Why You Need One-On-One Career Coaching

Learn The In and Out's of Career Coaching

What Is One-On-One Coaching?

One-on-one coaching is focused on you. It’s about helping you achieve clarity in your job hunt and then helping you stick with a plan - both identifying what the career goal is - and then working with you step-by-step to achieve it.

A simple example: how best to organize your time? Recently I worked with Harry to help him figure this out, and what a well-organized morning looks for him now: 

Here’s what we solved for:  How to get the most out of each day? What if you’ve got BOTH classes AND a job hunt to attend to? 

Since job hunting is a sustained daily effort, now he knows when and where in his Monday and Tuesday mornings to work on things. 

It doesn’t matter if you are an aspiring data scientist with the Big Four, or you want to work with a nonprofit organization in marketing OR if you want to work in an investment bank: you can get those great jobs and it takes a 1x1 coaching relationship, or multiple, to pull this off. 

And one-on-one coaching is one of the modalities which is available to you today.

One thing to note: the market for one-on-one coaching is not regulated. We don't have a professional body that's global that is say of the stature or size of the CPA program or the CFA.

As a result…

“...when we look for a coach, we must make our own assessments about the personality and the perspective and chemistry with the coach.”

And when you get a good one, together you can both celebrate: 

Goals When Selecting One-on-One Coaching

Let's talk about some of the goals for one-on-one coaching. To begin, the goals are what you would define them to be. The coach is not going to tell you exactly what to do unless you bring some input into that relationship. 

If the goal is to get a great internship, then that becomes the goal. The coach can help you plan out steps to take in order to reach that goal. 

“Whether the goal is an internship this month or next month or next quarter, the goals can be attainable once we identify them.”

Maybe the goal is to get a full-time job. Working with the coach to identify the next full-time job is the goal. 

One result of one-on-one coaching might be the entire pathway including a series of internships leading up to the full-time job. That's also possible through one-on-one coaching. 

For example, when Louise and I worked together, we proceeded through 2 CPT internship roles and one full-time OPT offer:

Once you recognize that one-on-one coaching isn't really well-defined, know you it’s important to define what your desired results are - in collaboration with the coach or before you work with one.

Don’t get me wrong: coaching can also involve helping you identify what those results SHOULD be. Coming to a coach with just a question, “Hey, I'm currently doing this major or I'm studying this, and I don't know what I want in my career. Can you help me?” are great ways to make quick progress. 

Then you might even find out that there are clubs or events on campus that you didn’t even know about - thanks to your relationship with the coach!

Coaching Can Be Mixed and Matched With Different Learning Modalities!

One-on-one coaching can be mixed and matched with other types of training. 

“Just like your university courses might be a mix of in-person sessions, video training, or group training, one-on-one coaching can supplement the other modalities to make your overall experience in your process more satisfying.”

In The Career Accelerator Program, we include one-on-one coaching in what we do. There are ALSO parts that are repeatable, like your own reference library of online courses.

 If someone sends you a message at three in the morning and you want to respond right away, exactly what to say and do is available in an online module for you and then one-on-one coaching is there to supplement the training.

Helping You Stay On Track and Identify the Next Step

One of the things that one-on-one coaching is great for when it's mixed with the online material is identifying what the next step should be for you.

When you come into a one-on-one coaching situation and you already have a lot of reference material available, it's always good to hear from the coach about “What should I be focusing on now?”. 

“One-on-one coaching is there to keep you on track.”

Conclusion

One-on-one coaching is a potentially transformational experience. You bring the willingness to do the work, the willingness to be challenged, the desire to get clarity, and have comradery. You bring those desires to that relationship.

“A good coach will help you take that and get you to wherever you want to go.”

As long as you're putting in the work, following the process - as long as you're coachable -  one-on-one coaching can deliver some amazing, amazing results.

And since it’s not well-defined, get clear with the coach or the potential coach what it is that's being offered.

Is it going to be offered in terms of a 10-session package? 

Or is the coaching going to support you until you get the job kind - which is what I do?

It’s my hope that your one-on-one coaching experience will be so transformational that you will redefine what was possible, soar far past goals you may have set on your own, and achieve a professional transformation.