Career coaching can feel illusive or maybe even out of reach, but that’s further from the truth. Career coaching, career counseling, career advising overlap in how they mean and what they can do for you. Not investing in your professional identity and professional wellbeing can cost you more than you imagine.
For example, imagine being stuck in a workplace for months or likely years because you’ve tried getting out but just couldn’t. You see your peers succeeding and advancing in their career and you feel left behind – they are making higher salary, having more disposable income, getting that promotion before you, or having their career where they come home happy and feel excited to get to work and leave their impression.
Most people, don’t think about it until it’s too late – they grind it out – for too long wondering if there’s actually something better out there. Or worse – accepting defeat and not changing at all, until they experience a few professional trauma: burnout, layoff, toxic managers, toxic workplace, etc. This is where mid-life crisis as it was previously called occur – a person very unhappy with their job for too long – quit, change everything about themselves and pursue something that brings them temporary happiness and an expensive car. This behavior is retaliation for sacrificing themselves for their career.
Now, we don’t hear too much about mid-life crisis because there are more frequent crisis in this current generation of workforce – recessions, wars, layoff, economic downturn, highly competitive job market, etc. These days, we see more quarter-life crisis – most millennials have experienced more recessions, layoffs, wars than the past 2-3 generation of workforce. All of this takes a toll on the person.
Some can be avoided, some can be expertly managed, some can lead to severe internal crisis.
NOW, there’s hope – there’s a way to live a more balanced life where you’re excelling in your professional and personal life. A career coach can help you manage the difficulty of career progression while making progress with ease.
Did you know the average job search takes over 6 months?
That’s roughly half of a person’s salary gone to job search. Why?
The job search process is complex and it’s challenging for most people to figure out and by the time they have it figured out – it’s already been 3-5 months. You can avoid that delay by getting a jump start on your career development. A small investment with a career coach can offer time and peace in how you navigate the job search process.
BUT – did you know that job search is about 5% of what a career coach can help you with?
Most people believe a career coach will only help with job search, but that’s only a small fraction of how we help you succeed. The other 95% is so much more impactful for you. Let’s dive deeper. . .
What is Career Coaching?
Career coaching is a generic term for the process of helping a person navigate their professional development. They focus on helping you recover from professional trauma by creating a psychologically safe environment to process your trauma, to identify barriers to your success and unlocking your mindset for limitless success, and build strategies for your to develop your professional agility and stregth to overcome any challenges in your way.
For example, imagine a personal fitness coach – what do they do? They assess your current situation, asks about your goals, and develops a plan to help you achieve those goals by working with your regularly to hold you accountable, address challenges to make the progress easier and faster, and provides a easy to follow plan that achieve your goal. They know the barriers you have to overcome to get to your desired goal, and you’ll help you get there.
Career coaches help you similarly – they know your goal, they know the strategies to let you there faster and make the process easier.
What is Career Counseling?
There’s a difference between Career Coaching and Career Counseling.
Going back to the previous example of Fitness coach – fitness coaches help you get to your next level. But, when you’ve suffered injuries and need to get back to your base, you don’t go to a fitness coach – you go to a Physical Therapist because they know the intricacies how your body works and they provide expert guidance to help you heal and recover before you can engage with your fitness coach. Anyone can call themselves a fitness coach, but to become a physical therapist, one needs to go to get advanced degrees and even medical school. Plus, a physical therapist can also provide similar benefits as a fitness coach, but cost a lot more for the same service.
Career counseling is similar to that of a physical therapist – a career counselor will help you heal from professional trauma, negative experiences and empower you to take control of your career. This is crucial for unlocking unhealthy professional patterns, opening up new level of career ceilings, and creating a healthy relationship with work so you’re living a more balanced life.
What is Career Advising?
Career advising, as you get in high school or college, is designed to give you generic advice so you can move forward. It doesn’t take into account your personal strengths and challenges. The career advising is similar to directing what you need to do – this is ideal for High School and early career individuals who are working on their first job.
For example, our Career Readiness program is a career advising program which aims at leveling up high school seniors who are entering their career or college. It outlines 50+ topics that are common to their transition and offers general guidelines for success.
Why work with a Career Counselor?
Career Counselors are healers. We work on recovery, focusing on your mental resilience in the workplace. Work is stressful, and compounding factors like a toxic workplace, toxic manager/leadership, burnout, imposter syndrome, self-doubt, confidence, etc., can hurt your professional and personal life.
In Career Counseling, we’re here to help you recover from unmanageable stress and move towards building your wellness plan so you can start managing your challenges better, navigate through workplace politics, heal from feeling burnout, establish practices to recognize when you’ve gone from EU-stress (“good stress” – stress that gets us excited and energized) to DIS-stress (“bad stress” – stress that triggered by unhealthy workload, manager, colleagues, mismatched career and interests, etc.).
Career Counselors are formally trained with a Masters or higher degree. They often come from a counseling background and specialize in career development, can offer specialized assessments, and deepen their client’s self-understanding and lead them to the executive level faster.
For example, I have a Master’s degree in Counseling and a certificate in Career Counseling. These help me work on workplace trauma, personal trauma, burnout, motivation, and imposter syndrome from a counseling perspective to heal the unaddressed past to help unlock the next-level confidence. I can also help as a life coach to bridge the intersection between career and life – thus Work-Life Balance.
