What Is Career Coaching?

Career coaching can help individuals with a variety of career and work issues. On full career coaching programmes they help you understand yourself from a career and work perspective enabling you to make smart decisions and making sure you are moving in the right career direction. You can work with a career coach over a series of meetings either informally or following a particular career coaching model and they can help you put together your career goals and ensure you are clear and focused about what next.

Career coaching is not just looking at your options; a career coach can also help you put together a successful job search campaign. Once you have established what your next role will be, a coach can work with you on areas such as:

• Devising a CV to target the roles you are applying for
• Practical interview training
• Support on cover letters, application forms and how to tackle the unadvertised job market
• How to network effectively and how best to use social media in your job search
• How to manage recruitment agencies and head-hunters

Career coaching is not only targeted at senior executives, many career management companies work with graduates helping them to get on the career ladder. Career coaches generally do not specialise in any particular sector or industry they are experts in helping you to make smart decisions about what next and how to market and sell yourself effectively to get the job that you want and quicker.

If you have no desire to leave your company but would like to move up in your career, career coaching can help you to explore the options of career development within your organisation. Your career coach will help you to establish the right role for you and help you to negotiate a job offer.

If you have been made redundant your organisation may offer career coaching as part of your redundancy package, this is called outplacement. Outplacement programmes provide that emotional and practical support needed at a time of uncertainty, the support from a career coach will help you through the challenging time when looking for a job.

It is important you choose the career coach that is right for you, as this is an unregulated market you should compare 2/3 companies, ask for recommendations and check the credentials of the career coach you are going to be working with.  Many people call themselves career coaches but are often are only qualified as a generalist coach. For in-depth exploratory work, career counselling is a very powerful technique. If more job search focus is required check how current they are in the latest job search strategies. Someone who may have been in recruitment, or was a senior manager 10 years ago, may be out of date for today’s job market.

Career coaching companies will often offer a free introductory to find out more. It is important to meet with the company before signing up to a career coaching programme to find out more about the company, its services and coaching team.

Bio:

Corinne Mills is MD of Personal Career Management, www.personalcareermanagement.com the UK’s No.1 provider of career management and outplacement services and author of the UK’s number 1 bestselling CV book “You’re Hired! CV: How to write a brilliant CV”. She writes career advice articles for the Guardian and Monster and regularly appears on television and radio as a careers expert, including BBC Breakfast, Working Lunch, ITV Daybreak, The Politics Show, BBC Radio 5 Live, Radio 2 and the BBC World Service.