Career Coaching for Students
Career coaching is an excellent investment for anyone who wants control of the trajectory their career is taking.
Perhaps you've just graduated college or are about to graduate and want to get onto the first rung of the career ladder.
Perhaps you're looking for an internship, or a worthwhile, satisfying job.
Career Coaching empowers you, gives you a competitive advantage, and helps reduce stress
Whatever your circumstances, career coaching offers help in three main areas.
1. Career Coaching can help you come to a clearer sense of what it is you want from a job and a career, and help you determine what career paths this suggests, along with understanding your own strengths, and having a clearer sense of your ambitions. This self-knowledge is an essential first step to a rewarding career – a career that will enrich every aspect of your life.
2. Career Coaching will help you develop the skills and strategies that make for successful job-hunting. Once you know what kind of jobs you want, the next step is to find them, and to make sure that employers notice your efforts. Knowing where to look for jobs, and how to craft a resume that gives you the real opportunity to compete for them, involve skills that few people have had any reason or opportunity to develop...until the need arises.
3. Career Coaching can help you with the messaging and delivery that will put you in the best possible position to convince employers to give you the job you want. From targeted cover letters to preparing for interviews, to finding the right way of expressing your qualities and skills to potential employers. These are things a career coach can help you with.
When it comes to all the practical skills involved in finding and getting a job, an experienced coach can act as a mentor, guide and resource.
Career Coaching for High School Students, College Students and College Graduates
It's a sad fact that a good education doesn't guarantee you a good job – certainly not the great job you're looking for. It takes practical know-how and hard work to turn a degree into a job. And even when you excel in the hard work department, that's where career coaching comes in.
A career coach can offer you advice and help in finding and getting your ideal job by helping you clarify what exactly you want from a job and a career, and what sort of job best fits your talents, education and individual personality. A career coach can be a valuable ally in the task of finding jobs to apply to; there are far more jobs out there than you think. Career Coaching can help you develop the many skills that successful job-hunting demands - from writing a resume that stands out from the crowd, to nailing interviews, to maximizing the potential of networking.
A skilled career coach can be an effective motivator and supporter when the task of finding a really good job seems daunting or impossible. Please contact us to learn more.
Career Coaching Services
Career Coaching
- Career Coaching for High School Students
- Career Coaching for College Students and Recent College Graduates
- Career Coaching for Adults
The Benefits of Career Coaching
Career coaching is an excellent investment of time, money and effort for anyone who wants control of the trajectory their career is taking. Perhaps you've just graduated, or are just about to graduate, and want to get onto the first rung of the career ladder. Perhaps you're looking for a better job, a more worthwhile or satisfying job.
Whatever your circumstances, career coaching offers you help in three main areas. First, it can help you come to a clearer sense of what it is you want from a job and a career, and help you determine what career paths this suggests, along with understanding your own strengths, and having a clearer sense of your ambitions. This self-knowledge is an essential first step to a rewarding career – a career that will enrich every aspect of your life.
Second, career coaching will help you develop the skills and strategies that make for successful job-hunting. Once you know what kind of jobs you want, the next step is to find them, and to make sure that employers notice your efforts. Knowing where to look for jobs, and how to craft a resume that gives you the real opportunity to compete for them, involve skills that few people have had any reason or opportunity to develop...until the need arises.
Finally, career coaching can help you with the messaging and delivery that will put you in the best possible position to convince employers to give you the job you want. From targeted cover letters to preparing for interviews, to finding the right way of expressing your qualities and skills to potential employers. These are things a career coach can help you with.
When it comes to all the practical skills involved in finding and getting your dream job, an experienced coach can act as a mentor, guide and resource.
Career Coaching for High School Students, College Students and College Graduates
It's a sad fact that a good education doesn't guarantee you a good job – certainly not the great job you're looking for. It takes practical know-how and hard work to turn a degree into a dream job. And even when you excel in the hard work department, that's where career coaching comes in.
A career coach can offer you advice and help in finding and getting your ideal job by helping you clarify what exactly you want from a job and a career, and what sort of job best fits your talents, education and individual personality. A career coach can be a valuable ally in the task of finding jobs to apply to; there are far more jobs out there than you think. Career Coaching can help you develop the many skills that successful job-hunting demands - from writing a resume that stands out from the crowd, to nailing interviews, to maximizing the potential of networking.
A skilled career coach can be an effective motivator and supporter when the task of finding a really good job seems daunting or impossible. Please contact us to learn more.
Career Testing and Interest Assessments
Finding a good job can be stressful. That makes it important to know you're focused on the right kind of jobs – jobs that match your expectations and your talents and skills. There is a wide variety of tools available to those who want a more objective sense of their abilities and aptitudes, interests and personality, and what these mean for their choice of careers. Tools like these are products of decades of empirical analysis and improvement, and when they're taken and interpreted under the guidance of an experienced career coach, they can prove highly effective for anyone seeking greater clarity about their choice of careers.
Job Search Strategy
Resumes, cover letters, applications, online strategies
A compelling resume and effective, targeted cover letters are crucial tools in the fight for the best jobs. Some employers can easily receive thousands of applications a year, and haven't got the time to interview more than a fraction of applicants. They employ 'weapons of mass rejection' to cull applications, and knowing how to avoid the cut is essential. The attrition rate among resumes is why it's important to go beyond the resume, and learn how to use the growing range of online resources, including LinkedIn, to your best advantage.
