Poonam Sharma Shah: Empowering Personalized Career Guidance for Students & Professionals
Poonam Sharma Shah, Founder, Aspire Career Planning
In today's fast-paced and ever-evolving job market, the guidance of an effective career coach is more important than ever. A career coach helps individuals navigate their professional paths, providing insights and support to ensure they make informed decisions about their future. The right coach can transform a confusing career journey into a strategic roadmap, preventing common pitfalls and helping clients achieve their full potential.
Poonam Sharma Shah, Founder of Aspire Career Planning, embodies the profound impact a career coach can have. Her own career story is a testament to the value of expert guidance. Poonam’s journey began with a series of decisions made more out of necessity and influence than passion or interest. Despite her excellent academic performance, she chose commerce to follow a friend's path, not her own interests. Her subsequent MBA and career in sales and marketing were driven by external expectations rather than personal fulfillment.
Despite achieving professional success and recognition, Poonam felt increasingly dissatisfied. It wasn’t until she took a career break during her pregnancy that she began to explore her true interests. She dabbled in freelance HR strategies, blogged about parenting and life, and discovered a genuine fascination with human behavior. This self-discovery led her to career counseling, where she found her true calling and established Aspire Career Planning with the intent of providing unbiased, updated & correct guidance to students & parents in their career journey based on their unique personality, interests & abilities, allaying their fears and helping them build focus & confidence.
Today, through Aspire Career Planning, Poonam helps others avoid the trial-and-error route she experienced. Her personal journey allows her to connect deeply with students, parents, and professionals, offering advice and support without bias.
Her mission is to guide others in making thoughtful career choices, saving them time and money, and leading them towards careers that bring fulfillment and joy. Poonam’s story is a powerful reminder of the difference a skilled career coach can make in shaping a satisfying professional life.
Personalized Career Roadmap for Students
At Aspire Career Planning, the goal is to provide students and parents with personalized, relevant advice that offers clear guidance for their career journey. The process follows a structured, three-step approach. First, the student completes a form, followed by a pre-counseling session where Poonam Sharma Shah engages in a detailed conversation with them. This helps her understand the student's interests, aspirations, and background, allowing her to add a human element to the career assessment. The student then takes a five-dimensional career assessment test, and its results are combined with insights from the pre-counseling session.
Based on this, Poonam prepares a comprehensive, detailed career roadmap, complete with top recommendations and all necessary information. During the final counseling session, she explains the report, discusses career options, and answers any lingering questions. By the end of these sessions, students gain absolute clarity, focus, and confidence in their chosen path.
Poonam emphasizes that building a career roadmap requires understanding the individual, staying updated with the latest trends in the job market, and having in-depth knowledge of educational opportunities. Most students often choose the wrong careers due to peer or parental pressure, or simply because they lack up-to-date information on courses and entry requirements.
Aspire Career Planning stands out by combining thes factors to create a highly personalized roadmap that addresses all aspects of career planning, including stream, subject, college, course, career, and skills. This thorough, one-point document is designed to guide students and parents through their entire career decision-making process.
“In today’s tech-driven highly competitive times, the most important advice that I give to all my students & professionals is - Don’t limit your learning to only what is taught in the books. There is so much knowledge available outside and so much you can learn outside your school. Participate in events, take initiative, create something, take online courses, follow your hobbies. Be ready to unlearn & re-learn”, speaks Poonam.
"Poonam’s story is a powerful reminder of the difference a skilled career coach can make in shaping a satisfying professional life"
Enhancing Careers with Tailored Assessments and Ongoing Support
Aspire Career Planning provides a comprehensive career assessment test that evaluates critical skills such as social, logical, leadership, and verbal abilities. This assessment is integral to the counseling process, helping to align these skills with the most suitable career paths and identify any skill gaps. For instance, if a student lacks social and cooperative skills, the roadmap will include strategies to enhance empathy, encourage networking, and broaden their perspectives. The emphasis is on pushing students out of their comfort zones to try new experiences, which often proves effective but can be daunting.
Counseling extends beyond the initial sessions, with ongoing support available for admissions, upskilling, resume building, and interview preparation. The true reward for Poonam Sharma Shah and her team comes from witnessing students' successes, whether they excel in exams, gain admission to their desired colleges, or secure their dream jobs.
Aspire Career Planning is in its early stages but aims to become a leading career counseling service in the country. While Poonam is dedicated to personally guiding students, future plans include expanding services to include profile building, internships, and skills development. The commitment is to provide continuous, personalized support that ensures students achieve long-term career satisfaction and success.
"At Aspire, our mission is to empower school students, graduates, and professionals to reach their career and educational goals with integrity and relevance. We are dedicated to providing ethical and accurate information to support their important career decisions. We recognize that each individual has unique qualities, personalities, and interests, and believe that career paths should be customized to address these personal attributes. Our approach emphasizes personalization—creating tailored career plans that build confidence and are practical, with clear, manageable goals to prevent overwhelm and track progress effectively. We also encourage clients to explore careers and engage in short courses to ensure their decisions are informed by their own experiences, even as we guide them through the process”, signs off Poonam.
