What Is A Career Coach?
We hear this question a lot. What is a Career Coach? A Career Coach is someone who helps a professional get a job, keep a job, and advance in their career. Here is everything you should know about what a career coach does, when they help and who they help.
Who do career coaches work with?
Most professionals reach out to career coaches when they’re at the start of a job search process: maybe they’ve just graduated college; maybe they’re looking for a new role, or a whole new path. Some professionals ask a career coach to help with identifying their career direction, while others want the coach to help them get promoted with their current employers.
What does a career coach do?
Career Coaches need to understand all of those aspects of a job life cycle. Here is a short list of things a great career coach does and where they add a lot of value:
Identify career direction so that job seekers have clarity on the role that is best aligned with their skills and talents
Create appropriately stunning resumes so that recruiters and hiring managers understand the professional—and can’t wait to talk with them
Revise LinkedIn profiles so that recruiters find them and reach out to them for the right types of jobs, even if the professional is in a stealth-search
Create a networking strategy so that the professional is leveraging their best connections
Teach professionals how to nail an interview, so that companies are clamouring after the professional to join their team
Assist with negotiating salaries so professionals do not leave anything on the table and do not come across as a jerk
Help the professional shine during the first 90 days of a new role, so their manager says that they’re one of the best hires ever
Help the professional navigate the internal workings of the organization so they’re positioned for a secure role or for a promotion
Co-develop executive presence so that the professional is able to be seen and heard
Assist with mindset management, to overcome self-sabotaging negative self-talk and develop stronger personal grit
But the single biggest tool in the arsenal of a great career coach is the ability to hold the professional accountable for getting all of their items completed. Most professionals find it easier to help others than to help themselves. That’s where we come in. Your career coach is there for you, a partner in your professional development who can create the space for you to become your professional best.