Interview Coaching
Once you've passed the first hurdle, and created a resume that gets noticed and put in the small pile, the next step is an interview, or a series of interviews. If you're looking for your first career-trajectory job, the competition will be strong, so it's essential to put work into preparing for interviews; from knowing about the employer and understanding what they're looking for, to being able to answer those inevitable questions about your own interests clearly and authentically. If someone asks: 'what can you bring to our company', your answer will always be more convincing if you know what you can bring! And there are proven strategies for how to conduct yourself and not to conduct yourself in interviews. The mock interview is a proven technique for fine tuning everything from language and posture and dress codes, to how to answer a question, to how to ask one.
Preparing properly for an interview has a second advantage, the higher your level of preparation, the more relaxed and confident you'll be going into the interview, and the better sense of who you are the interviewers will get.
Many colleges and universities offer career advice, and there are products – from interactive software to series of inspirational videos – that promise to answer all the needs that a graduate brings to their first serious interviews. But nothing can compare with the individual attention that comes from a coach, and the years of experience they bring with them. Coaches don't default to cookie-cutter solutions; they help clients understand themselves, and to bring this understanding to everything from letter and interviews to the choice of career itself. And a coach is there for their clients in an ongoing capacity, when they need advice in their new job or about looking for another one.
Getting to Work at Getting Work
Finding a new job is a job, and never so much so as when you don't have a job. Good coaching will help you organize this job as efficiently and effectively as possible, helping you research opportunities, making sure your resume is the best possible reflection of your career to date, and that your cover letters speak to each potential employer.
The job of finding a job needs to be organized, with maximum efficiency and effectiveness. Coaching will help you make the best use of your time. It will make sure that you don't just send out five resumes a day, but send out five effective, tailored resumes, with letters that hit the bullseye with respect to each potential employer's expectations.
Interviews and Attitude
Self-knowledge is empowering when it comes time for interviews. So is preparation. What are the most likely potential interview questions you're likely to face? And what are your answers? Preparation like this, with the help of a coach, will help you concentrate on other important issues: what answer do they expect for that question? What if I surprise them and say this? The combination of relaxed confidence and active engagement is a winner every time. Confidence is a factor among the most important element you can bring to the search for a job, with the help of a coach, positivity.
With the help of a good coach, you have the power to turn a potentially stressful activity into one of the best. Effective career coaching can ensure that you never get caught in the vicious circle of self-doubt, avoidance and dread. Take stock, make a plan and get to work.
Time for a Change of Job or Career?
Ok. You have a job. But it's not quite the dream job, or the dream career, you imagined yourself having. Or perhaps its nothing at all like your dream job. Perhaps your employer clearly undervalues your contribution and talents, and it's increasingly obvious that you're in a dead end. Or perhaps you've been successful, but want a job that is more meaningful, more interesting or more aligned with your personal ideals.
Whatever your reasons, it's never too late to change jobs or careers, and it doesn't need to involve a leap into the void. It's all a matter of strategy. Coaching can help you at every step of the way.
Explore Options and Interests
The first step in any good strategy is to determine exactly what that strategy should be working towards. What are your career objectives? Are they attainable? Are they too modest?! What are your interests? What are your talents, skills, strengths and weaknesses? How do these relate to the demands and circumstances of your target career? If a client wants it, there are a host of objective tools available for looking at these questions. Cognitive styles, interests, emotional intelligence, leadership quotient, personality traits can all be explored in depth, with a coach who's had experience interpreting and integrating the results. The same issues can be explored in more informal ways as well, if that's your preference. The end result should be the clearest possible understanding of just what your ideal job looks like, as well as a clearer sense of why it is – a clearer self-understanding.
The next step is to prepare the tools that will help you get the attention and interest of employers. This begins with a resume, and cover letters that target the needs and pique the interest of your dream employers. Identifying your best references, and establishing an online presence. You're marketing yourself; the more effective your strategies, the more opportunities you'll have. Once you have all this right, with the help of your coach, you're ready to start actively looking for jobs. Even in the slowest economy, there are thousands of jobs out there, waiting to be found, and you'll benefit from the experience of a coach who knows where to look and who to contact.
The final step in getting your ideal job is handling the interview. Whatever your role in your current job, it's likely it hasn't involved much experience in being interviewed, and this is where the help of a seasoned and experienced coach can be most crucial. A successful interview doesn't happen by itself; it's the result of thorough preparation. The first step here is a study of the employer, so that you know as much as possible about their activities, corporate culture and structure. In a very real sense, the preparation you made at the very beginning of the whole process of shifting careers will serve you well in interviews. Good answers to tough questions are easier when you know what you want from a job, what you bring to it, and how you'll handle it. Preparation with a coach, which can include practice interviews, will help you learn how to address the specific needs and expectations that employers bring to interviews, concerning everything from dress and attitude to responses and counter-questions.
The final advantage to thorough preparation with a coach is that it will give you the confidence that allows you to present the best possible version of yourself to interviewers, whether on the phone, on Skype or in person, with a single interviewer or a panel. A career coach can't find you a new job. You have to do that yourself, and it's hard work. But coaching can make sure that your hard work is focused on strategies that actually do work. And in the process, coaching can prepare you to enter your new career with greater insight and self-knowledge, and a clearer idea of just what you want from it.
When it comes to all the practical skills involved in finding and getting your dream job, an experienced coach can act as a mentor, guide and resource.
Please contact us to learn more.
Consultations are free and without any obligation.