Poonam Sharma Shah, Founder of Aspire Career Planning, embodies the profound impact a career coach can have. Her own career story is a testament to the value of expert guidance. Poonam’s journey began with a series of decisions made more out of necessity and influence than passion or interest. Despite her excellent academic performance, she chose commerce to follow a friend's path, not her own interests. Her subsequent MBA and career in sales and marketing were driven by external expectations rather than personal fulfillment.
Despite achieving professional success and recognition, Poonam felt increasingly dissatisfied. It wasn’t until she took a career break during her pregnancy that she began to explore her true interests. She dabbled in freelance HR strategies, blogged about parenting and life, and discovered a genuine fascination with human behavior. This self-discovery led her to career counseling, where she found her true calling and established Aspire Career Planning with the intent of providing unbiased, updated & correct guidance to students & parents in their career journey based on their unique personality, interests & abilities, allaying their fears and helping them build focus & confidence.
Today, through Aspire Career Planning, Poonam helps others avoid the trial-and-error route she experienced. Her personal journey allows her to connect deeply with students, parents, and professionals, offering advice and support without bias.
Her mission is to guide others in making thoughtful career choices, saving them time and money, and leading them towards careers that bring fulfillment and joy. Poonam’s story is a powerful reminder of the difference a skilled career coach can make in shaping a satisfying professional life.
Personalized Career Roadmap for Students
At Aspire Career Planning, the goal is to provide students and parents with personalized, relevant advice that offers clear guidance for their career journey. The process follows a structured, three-step approach. First, the student completes a form, followed by a pre-counseling session where Poonam Sharma Shah engages in a detailed conversation with them. This helps her understand the student's interests, aspirations, and background, allowing her to add a human element to the career assessment. The student then takes a five-dimensional career assessment test, and its results are combined with insights from the pre-counseling session.
Based on this, Poonam prepares a comprehensive, detailed career roadmap, complete with top recommendations and all necessary information. During the final counseling session, she explains the report, discusses career options, and answers any lingering questions. By the end of these sessions, students gain absolute clarity, focus, and confidence in their chosen path.
Poonam emphasizes that building a career roadmap requires understanding the individual, staying updated with the latest trends in the job market, and having in-depth knowledge of educational opportunities. Most students often choose the wrong careers due to peer or parental pressure, or simply because they lack up-to-date information on courses and entry requirements.
Aspire Career Planning stands out by combining thes factors to create a highly personalized roadmap that addresses all aspects of career planning, including stream, subject, college, course, career, and skills. This thorough, one-point document is designed to guide students and parents through their entire career decision-making process.
“In today’s tech-driven highly competitive times, the most important advice that I give to all my students & professionals is - Don’t limit your learning to only what is taught in the books. There is so much knowledge available outside and so much you can learn outside your school. Participate in events, take initiative, create something, take online courses, follow your hobbies. Be ready to unlearn & re-learn”, speaks Poonam.
"Poonam’s story is a powerful reminder of the difference a skilled career coach can make in shaping a satisfying professional life"
Enhancing Careers with Tailored Assessments and Ongoing Support
Aspire Career Planning provides a comprehensive career assessment test that evaluates critical skills such as social, logical, leadership, and verbal abilities. This assessment is integral to the counseling process, helping to align these skills with the most suitable career paths and identify any skill gaps. For instance, if a student lacks social and cooperative skills, the roadmap will include strategies to enhance empathy, encourage networking, and broaden their perspectives. The emphasis is on pushing students out of their comfort zones to try new experiences, which often proves effective but can be daunting.
Counseling extends beyond the initial sessions, with ongoing support available for admissions, upskilling, resume building, and interview preparation. The true reward for Poonam Sharma Shah and her team comes from witnessing students' successes, whether they excel in exams, gain admission to their desired colleges, or secure their dream jobs.
Aspire Career Planning is in its early stages but aims to become a leading career counseling service in the country. While Poonam is dedicated to personally guiding students, future plans include expanding services to include profile building, internships, and skills development. The commitment is to provide continuous, personalized support that ensures students achieve long-term career satisfaction and success.
"At Aspire, our mission is to empower school students, graduates, and professionals to reach their career and educational goals with integrity and relevance. We are dedicated to providing ethical and accurate information to support their important career decisions. We recognize that each individual has unique qualities, personalities, and interests, and believe that career paths should be customized to address these personal attributes. Our approach emphasizes personalization—creating tailored career plans that build confidence and are practical, with clear, manageable goals to prevent overwhelm and track progress effectively. We also encourage clients to explore careers and engage in short courses to ensure their decisions are informed by their own experiences, even as we guide them through the process”, signs off Poonam.
