What Is Career Coaching?

Do I Need A Career Coach?

Congratulations on continuing to make progress in your career exploration and checking out additional resources to help you succeed. And well, this is my favorite topic to speak about and I think you're going to love what we're going to talk about. 

We're going to talk about “what is coaching?”

Now, coaching could be any kind of coaching. It could be life coaching, could be nutrition, sports, parenting coaching, relationship coaching. 

Here we're going to focus on career coaching and what great career coaching is. 

Use this video, this training, to go out and evaluate other programs that you might be considering, and just check, “Hey, is this program going to fit me in this respect?”

I’m going to talk about four aspects or “4 C’s” of Coaching, and one of the important things for you to consider when you're out getting a job is knowing why someone would hire you.

Why would someone hire you?

And if you can't answer that question right now, that's okay, but if you can't answer that question, no one is going to hire you.

So, why would someone hire you?

It is an important question for you to explore and through coaching, you can uncover it of course.

And I also need to ask myself that question and you might like to turn the tables on me and say, “Hey, what is coaching and why hire a coach?” 

Until now, you've worked so hard - congratulations on all that you've accomplished up until now. You have done so well, you have gotten to where you are now, and it's been a struggle. And yet, you know that you want to aim higher. You want to continue to progress, so let's go into what coaching is.

The “4C’s of Career Coaching 

Coaching has four aspects. I'm going to take them one at a time.

The first is it delivers “clarity”. What is clarity?

Clarity: on an Essential Life Direction 

When it comes to the job hunt and career development, clarity might be getting an understanding such as: 

• “who I am right now” and “where am I?” or “What am I doing?”. It could be as simple as 
• “why am I in this major?” or, 
• “What are some places I could go with this major?”

If I'm an undergrad, “why would I consider going to grad school… is that important? Is it necessary?” 

If I’m in grad school, I might wonder: “Now that I'm here in grad school, how do I navigate grad school so I can be successful in my job hunt?”

And so getting clarity means having someone to talk to about some of these essential things that might be questioned and may not be immediately answered in the near term, but we want to navigate that space so that we can get the job that we want. 

Maybe we want to work at a large global firm and we're not sure if that major can get us to where we are now? 

Clarity on the Exact Job Hunt Process. 

The other thing people seek clarity on is a process – they benefit from someone who can take them from the beginning to the end of the process: from where the job hunt begins and to where it ends in a great full-time job.

Perhaps, along the way, getting a series of amazing internships, which help us clarify, get clarity about what we want in our life and understanding what we like and d maybe we don't like, so clarity has these aspects to it, some fundamental - getting clear on some fundamental questions and then also walking through a process that we can take together and have conversations about it. 

A coach needs to be there to listen and, importantly, ask questions - ask questions that can help prompt an individual to think, “Okay, that's a really good question. Let me think about it.” …and helping those answers get discovered from within you about what is important to you as a high performer in the job hunt. 

Congruence: The Second “4C” of Career Coaching

The next one is called “congruence”. Until now, you have invested so much in terms of your academics, and getting across borders. You've accomplished so much more than many people will accomplish in their entire lives already, and you want to aim higher and you want the actions that you take on a daily, weekly, monthly basis to get you to where you want to go.

Congruence means you have certain objectives and you want to stay on a path to attaining them. 

As an example, I'll have students who have told me, 

• “I would like to work in data science at a top tech firm”, Or 
• “I would like to work in investment banking.”
• “I would like to work as an engineer.”

“How can I get there?” 

Together, that student and I will figure out that path, we'll get that clarity. And because someone has told me such-and-such was their goal a couple of days ago or weeks ago, I can see where they are in their path right now and say, “I wanted to just confirm. What I heard you say last month or last week was THIS. Is THIS still true? And are we taking steps to get to THAT destination?

Congruence might mean sticking with your networking. Some may acknowledge that they want to do more networking, and yet they find themselves continuing to apply online and shy away from networking. As a coach, I can come in and say, 

“Hey, let's examine this because you want to make your job hunt predictable. You want to be in charge. And you know that when your network and follow our process, such as in The Career Accelerator Program, you get amazing results through networking and you develop real relationships. And yet over here, you're continuing to apply online, which is removing power from you. It's making you passive and reactive, and you're just chasing around some job postings and that's not what you want. So how can we then turn towards networking?”

And so we stick with things and develop your networking plan together.

As you develop your network, even if it's zero right now, even if you have no network, we can build a network together. And we can build networks among senior executives as well as junior recent hires. And there are different reasons for doing both, but let's stay focused on that path. Let's get to where you want to go.

Congruence will allow you, through that relationship with a coach, to stay focused and make progress in your search. So that's congruence.

Challenge: The Third “4C” of Career Coaching

You're a high performer and you have goals for your life. And as an international student, you have come so far like we just mentioned. And so sometimes we need somebody to step in and say, “Hey, where do you want to be?” 

The challenge could be something like, “Hey, you know, I know that you want to follow up with these firms that we've reached out to already on LinkedIn. Now let's go ahead and do that. Let's go ahead and set up those calls.”

One hesitation may be that you might not perform well on those calls. And we can explore that feeling.

And we can. we can remind ourselves that the best way to be awesome at networking is just to start.

And you see here [in the Career Accelerator Program], I've laid out the exact steps. Let's take those steps together. If anything comes up, just message me. I'm here 24 hours a day to support you.

