When is a Career Coach helpful and what do they do?

When is it helpful to hire a career coach?

If you are thinking of finding a new role at a new company, switching industries, or re-evaluating your career, you may want to hire a career coach. At RecruiterReady we work with clients just like you to find a path to the next job by defining your current skills, looking at the job market, and helping you to find the right job titles that match what you are good at doing from offices in Seattle, San Francisco, and greater Los Angeles.

Breaking free of a stagnant career progression

Most of us get caught up in “the drift.” When we graduate from school, we are often asked to take the first good job that is offered to us, which a goal of growing a career from that job. It may not be in the industry we wanted, or even something we particularly like. This becomes “the boat” we drift on in an ocean current we call “a career.” The skills we gain are the same ones we use to get the next role in the company, usually on a linear progression from individual contributor, to manager, to second-line manager, and maybe Director or higher. In our work in Career Trajectory, we can help you to discover what other types of jobs you might excel at doing, what they might be called in other industries, and learn the names of those jobs so you can use them when shopping for potential jobs, so you have a wider and more fruitful job search.

Getting more perspective on the job market

If we stick with the metaphor of being adrift on a boat, we can imagine what needs to happen to change our perspective on the job market. Envision building a crows-nest on your boat tall enough to see over the curvature of the earth – a way to see farther into the future and with a wider horizon – working with a career coach can help you get that point of view and to anticipate where you want to be in your career beyond just the next step.

The job market is everywhere – online and in-person

If you are in your 40s or 50s, you’ll remember a time where you could print out your resume on some nice “resume paper” and hand deliver it to a person working at the front desk of a company. Most applications are done online these days and showing up unannounced is more likely to seem rude and intimidating than in times past. It’s crucial to understand how today’s recruiters and hiring managers are looking for candidates, and what you can do to make it easy for a recruiter to say “yes” to a screening call.

What recruiters want and need to be successful

A recruiter is really a salesperson. Their job is to find the right candidates for a role and sell the candidate on the company AND sell the hiring manager on the candidate. To be the right candidate you must be sure the recruiter can see you have the right skills and experience for the job. Even if a recruiter likes you as a person, if you don’t show the skills they are shopping for, they can’t sell you to the hiring manager. They can’t sell your potential, so they won’t see a fit. It’s crucial to take on the perspective of the recruiter if you want to get interviews. Help them by aligning your candidacy with their needs.

How to create a resume and LinkedIn that recruiters love

The job description says it all. If it is well-written, you will know everything the recruiter is looking for in a candidate. Your job is to lower your expectations of the recruiter and to understand what is being asked of you in the job and be sure your resume is using the same terms to describe your past work that the job description is asking for in your future work. This is best accomplished using an online tool like Jobscan (https://jobscan.com) which compares a job description to your resume to point out what the company is asking for, what language they are using, and whether your resume reflects those terms.

This is a great way to improve your resume when applying for similar jobs at several companies by getting up to speed on current terms and making the changes directly to your resume.

For your LinkedIn summary, it is best to write it in the first person in a style that would be similar to a “tell me about yourself” question. For example: “I am an experienced Product Manager with 4+ years of experience in mobile app development. I believe that great communication is the key to delivering product features on time, and that keeping the team aligned to milestones is crucial.” It can go on from there to describe the contours of your career so far in a way that communicates you are open to new opportunities.

How to contact a career coach

If working with a career coach feels like the right move, book a complimentary call with RecruiterReady – my Career Coaching company – today using this link: https://calendly.com/coachtechgroup/30-min-career-coaching-intro-by-phone