Transcript #159. Career Coach: What is it, How does it work, and why you may need one

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[00:00:00] If you're already working with a career coach or if you're yet to begin looking for a career coach, you don't even know if you need a career coach. You don't want to miss this episode because there is no underestimating the value of finding the right career coach, mentor, or support for you when your job hunting.

Renata: So, let's dive into it right now.

 You see, job hunting is a waiting game. It. [00:01:00] The time when you're interested in your future, you are forward-looking, but you may not be paying attention to what's present and right in front of you. It's a very uncomfortable situation to be in. It makes professionals very nervous, grumpy, angry, regretful of.

Not doing things in the past that they wish they have done, and now they find themselves in this situation where they need something that they don't have yet, like the right networks and connections or the right cv or update their LinkedIn profiles. They're also grieving for the jobs they have lost. They might have been going through recruitment and selection and missing out.

On opportunities, and there's a grieving process that happens when you are going through job hunting.

The other thing that starts happening is you get so anxious and nervous about your future prospect. You start thinking that your past jobs were actually not that bad. Why did you leave them? What [00:02:00] happened? And it's very uncomfortable. As I said before, there's a lot of tension and discrepancy. Between what's happening with you now and what you want to happen to you in the future.

There's narc that needs to be covered, you know, what is it that will help you take you from A to B from where you are right now, this uncomfortable situation to again, being comfortable with a job, with a salary, with career prospects that you envision for. However, you know, with job hunting, if you stay too much on that mode, the future starts to seem uncertain.

It starts to look like a fantasy. You start doubting yourselves, start doubting your ability to actually get a job. It can be very difficult to go through alone. But if you are curious about the present and see this transition as an opportunity, not just for a new job, an opportunity to learn about other companies, about other industries, about other [00:03:00] professionals, an opportunity to make connections when you're going through equipment and selection, when you're talking to people about what you want for your career, and ask them what are they getting out of.

There's a learning process. It's also a great opportunity for you to take a break from the hustle and bustle of having a full-time job, an opportunity for you to take care of yourself, sleep better, manage your health. Do sports, do meditation, start a hobby. Open horizons for things that are just outside of that professional zone that we sometimes get stuck into and pigeonhole ourselves.

When you get a job, and you finally get what you want, you may look back at this transition time and see, Oh, regret not having the opportunity to enjoy it as much as you should, as I think you should as a career coach. I see that happening [00:04:00] very often. You may start underselling yourself to get a new job faster.

That's also another big risk that can happen when you're job hunting for a long time because you want to get out of the uncomfortable zone that you find yourself in.

So I really invite you, no matter what, engage fully with what you're going through right now with the uncomfortable and make that uncomfortable situation a project for you. A project where you can start updating your career plans and. Really try as much as you can not to worry so much because chances are if you're in Australia, if you're in the US and you have a, you know, a university degree, you have a career behind you.

Even if you don't have a university degree, you have a career behind you with experiences, with competencies, with strengths, with know. Chances are you are going to get a job, okay? It may take longer if you hit your head against the wall and reinvent the wheel [00:05:00] and not get a lot of support, but eventually, you will get a job.

The reason why I think cultures are great is because I believe they can speed the process for you. The process of learning on how to job hand, they can also make that process much more enjoyable by.

Renata: Giving you a framework that you can follow ideas and methods and intelligence about what's happening out there. How other people think, how recruiters think, how employer thinks, what they actually expect out of candidates. These are things that you should know. It's not knowledge that is necessarily going to be useful for your professional day-to-day job.

It's knowledge. Me as a career coach, I love gathering, but I don't expect my clients and all professionals to have that knowledge. It's knowledge of things that will happen to you at a point in time. My goal is to make professionals more [00:06:00] educated and comfortable with changing jobs because I do believe.

Now more than ever, changing jobs every 2, 3, 4 years is very good and valuable for your career and for your ability to earn a better. So if you're new to this podcast and you haven't listened to some of my older episodes where I explain more about my story, I have a long story with career coaches.

I love them. The ones I love have been guests on this podcast, so they're easy to find. And they're not just career coaches. Most of them are not. They are leadership coaches. They are performance coaches, they are team coaches, and they are wonderful at what they do. I am also. Embarrassed by some coaches because there is, I understand, from a client point of view when you're trying to engage the best possible coach for you, I can see that there are coaches there that lack [00:07:00] professionalism.

