when new-age careers are emerging and trends are shifting rapidly,” said Naren Verma, Executive Chairman, APCCI. “To build a Viksit Bharat, we must invest in professional career guidance ecosystem that reaches every student, not just the privileged few,” he said.

The programme includes keynote addresses, expert panels, white paper presentations, and curated sessions on best practices. A felicitation ceremony will honour career guidance experts who have made outstanding contributions to the field.

Sessions will also examine the structural and social barriers limiting access to career guidance services, particularly in rural and underserved areas. Delegates will explore how technology and AI can help scale outreach.

The convention aligns with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which advocates age-appropriate career guidance from the middle school level. While many urban schools have adopted such practices, outreach in rural areas remains minimal. The focus is to have greater opportunities for students and youth from marginalised rural communities to access formal career counselling, as the current access remains very limited.

EoM.