A career coach can help you work through a variety of situations on the way to a more fulfilling career.
The average person spends 90,000 hours—more than 10 years of their life—at work. Career coaching is a tool to help you make that time count.
Wouldn’t it be great if we automatically landed in the right career, the right job, the right company? Great for sure, but not realistic. For one thing, just what constitutes “right” changes over time. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the typical employee stays at a job for just over 4 years. Over the course of a 40-year career (some say longer, as people live longer), you might find yourself in 10 different jobs or 2 jobs. And each scenario comes with its own opportunities and challenges.
With such a long career journey, we’re bound to have situations arise that are puzzling, frustrating, exciting, scary, or…you name it. Doors may open or close. Dream jobs may lose their luster. We have decisions to make, finances to consider, skills to learn or refine. Through it all, change is constant—in technology, in society, in expectations (our own and others’), and even in work itself.
Why coaching?
Career coaching helps you be purposeful in how you approach your career and make decisions over time. For example, consider career coaching if you:
- Are a student and not sure what career to pursue
- Feel stuck in your current job
- Want to take your career to the next level
- Aren’t sure you’re even in the right career
- Need help setting goals for yourself or reaching the goals you’ve set
- Have gotten performance feedback (for better or worse) that you want to work on
- Are job hunting
- Are pondering a “second act” after retirement
What coaching involves
Different coaches have different processes, but in general, a coach is there to help you better understand yourself—what kind of work you’re best suited for, what you’re looking for in a career, and your actual (rather than assumed) strengths and weaknesses. A coach makes recommendations based on those factors and helps you create concrete goals and plot a roadmap to achieve them.
Your coach can help you clarify where you want to go in your career and the steps to get there. And it might not be a straight line. You may need to develop new skills, refine existing skills, or move in a direction you hadn’t considered before.
With career coaching, you are making an investment in yourself. Whether the investment pays off is up to you. Your coach is your guide. But the journey is yours to own.
Ready to get started? Our approach to career coaching leverages the Birkman Method assessment and our years of experience guiding people in their professional development. Here’s what’s involved.