They lack knowledge and experience to teach you what you need to understand and know to get better. Whatever aspect of your profession or career that you want to improve. And there are different types of coaches, so there are life coaches and career coaches, and leadership coaches, like I said before, and they don't.

all serve the same purpose. You know, they have different niches and expertise, and depending on what you are trying to achieve in your career, I could be a good match for you, or another type of coach could be a good match for you. When people book a discovery 30-minute, Conversation with me because they're interested in private coaching.

Sometimes I say to them; I think there is a better coach for you out there. Let me see if I can connect you with that other coach. And if you have had one of those discovery calls with me, you know, maybe that's something I said to you. But the [00:08:00] biggest thing that I have learned when working in the corporate sector was that to help me with my ambition that I had for my career, it was really invaluable to me to have the comfort and access to high-quality coaching.

So, You know, in 2008, when I worked as an mba career manager until 2010, I used to hire lots of expert coaches to come in and deliver to the MBA students and to all of the master students in the faculty of business at Monash Uni on a series of career readiness programs. And I learned a lot from that period.

And I learned that great career coaches, they do much more than review resumes and cover letters. You know, in my personal career, I have hired coaches to review my resume and cover letter, but in order for them to do so, they actually needed to get to [00:09:00] know me very well to support me. Developing the best possible resume for me.

And I remember when I invested in that, and it was very expensive at the time; I still have the invoice. I thought to myself, Oh my God, what am I doing? But I got the job that I wanted, and that resume template stayed with me for. Years. It was such a great investment. I also had wonderful coaches that helped me onboard in my CEO role.

They actually helped me transition out of that role when I was made redundant in my last corporate job, I. Was very lucky that HR gave me an opportunity to choose the outplacement organization that I wanted to work with. So I interview them. I chose the one that I liked the most. And in that outplacement, I worked with three different coaches.

In fact, a career coach, a business coach, and a LinkedIn coach. And that was really wonderful for me. When [00:10:00] I was choosing careers, when I was a teenager and, and young adult, I had a family friend who was a career counselor, and she did assessments with me, mainly Maya Briggs, which she loved at the time, and that was so great.

You know, I learned so much from working with her and having a great relationship with her until she passed. And also, whenever I was 

brainstorming 

Renata: ideas for my career, I had access to a supportive network of coaches because, either professionally or because of the businesses that I worked for, I had to engage coaches to do professional development for us.

And I was 

able 

Renata: to work alongside them for my own career develop. So I'm pretty sure that if you find a great coach, that can be very helpful for your career. A good coach can make all the difference in how well or how poorly you perform in this competition. That is, job [00:11:00] hunting candidates with similar backgrounds will be competing with you for the job that you want.

 That's something that sometimes we fail to acknowledge because if you're doing it alone, It's a solo sport, and it's very isolating. You don't see your competition. It's very rare that you know who you're competing against, but it is a competition, and there are other great professionals there that, you know.

I think having respect for that process is really important, and understanding that you're competing against people that are equally qualified and experienced, have great professional competencies and backgrounds. They all will be competing for that same job, but they have very different success rates under the same conditions, and I believe it has to do not.

so much with the experience that they bring to especially the tail end of the process when the short list has already happened. And those [00:12:00] 4, 5, 6 candidates that are brought in for, you know, the final interviews, you know, they, have similar experiences. They could. Do the job. So what is it that convert them from final job interviews to a job offer?

 I think it's that career readiness. It's understanding what needs to be done in that room where you are being interviewed when you are being assessed. So a good career coach goes beyond writing resumes and LinkedIn profiles. So many times, people reach out to me for those two tasks, especially on LinkedIn because I'm a service provider on LinkedIn, and people contact me and say, can you review my resume?

Can you do my LinkedIn profile? And I have those services. You know, I can. Your resume. In one of my consultations that can be booked on my website, LinkedIn profiles. I have a LinkedIn audit that I do. It's very popular. You can book that on my website as well. But we can do so much more than [00:13:00] that as good career coaches, not just myself.

I know that there are others out there around the world. the other Thing that I think people focus a lot on is helping you answer behavioral questions in job interviews. my style of, you know, job interview preparation, which I can also do in one-on-one consultations, is where goes away, above and beyond helping you with behavioral.