Career Counselors are the most versatile of the group because they’re able to work from healing the individual to unlocking the person’s full potential.
Why work with a Career Coach?
Career Coaches focuses on getting you to your next position, internally, externally, career pivot, etc.; no matter where you want to go, a career coach will help you. Career coaching is future-oriented and strategic. We talk through your barriers to success and devise a strategy to help you avoid those barriers and empower you to take meaningful steps toward making your moves.
Career Coaches don’t need formal training, nearly anyone can call themselves a career coach. This informal title can give amazing coaches lower barriers to helping people because they can do what they’re naturally good at – helping people. BUT, this low entry to “career coach” title also provides opportunity to poor or low-impact coaches to work with people because of their marketing ability and they often over promise and under deliver, but makes you feel confident they’ll get you there.
Sad example, a family friend worked with a career coach for 6 months, paid 5x the amount for a package that was going to get them into the tech field. The program had video content, 1:1s, and a map to success. They promised results within 6 months of money back. The way they sold the program, I would’ve signed up for it. What was delivered was something very different – it was a generic video experience you could get from YouTube, 1:1s were 30-mins of patronizing comments and discussions, blaming the client for not doing exactly what was needed, and the map was a checklist of generic items, resume, cover letter, apply and interview. When my family friend didn’t get into the tech field, the coach said they didn’t exactly what was outlined, so they won’t receive their money back. Very Sad. So, please be aware when working with too good to be true career coaches.
Why work with a Career Advisor?
Career advisors often see too many people in high school, these are your guidance counselors who see 400+ students per person. In college, these are your career advisors who support nearly 1,200+ students. You won’t get personalized support, but you’ll get good generic information to get you started on your career journey.
I created the Career Readiness program (LINK) from a Career Advising perspective, which offers generic career advice along with various mental, financial, relational health advices to help transitioning high school students make the most out of their life and career.
What services do Career Development professionals offer?
Career counselors can perform the full-scale of career advising, career coaching and career counseling. Thus working with Balanced at Last gets you access to a highly qualified career development professional that can help you in high school to find a direction in your career to the executives leading 100s of people under their organization and develop strategies to help them succeed.
Previously, we mentioned job search is roughly 5% of what career professionals can do – here’s an exhaustive list of support that we can provide:
Now, for a nearly endless list of Career Development services, we provide:
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There are many more that we haven’t listed above because all clients are different and they needs different services. We meet the client where they are and develop a customized approach to helping them achieve their goals by leveraging their strengths so they reach their goals faster and with ease. If you’d like to learn how we can support your career development, schedule a discovery call today!
How is Balanced At Last different from competitors?
We are a bespoke practice, where I am a trained counselor and have been specializing in Career Development since 2009. I’ve helped over 3,000+ individuals over the past 15 years, from retirement, C-Suite, Executives, Sr. Leadership, Directors, Managers, Leaderships, and Colleagues; along with College and High School Seniors. The wide range of clientele helps me understand where you are currently and how to get you to the next level.
You control your journey when working with me, and I’m here to deliver your results ASAP.
The reason my practice is called “Balanced At Last” is because I will help you build a life that gives you confidence in your professional and personal world, because I believe when we live a more balanced life we make greater decisions, get to our destination faster and with ease.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Career Coaching:
How long does career coaching take to see results?
Although the answer depends on the complexity of the problem, most clients see results within one month, and ALL clients see the value within the 1st session. Your goals will determine what we need, maybe it’s a single session, maybe it’s a package of sessions. The Packages are designed with 10 years of experience in seeing how individuals, as a whole, progress towards their goals.
Why do I need a career coach?
We speed up the process of your professional development by meeting your aspirations faster, improving your career trajectory, landing that dream job faster, overcoming burnout so you keep doing what you love, managing work-life stress and so much more. Imagine saving 6 months salary because you got to your next career earlier?
Or imagine leading a team by jump starting your career development?
OR recovering from the dread and exhaustion of burnout so you start living a healthier and happier life and build a career that motivate and drive you to excellence.
No matter where you’re headed, with expert guidance you’ll get their faster and avoid pitfalls and distractions that can take years of your career growth.
How much does career coaching cost?
Most clients see a 25x ROI from engaging with us. That is for every dollar then spent in coaching, they’ll see a return of $25 – you can’t really put a price on those returns. That is determined by the funds they invest in our program to the tangible and intangible progress they achieve within 6 months of working with us – sometimes it’s doubling their income, sometimes it’s saving their marriage, sometimes it’s leap frogging from one title to advance 2 titles during a promotion, sometimes it’s recovering from an endless cycle of burnout to a healthier outlook on life.
Our stand alone programs start under $100, but the pricing depends on the complexcities of your challenges. We’re here to help you solve your challenges as quickly as possible – maybe that’s in days, maybe that’s in months – you get to decide how quickly you’d like to resolve your challenges so you can focus on what’s most important – spending time the way you want.
If you have questions or would like to see how we can help you, please schedule a FREE consultation call. We’re ready to support your career success.
