9 Benefits of Working With a Career Coach

Do you need the assitance of a career coach to find your dream job?

Your job search can become so opaque that you do not know what to do next. 

Your career seems like it is stuck in the mud.

You are so frazzled by stress that even the most straightforward decisions paralyze you.

You may benefit from working with a professional career coach.

If you have the funds to enable this, the investment comes with many benefits:

Shaping your career direction

Many early job searches can feel like you are drowning in a sea of possibilities. Any job search requires 100% of your energy, but when you are not set on a defined direction, you risk exhausting yourself before narrowing down your options. 

Sit down with an experienced guide who can help shape the direction of your search. They understand the mental torment of feeling that everything is possible while simultaneously fearing that nothing is. Making progress in the “right” direction will fuel your efforts.

Emotional support

There are many sources of emotional support for a job seeker, but few of them come without strings. Investing in a professional coach means working with someone there to support your professional and emotional well-being.

Too many job seekers feel a PTSD-type of dread well up inside them when they start a job search. Choosing a caring career coach will help to calm the emotional storms and enable you to make rational and considered decisions.

Accountability

Binge-watching Netflix and “taking it easy for a while” is a comfort to most job seekers, but if you are only accountable to yourself, you risk not making the most of your available time. Career coaches can help you to focus on what matters.

Our natural reaction after a traumatic job loss is to be kind to ourselves. It can often go the other way…. Career coaches know what we are capable of and should (ideally) drive us to make the very most of our opportunities. They know when to crack the whip.

Career coach value

Immediate tactical advice

Most job seekers will only call on a career coach when they are some way into their job searches. They didn’t have the immediate success they were hoping for and realized there is more to a job search than sending off a few CVs.

By this stage, they may already be making some fundamental mistakes. A seasoned career coach can parachute into the midst of a job search and troubleshoot. Such valuable tactical advice can immediately set their client back onto the right path.

Longer-term planning

In the immediate rush to secure the next salary, longer-term plans tend to take a back seat, but a job search is often the only time that radical change can be enacted. Most job seekers struggle with seeing what the next year brings, let alone five years down the track.

Career coaches have worked with hundreds and maybe thousands of people in a similar situation, and they understand the long-term ramifications of job search decisions. Step back and ponder whether your choices will lead to a future where you are flourishing.

Interview practice

All career coaches measure success by how quickly you get an offer for your dream role. If you lack experience in interviews, it is in their interest to offer some tips to improve your outcomes. You can never get enough interview practice. You only get one chance.

While recruiters might give you some interview coaching (as they are financially invested in your success), career coaches will know you so much better as a person. A practice interview with a career coach who is an expert in your industry is ideal preparation.

Coach guidance

Honest feedback

Now, this one might hurt. Career coaches can give you some of the most upsetting even soul-destroying feedback. Family and friends will skirt around your shortcomings for fear of hurting your feelings, but career coaches know that they need to be brutally honest.

If you want to change and become someone new, you need to strip back some of the stuff that hasn’t served you well in the past. Much as you might not want to admit it. A career coach can help you to identify the flaws that need to be rectified.

Process and productivity

Most job searches are a disorganized mess of spinning plates and missed opportunities. Crazy busy job seekers do not make good decisions. Career coaches can help to introduce processes and planning to make a job search maximally productive.

The key to job search productivity is to ask yourself whether each activity is worth doing. Just because you are invited to a second interview doesn’t mean you must attend. Evaluate everything. Follow a process. Cut down on what isn’t worth doing.

Personal brand development

Lastly, career coaches understand all too well about the value of a personal brand on social media. That is how they find new business, but a job seeker’s social footprint is an extension of their real-world presence. Every employer will judge them on their activity.

Career coaches can offer the latest personal branding advice and share the latest social media advice. Job seekers should make the most of LinkedIn, so this impartial advice can cut through the confusing mass of “thought leadership.”

***

This blog is shared with Job Seeker Duetists. 

Written by former recruitment ghostwriter Paul Drury (not AI).