Questions because, frankly, you can Google that. You know that, and that's probably the reason why you haven't booked a coach yet because you think that that's all that we will do for you. Great coaches will know how to play to your strengths. They will know how to identify your strengths. They will also know how to identify your weaknesses, those big elephants in the room that you will need to address, and they will help you address them so that you can take control over the conversation and take more of an opportunity [00:14:00] to address any issues.

When you have the opportunity, when you're in the room, when you're on the phone, when you're in the boardroom having your board, I. And provide, you know, the kind of support and direction that can really lead you to achieving faster results and great results when you're negotiating salaries when you're, you know, at your final interview, and you really need to convince the selection panel to hire you.

So today, I also wanted to not only. Expand on my love for coaching, but also help you choose the right person for the job for you because not every coach is the right coach for you. 

And 

Renata: explain the differences between different types of coaches and also the difference between the different types of engagement.

so, for example, I am a career coach. I'm an executive career coach, so most of the people that I help are 35 years and above with a lot of [00:15:00] experience under their belt, you know, their subject matter experts or their middle managers or their heads off VPs NC level. So that's kind of The range that I work with; most of my clients want to earn 200 K or above.

I have clients that are, you know, looking for jobs at 1 21 50 K, and I really help them whenever they're changing jobs to earn that 30% more to really make the most of their transitions. And I am not a leadership coach. What do I mean by that? I will help my clients onboard into a job, and a lot of my clients want to continue working with me because they trust me and they trust my judgment and the advice and the recommendation that I can give.

But I don't promote myself as a leadership coach, and I wouldn't start a new client on leadership coaching. I would rather say, okay, if you are being challenged in your leadership, if you're finding it [00:16:00] difficult to manage a team or manage large-scale projects, let me put you in touch with another coach that's an expert in that.

If you're being challenged with, Culture with incorporating diversity and inclusion in your organization? Let me put you in touch with someone else. Could I do that job? Yes. Am I the best coach for that? No. I'm the sort of coach that you would want to hire. When you're fired, when you hate your job, when you're made redundant, when you want to find something else, when you are ready for the next chapter of your career.

When you're transitioning from full-time to part-time, from middle management to, you know, a more senior role, and you want to find that job, and you want to do it with my support, That's the sort of coach that I am. I also know people that are sales coaches. So if you're a sales director and you want to know how to sell more, you can contact the sales coach.

If you're having issues that are [00:17:00] above and beyond the rummage of career if you could contact a life coach. And you know, there's some great life coaches out there as well. Does that make sense? So I hope that makes sense because, you know, sometimes people come to me and say, But I've spent so much already with life coaching, and that has been great for me, but I still don't, don't have a job.

And I'm like, I dunno what to say to you. Of course, life coaches are great, and you will learn so much about yourself and think about life more holistically and see careers, you know, one part of yourself and not your identity. That's all great, but my coaching is very tactical. You know, it's was very, it's much more like a sports coach than a life coach because I see recruitment as a competition, and I will put you through that.

And I also love doing career design and career planning. So I, it's very hard to start tactical [00:18:00] operations without strategy. So the strategy is the beginning of everything. Even if you're looking for a job and you're in a hurry, if you work with me, you will. Take stock, stop, do some planning, you know, at a minimum at ten years, if not more.

and then we start the sort of practical sides of looking for work. So when you are looking for a coach and if you are looking for, you know, an engagement and ready to make that investment, number one, the most important thing that you should look for when engaging with a coach is the personal connection.

Are you able to build a great partnership with that person? Are you able to build a relationship, and do you trust that person to get you to where you need to go? So that's the first thing that I would ask you to consider. Then I would ask you to, Think about what you really need. Do [00:19:00] you need one-on-one coaching?

Or would you be happy in a group coaching program? I find this fascinating. A lot of people think that they're very different in that their case is unique. And it's really funny cuz a few weeks ago, Somebody booked a discovery call with me, and they said, Look, my case is really unique. And I said, Well, everybody tells me that.

And then he told me his case, and I'm like, Yes, your case is very unique. Let me put you in touch with another coach. Like I can help you, but it seems like this other person could also help you. So why don't you have a chat to both of us and then make a decision, right? So it was quite funny because it was very unique, but most times, The situation that you find yourself in, if you lost your job, if you can't find a job, if you're finding it hard to get an interview or to move from an interview to a job offer.

