Gartner survey finds that just 46% of employees are satisfied with their career development.
Building a career is not easy. Maintaining a career is equally challenging. And this remains true whether you’re a university graduate or a corporate professional. Happily, the way we think about careers can be shifted for the better with available, easy-to-try tools and expert guidance. Career coaching exists to give you those tools and hand in career development. Thus, we will start by clarifying its meaning.
What is career coaching?
Career coaching is about hands-on techniques for enhancing your professional life—to be satisfied with your career, be recognized, achieve professional and financial goals, and uncover hidden potential.
Let’s consider career coaching services a compass in the job market landscape. Here is how you can benefit from career coaching when you are lost:
- Align the compass with the north. Acknowledge your career obstacles: meaningless job, financial anxiety, poor work-life balance, or anything related.
- Orient the compass to your position. Identify your career expectations, whether setting professional goals, transitioning to a new career, or improving the workplace environment.
- Find the desired direction of travel. Determine a career path with interests, strengths, skills, and learning opportunities.
- Match your travel direction with the north. Work on a career plan, set meaningful objectives, and try coaching exercises to reflect on your approach and needs.
- Check your path using landmarks. Track progress on the career roadmap. Small, measured steps will eventually lead you to the targeted destination.
At any step of finding the way, it’s natural to be uncertain, frustrated, or stuck. A certified career coach can consult, support, or fully guide you through the career path. This leads to the question: who exactly is a career coach, and why should you consider working with one?
Who is a career coach?
A career coach is a professional who assists in achieving career goals. They work with you to overcome career challenges and tailor a unique career plan that fits your strengths, lifestyle, and aspirations.
Here are the areas career coaches often engage in.
Preparing for a job application
Laying the foundation is everything. The cover letter and resume must be accurate, well-structured, and capture the employer’s attention on the experience required for the specific role. A career coach ensures your application materials reflect those.
To stand out, showcasing what impact you make at work is a must-have. A career coach offers an objective view of how much you can bring to the table, along with:
- Crafting or refining cover letter and resume
- Filling in the LinkedIn profile or a profile on any other recruitment platform
- Participating in a desired job searching
- Preparing for interviews
- Building or improving communication skills
- Expanding network and valuable contacts for professional connections
Navigating a career transition
You believe you can do much more. Your current career is no longer fulfilling or aligned with who you are or want to be. You are passionate about your occupation, but professional frustration and lack of motivation started resonating.
Isn’t it the moment to explore new horizons?
When it comes to career change, the pressure of commitments and responsibilities might be too high to take a risk. And we understand how tough this is for you. Looking for an entirely new field, like going from corporate work to entrepreneurship or moving from one industry to another, seems promising but also scary. To clear your doubts and fears, a career counselor will aim at keeping the process straightforward, time-efficient, and certainly smooth while:
- Assessing interests, strengths, and skills
- Setting career goals
- Creating a tailored career plan with a strategy toward targeted positions
Shining in a current role
A professional career coach isn’t only about getting you hired somewhere new. They are likewise proficient in growing and flourishing your best self in a current career.
Achieve your work-life balance
Balancing work and personal life keeps you productive, enthusiastic, and on track to reach your goals without sacrificing relationships, health, and well-being. If work consumes all your time and pushes what truly matters to the back seat, it can leave you exhausted and stuck in a cycle of endless repetition, with long-term effects if not addressed early on.
Nice to meet you, confidence
In addition to working hours, salary and benefits go hand in hand, and more importantly—the confidence to communicate when you feel underpaid or your benefits package isn’t competitive.
Through career coaching sessions, you rediscover your worth as a professional and the value of your experience. A career coach particularly affects the picture by:
- Guiding on how to negotiate effectively for promotions, salary raises, and other benefits
- Looking for training and skills-up courses
- Fixing unhealthy work-life balance, breaking the burnout cycle, and setting boundaries
- Boosting self-esteem and handling imposter syndrome
Working with a career coach in today’s competitive job market gives you an advantage in reaching your full potential and succeeding in your career. They are your pillow of support in times when you aren’t sure what you want to do and how to do it.
Try self-coaching exercises for your career development
At Amy, we strive to give people as many valuable tools from our vast experience as possible.
We believe that career coaching is here for you as a practical resource for embracing a true calling, whether you are worried that you are not progressing in your career, feeling stuck in a dead-end job, or are underappreciated.
Check our library of free self-coaching exercises and be ready to enjoy long-lasting results.