Definitions. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word “career” as a person’s “course or progress through life (or a distinct portion of life)”. This definition relates “career” to a range of aspects of an individual’s life, learning, and work.
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It’s no secret that it’s still a pretty tough job market out there—both for people who are completely without work and those who have jobs but certainly not the dream careers that they desire.
Our expert career coach will sit with to uncover the art and science of career counseling—as well as to better understand how a career coach can help prep you to compete against millions of fellow job-seekers
Career coaching with Laurel & Tercel
We approach it as a discipline comprised of two similar but distinct tracks: coaching and counseling. The goal is to support you in making informed decisions about your career development and trajectory, as well as offer various tools that you can use to meet your goals.
Our “career coaching” is a solution-oriented approach, which involves working with you to see what concrete steps you can take to achieve your career objectives. “Counseling,” however, is more process driven—we look at whether there are any behavioral, emotional or psychological issues that could be impeding a person’s desired career ambitions.
But the core virtue of our career coaching is to help you assess your professional situations with a greater degree of honesty, curiosity, empathy and compassion.
Our career coaching package includes:
- Identifying Transferable Skills
- Networking & Information Interviews
- Reviewing Résumés & Cover Letters
- Job Search Strategies
- Preparing for Interviews & Following Up
- Negotiating Compensation
- Ongoing Coaching Support
The most common misconceptions about career coaching
That a well-done résumé is all you need to conduct an effective job search—and that career coaches will actually find you a job. There’s also the popular notion that you only have to attend a single career-coaching session … and your job challenges will be resolved. It actually takes about one to two week of counseling for the typical client to begin internalizing the key benefits of coaching.
By and large, you can reasonably expect to gain career confidence, insight, encouragement and inspiration. The coaching relationship grants you some permission to relax a bit. The job search can create a fair amount of anxiety, fear and vulnerability in people, and we often work with you to unwrap those emotions so you can better understand how these factors may be keeping you stuck in your career.
There are also a number of assessments that career coaches can use to help you, such as personality tests, interest inventories, accomplishment exercises that identify what you are most proud of and job-description analyses that can pinpoint the kind of work and workplaces that are the best fit for you.
At what point in a person’s professional life is career coaching likely to be most useful?
While we believe that career coaching can be helpful at every point of your professional path:
- Good career coaching in the early years of college or immediately post-college can put individuals on more solid footing—not just with a well-crafted résumé and a suitable career path, but also with a mindset that helps them understand that the career path of today is not as direct as it might have been in previous generations.
- Working employees tell us “I hate my job, but I don’t know what else I can do!” “I have no idea what I can do with my skills,” and “I need help pinpointing what exactly I want to do—and how to get there.
- Promoted employee with new position with new role and responsibilities that are not familiar for him
- Someone changing role in same organization: example a surgeon is assigned as a hospital manager. A first time CEO, Director, General Manager.
- Job-searchers anxious clients who express frustration with using social media, especially LinkedIn, as an aid in their career goals.
- A former stay-at-home mom who was motivated to return to work.
In my opinion, organizational culture is the greater factor. Zappos, LinkedIn and Google are all organizations that are proactive in fostering a positive, relaxed, non-hierarchical and generally enjoyable work environment. These companies encourage employees to do things beyond the work, whether it’s active volunteering, getting coaching or simply creating better work-life balance. All of these factors are bound to improve a person’s sense of work satisfaction, provided that they are in the right job to begin with.
The right candidate for career coaching
Someone who is open to new ideas, willing to step out of his or her comfort zone and motivated to embark on the work that makes up the job-search-and-career-change process. What’s more, a good client allows the coach to be a partner in that process. It’s actually essential because there are so many tricky steps along the way, whether it’s the tough job market or a very lengthy career change. So clients should reach out for as much help as possible—from the coach and from everyone else in their personal or professional networks—in order to succeed.
At what point might the usefulness of career coaching diminish?
There are certain factors that can impede the utility of the career-coaching process from the outset,
- Unchecked anxiety, depression, low self-confidence, fear or general resistance to change.
- If and when—for whatever reason—clients are no longer doing the work required to conduct a the coaching exercises or make the desired change, the utility of career coaching will also decrease.
- Someone for some reason, he’s sabotaging the process by not heeding the coach’s advice to follow through the process effectively.
The “Golden Rule” of career satisfaction
If you are doing something you really, truly enjoy, it shouldn’t feel like work at all. Ideally, you should feel a sense of alignment between your work and your values. It’s only in that space of overlap—which may or may not relate to your sense of purpose in the world—that a genuine sense of career gratification or fulfillment becomes possible. If you want a job that brings fulfillment, then aligning your work with your values, strengths and abilities is essential.
For further information and bookings, contact our principle consultant, Iman Ousseyran, ousseyran.i@laurelandtercel.com or +971505536895
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