But I'm here to also challenge you to remind you that these are our goals. And sometimes I’m here to help you set lofty goals. 

By way of example, sometimes people are reaching out to small companies because they don't think a big company would take them when they don't realize that it's just the same amount of work – it’s no less work and not easier to get into a smaller company as an international student because they may not have sponsorship practices at all and you would be the odd exception.

And so challenging you to think higher, to stick with your goal is what keeps you challenged looks like. If the goal is a large global firm, then let's stick with that. I want you to aim higher. 

And I might challenge you to be more consistent in your job hunt, to challenge you to achieve your goals. 

Coaching means having that person there to listen and to encourage, and to remind you that you can do this! Yes, you can get any job you want at any time in any firm. You can do this! I'm here to remind you of that. A coach should remind you of that.

And what I see sometimes happening in the career coaching space is that people are not challenging their mentees. They're saying, “Well, it's really hard to get sponsorship. So don't even try. Just try to get a job in your home country.” Or, they might say, “You've never done this before, so the chance of you doing it is really low.

That is not what coaching is about.

There is a lot of career advising where you might get a chance to meet with somebody once a month or whenever their calendar is open and you have to grab a spot and maybe you talk about the resume, but you don't get beyond that. That's not challenging you. 

That’s not the same as saying, “you've accomplished so much and you can accomplish so much more. Let's get those goals identified and keep moving towards them and you will get there and you will get there faster than you can imagine. That's a challenge.

Camaraderie: The Fourth of the “4Cs” of Career Coaching

Camaraderie means having someone by your side, having someone with you to help you, to be there as a resource. Now, if someone wants to talk to me one-on-one we can sit down in a safe space, without judgment, and talk through what is on your mind.

Have you ever felt that the job hunt was lonely?

Have you ever felt that you were alone?

Have you felt that your peers around you were not giving you the support to achieve more?

When your peers are just trying to get “just any job” and they're not going for the gold that you thought was possible, comradery with a coach might remind you that you can achieve what you came here for. 

And coaching will give you that space, that community to help you achieve your goals.

Camaraderie comes in the form of one-on-one coaching and having a group of people to be with you, to support you - people who have already stood up and said, “yes, I want to achieve more. I want to reach my goals. I want to get what I came here for.”

Comradery not having a personal friend where you're maybe talking about, you know, everything, but it's like, you know, a buddy who is focusing on moving you forward in your job hunt - someone who's cheerleading for you and being there with you so you're not lonely. 

When you have all of these resources and ideas, someone is there as a sounding board for you.

And so camaraderie is so much about having someone there, so much about challenging you and so much about keeping the clarity, developing the clarity on this path.

So no matter where you are in your job hunt: whether you're looking for an internship or if you're looking for that full-time job and you're not sure about how that fits with your academic schedule, the camaraderie piece is going to be there for you.

And it's not the same thing as say, therapy. Therapy in the sense of you're sitting down with somebody and you're dumping out your troubles on them and talking about, say how in your childhood, how you were not supported in this or that, or how throughout the parenting process, you were only valued for your grades or your school rank, and therefore you're afraid to make mistakes right now. I mean, that is an important role for therapy, but this isn't therapy.

The distinction is that coaching is forward-looking. We're focusing on accomplishing goals and moving forward. Now, if there are issues that are holding you back and fears and certain experiences that make your job hunt hard, well, I'm here for you. Coaches should be here for you for that. 

This camaraderie piece is about helping you move forward.

Conclusion

So I want you to think about this: why would somebody hire you? And then if you can't think of any reasons, do some research about that because we want to find out why someone would hire you. Because until we find that out, then no one is going to!

You can turn the tables on me and say, “Hey, what is coaching? Why hire a coach? Why? 

And it's these four things, the “4Cs”.

First of all, how can you get clarity on your job hunting? How can we get you aligned with what you're doing now and understand what is going to move the needle for you in the job hunt?

Because I see out there in the market, people on LinkedIn are getting certificates. They are confusing getting a certificate with making progress in the job hunt. 

Clarity is about taking those exact actions to get you exactly where you want to go finding out exactly where you want to go in the first place and executing on those exact actions that get you there,

Coaching is also about challenging you and it's about that piece we talked about, which was the camaraderie, right. And the congruence.

Congruence is the idea of sticking with a plan, developing a plan, and sticking with it. A lot of people are just kind of going through the motions, going to classes and showing up to classes, but to get a job, we have to be more than just showing up to classes. We have to focus and stay moving forward in our job hunt and that's congruence. 

And then the third is the challenge. Going back to that example of the certificates: this represents staying in the comfort zone. People are going out and signing up for a certification exam or a designation exam. And they're confusing that with their job hunt, where in fact what they're doing is just staying comfortable.

We are all great students here, so more of what's comfortable such as more study, right? 

You might think that a certification is a challenge that you need here, but it's not. 

You don't need to have any designations or certifications to get an amazing job. And so the coach is here to challenge you to achieve what you need to achieve, get to where you want to go.

And then the last part is that Camaraderie - having someone there by your side who can provide a safe space and who can allow you to achieve the things that you want to achieve. 

If you're feeling like you're down on your confidence or you're down, having someone there to talk through these issues can help you keep moving forward and you don't feel alone in your hunt.

So those are the four aspects of career coaching.