A lot of people go through that. Right. And group coaching, in my view, now that I have been running it since late [00:20:00] 2019, so since before the pandemic, group coaching is actually really effective. It's a great return on your investment. It provides a lot of camaraderie and accountability and a sense of urgency because my program is seven weeks long, and there's a lot of content there.

People just get motivated to keep up with the group, and it works really well in terms of success rate between comparing one-on-one coaching and group. I can't see the difference, right? So right now, because I don't have a lot of hours in a day, I can only. A limited number of private clients.

Usually, I'm accepting those exceptional cases. Like the client, I just prospect client; I just explained before if he decides to lock in coaching with me, he wouldn't adjust into a group coaching because his situation is really unique. Or if the person is [00:21:00] very senior and cannot. Let their work know that they are looking for a job in any way, shape, or form.

There could be clauses in the contract and shares and bonuses involved that, you know, that there's a great risk of the leak of that person looking for a job. Affect their ability to do their job. So, in that case, one-on-one coaching. And also, you know, I do have clients that have. Special circumstances.

They have special needs in one way or another. Now, it could be a busy, you know, schedule with family. Or it could be that they're neuro-diverse or have, you know, some sort of disability that just requires them to, you know, spend. Times with me, they can't join a group for one reason or another.

You would be surprised how amazing some senior people are in this world and the sort of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that we don't even see if it was really when I [00:22:00] became a coach that I realized, you know, that yeah. There are people that can do so much with their time, and it just makes me so proud of all of my clients.

I think they're all absolutely amazing at what they do and how they manage their lives as well. So that's the difference between group coaching and one-on-one coaching. Group coaching will be an investment that's easier to make. One-on-one coaching is a bigger investment, so those things need to be considered as well.

And how do you determine the return on your investment from career coaching as an investment for you? I can't say about the other types of coaching, but in terms of career coaching, the way that I price my coaching is very democratic. So if you go to my website, you know, there's a, a service there that's like $99. Your talents and your career drivers and your strengths, and that, you know, is a stepping stone, a baby step. But gosh, it's [00:23:00] such good value for money, and I would encourage everybody that has neverinvested in themselves to at least do that. Right. And then, at 1 99, you have an amazing program Online. So it's a a course that you sit down, and you do, and I'll be teaching that course for you. And there is just so much content there. There are templates so you can, you know, take it slowly but surely, moving into your dial and propelling you forward in learning and understanding how job hunting and recruitment and selection work so that you can use that again and again.

You know, once you know it. I think it's, stays with you, and then you have, you know, those consultations that really. Work very much like a consultation with any specialist out there. If you need a physio or a chiropractor, or a dermatologist, you can book time with me. LinkedIn audit is very similar to the consultation and then private and group coaching.

It's more of a retainer. [00:24:00] So the group coaching is seven weeks, and the private coaching is at least three months. Usually, my clients lock me for six months, and I have a few clients on 12 months, and it really depends on what they're trying to do and what they're trying to achieve. If you can recoup that money if what you are investing will make that process faster for you.

The learning and what you achieve, you will get there quicker than if you were doing things on your own and DIYing everything on your own, then the best investment that you can make. Because my goal, especially if I'm working with group coaching and private coaching clients, is I want you to not only change your job but get a better salary.

Get better conditions, better benefits, and I hope that what you're investing in a conversation with me, if it's a consultation or private coaching with me if I'm on a retainer that you will get [00:25:00] that back very quickly with your first salary. So that's how I kind of think about coaching and how it can help.

I also discuss With my clients, you know, making those tiny changes in a way that is consistent over time and that they can always come back to me when they need me. But I hope to leave them with as much information as I can so that they can carry on making. Career planning and reflection part of their day-to-day carving out time to do that as if it was the same as brushing your teeth.

I hope everybody here is brushing their teeth every day. So, you know, thinking about your career, your future, and what you want to achieve, your goals, and how you're going to step by step get there should be part of our conversations and what. Trying to achieve in life. I think post-pandemic more now than ever.

We [00:26:00] have kind of learned that this is important. And yeah. I wish you all the best in deciding what's the best for you in identifying mentors, coaches, and a support system that supports you in achieving your goals as a professional. You know where to find me. There are links in the show notes, but at the very least, please subscribe to this podcast and keep in touch, and I hope to see you again next time.

Bye for now.