A school told me proudly: "We invite guest speakers for career sessions throughout the year." My first question was — do you have any data on what happened next?

Last week I spoke to several rural school principals about career guidance. One replied with genuine enthusiasm — they were running guest speaker sessions on careers, all year long. I appreciated the intent. But then I asked the harder question.

Imagine a guest speaker tells students: "Biomedical Engineering is a great field — go for it!" But no one tells them which exam to prepare for. Which college in India is best. What the eligibility criteria are. What the job market looks like. The student goes home excited — and then lost.

Schools need to ask themselves: After every session, are we tracking which students showed interest? Did they research further? Did they prepare for that stream? Did they enroll? Without this data, you cannot measure impact — and without impact measurement, you cannot improve.

Career guidance must be a living, 365-day process — with counsellors, structured sessions, student interest mapping, exam awareness workshops, and a proper reporting framework. That's what transforms a session into a life-changing outcome for a rural student.