Choosing a Career Coach – finding the right fit for you
If you’re considering engaging with a career coach, you might be wondering how to find a coach that you can achieve results with. After all, coaching is going to be a big investment on your time, finances and effort, so it stands to reason that you need to get the selection right if you are to see a return on that investment.
The difficulty is that there are so many coaches out there, all with different approaches to coaching, different types of qualifications (if any) and levels of experience and specialism. It can feel daunting and hard to know where to start and how to differentiate between marketing spiel and reality. So how can you go about finding a coach that’s the best fit for you?
An initial Google search may be many people’s first port of call and if you put in relevant search terms may come up with some initial options to look at. More powerful than this could be to reach out to your network and ask for any recommendations. It’s worth checking whether their reason for engaging with a coach has any similarity to yours – for instance, if they had a leadership & management coach, this might be a completely different type of coach if you’re looking for a career change coach. Also, try to dig deeper and find out what they liked or didn’t like about their coach.
The professional coaching bodies may have a register of professionally qualified coaches, enabling you to search for a coach in your geographical area or for your specific concern. By finding a coach from a register, you at least know that the coach is qualified, adheres to a code of ethics and has a commitment to CPD. One such example is the Career Development Institute’s Register of Career Development Professionals: https://www.thecdi.net/find-a-professional
Once you have a shortlist of coaches to contact, how do you choose between them? Most coaches offer a free initial call, which is an ideal opportunity to gauge if your coach is a good fit for you. Indicators of a promising coaching relationship include feeling at ease when talking to the coach and gaining a sense that you are starting to build a good rapport with each other. This is important as you will be spending lots of time with your coach and sharing vulnerabilities and potentially deep-rooted concerns. Does the coach listen effectively and ask incisive questions to explore your needs? Come prepared with questions that you want to ask the coach about how they work, their services and the approach they might use with you. Another idea is to ask for testimonials, as any experienced coach will have gathered these from previous clients.
In the field of career coaching, there are some specific ‘results’ areas that can be measured. Here are a few questions that you could ask a coach that you are exploring working with:
How many clients have achieved a career transition or gained employment through working with you?
Have clients that you worked with gained a promotion as a result of working with you?
Do you have experience of supporting clients with XYZ need or at XYZ career stage?
However, the key thing here is that you ask questions relating to your goals and area of need. After all, you want to know that the coach you choose to engage with is going to support you in getting to where you want to be. This may not be about changing jobs, but perhaps about gaining greater work-life balance, or more confidence at work, or making career decisions both now and in the future.
These areas are less tangible and can’t be measured through a simple tick-box or number crunching exercise. Take client ‘James’ who took part in a podcast explaining the benefit of working with me as his coach.
James came to coaching after being out of work due to illness for a number of years and feeling overwhelmed, consumed with negative thoughts about his self-worth and lacking structure in his life.
He reflected that coaching has given him structure and focus, a different perspective and validation. He describes a change in perception of himself, that he feels more optimistic and has increased motivation. He uses lovely metaphors to describe how, for him, it was as though his coach “found a key and unlocked a door for me – from a world of shadow into a world of clarity”. These are less tangible outcomes than getting a job or promotion and may be harder for you to gain a quantitative answer from coaches about. Combined with this, you will no doubt find that some coaches are better than others at measuring impact on their clients. But being aware that there is the possibility of these ‘felt’ benefits and thinking through what you would like your outcome from coaching to be, can really help you to ask the right questions. This will enable you to be far more discerning and likely to find a coach that’s the right fit for you.
If you’d like to explore how coaching with Georgie could impact you, Get in Touch.
