Hiring a career coach for the best chance at a new position

Putting someone on your side is cost and time effective
 

Most people, even highly successful ones, are completely out of water when they make a career transition. Their professional skills are normally focused on getting their job done instead of figuring the best way to market themselves to potential employers. This profound confusion can be offset, even eliminated, with the services of a professional career coach. 

Acting as an independent and objective third party, a career coach is adept at improving not only your résumé but also at helping you with your "career story." Someone who is outside your immediate circle and who can make objective assessments can better articulate why your skills are the best for a prospective employer. 

Career coaches are not miracle workers but they can help counteract job-seeking inertia that eats up your time and sidelines your efforts. He or she can effectively focus your efforts along the job-getting path.  And, when a career transition is in progress, a career coach can direct you to productive activities, interviews and headhunters.   

What can a career coach do?

The first task at hand is streamlining your résumé. A job-winning version will highlight your compelling facts and eliminate excess baggage that may have accumulated. Remember a résumé is a tool, and only a tool, that represents your work history. More importantly, it emphasizes what you can do at the next position.

It is important to realize that you are your best résumé, which is why the development of your career story is so important. Developing a personal elevator speech that everyone can understand is key to moving up.

Human resource professionals and headhunters may not even want your résumé if you can articulate your true strengths and demonstrate an ability to get the job done.

Career coaches provide an essential role. They offer a new way at looking at your skill set that wraps your experience into a neat package with a few alterations. By eliminating nonproductive activities, such as surfing the Internet, mass mailing blind résumés, and sipping another cafe latté in Starbucks, you can obtain interviews with companies. Those professionals in transition easily get sidelined in their search, forgetting that seeking a new career is a full-time job. A career coach can get you organized, make your day productive and set up reasonable expectations for you to accomplish.

Finally, a career coach gives you access to new a world of new resources. From strategic contacts, appropriate staffing firms and Websites that list your industry specific job openings, you should be directed along route to a new position. 

 Aside from the tangible resources and independent thought a career coach can provide, they are also useful for a regular pep talk. They are instrumental in helping improve your self-confidence when the ideal interview comes around. Remember, they are professionals on your side of the game.

Referral career coaches can be found through a human resources director or outplacement firm.  They charge $100-150 per hour.