Career Coaching: the New Competitive Advantage

By Gordon Miller

Author

The Career Coach: Winning Strategies for Getting Ahead in Today's Job Market

Today's extremely competitive business environment demands that workers perform at much higher levels than in the past. Powerful trends suggest that tomorrow's winners will be those people who can constantly learn, adapt, and capitalize on the routine sudden shifts in the marketplace. While most of us are competent or even stars at our chosen profession, we may not be experts in determining how our education, experience, and acquired skills best position us for the future. Career coaching does.

So how can working with an experienced and skilled career coach provide you with a competitive advantage in our change-a-minute, unpredictable job market? It might be best to start with a brief explanation of what career coaching is all about:

Career coaching is a one-on-one individualized program designed to enhance your job performance and job satisfaction, and to provide you with the focus, tools, and techniques to more effectively manage your career challenges, transition, and change. A coach's main job is to help their clients determine what is holding them back and to design an action-oriented, results-based path to quickly bridge the gap between where they are in their career and where they can be.

How do you know if you really need a coach? Following is a list of questions designed to help you decide.

- Do you know what it is you don't know?

- Are you mid-career and feeling stuck?

- Are you interested in developing yourself further?

- Do you feel like you are on a career treadmill?

- Are you burned out and thinking about doing something else?

- Are you new at being an entrepreneur and feeling a little overwhelmed?

- Are you overqualified and underutilized?

- Do you have a written career plan to serve as your road map?

- Are you waiting for a miracle?

The best way to locate a coach is to talk to people you know and respect to see if they have hired or if they know someone who has worked with a coach. A personal experience reference is a great way to find someone. International Coach Federation, http://www.coachfederation.org can lead you to a good coach

Hiring a career coach is a significant investment. Not just a financial investment (the typical coaching engagement costs $350-1500 and lasts 4-10 weeks), but also an investment of time. The coaching client can expect a weekly, one-hour meeting, either in person or over the phone, plus 3-5 hours of "fieldwork" in preparation for the next meeting. What can you expect in return?

- A comprehensive assessment to establish a basis to move forward.

- Direction on how to craft a written, career strategy plan.

- Assistance in adapting job-search tactics that clearly differentiate you from the competition.

- A professional who will hold you accountable for your plan.

- A non-stop series of questions to identify obstacles you face and possible ways to over come them.

- A relentless focus on how to focus on what's really important .

Finally, does career coaching really work? Is it worth the money and time commitment? Like most things, that's up to you. But, consider this. Michael Jordan, Meryl Streep, Tiger Woods, and many others have enlisted the services of a coach to help take them to the next level. Will you?