Is Career Coaching Worth The Cost?

Guardian journalist Anna Tims Came to put us to the test. Seeks to answer the question; Is career coaching worth the price? Anna tells it all in her candid and impartial review:


The voice on the phone wants me to draw a picture of where I am. I’m confused. Where I am, at that moment, he is in the kitchen trying to extract a tissue that has just undergone a hot cycle with the children’s school uniforms. “No, where are you alive,” Explains the voice. “In your life now.”

This is where I begin, briefly, to panic. I volunteered to apply for one of the UK’s top career advisers, Corinne Mills from Personal Career Management, partly because the idea of ​​talking about yourself long with a captive stranger is always pleasant, and partly because newsprint jobs seem increasingly risky. . Flexible work that allows you to perform twice a day at the school gate is elusive, and I recently found myself assuming that my professional future would be tied to the Tesco box office.

Mills tells me, with help, that the place she is in, right now, is juggling her career with a household, and her picture shows herself waving dust like someone drowning. I realize, surprised, that I am completely satisfied with my life as it is now; It is the fear of unwanted change that worries me. I ponder the composition that includes me dangling smugly in a well-padded hammock, a yawning abyss beneath. Then I start worrying about vanishing points and Chiaroscuro. Mills, probably a watch for deep neuroses before we even met, suggests I concentrate on identifying my skills from an alphabetical checklist.

Corinne Mills and Anna Tims (right).
Photo: Frank Baron

I never had much time for counseling. It may be a vital aid and motivation, I do not doubt it, but to speak well in the face of my husband’s shaving mirror should, in my opinion, suffice to align corrupt points of view in my privileged life.

What to expect when you enter

However, I’m a little excited when I get to the Buckinghamshire mansion that has a shared personal career with a commercial insurance broker. I have hopes that Mills will delve into my dying resume and extract unseen treasures that will open up landscapes and ease me through the calamity.

warm welcome

“Love Monday Morning” It is written on the door plate and on the walls inside. The receptionist leaps from her chair with a firm handshake and a well-trained eye contact. In the waiting area there is a forest of polished and polished foliage. This place is all ok.

Get to know my skills

In a bright Mills conference room begins with a look at the homework she has prepared for me. This is not a good start. The AZ of skills, from conceptualization to quantification, adaptation to winning, bothered me. I find I do not know myself. It is much easier to define the skills of his colleagues than his skills, and I was tormented by the question of whether, if a push were preventative, I could “To make” or “to approve” or “summarize”. I almost randomly marked “Formulate”, “sort” andWith memories of that shredded tissue, “coping.” And of course, “writing“, The only concrete skill I feel I have to earn my possession.

I feel the need to apologize for marking skills at all. It looks pretentious, not British. “Do not be overwhelmed by yourself – it’s all about playing on your strengths because recruitment is not about who is the most talented, but who seems to the interviewer to be the most talented.” Says Mills. “People tend to focus on the negative and take the positive for granted.”

This is surprising because a large portion of its clientele are lawyers and financiers who are tired of wealth without the leisure to spend it on. But even they, it seems, are exposed to self-doubt when it comes to leaving the seller and marketing them. Properties elsewhere. “People do not come to us because they want a job, but because they want the right job,” Says Mills. “What we offer is a trust-building process.”

How much does career coaching cost?

The gift of self-confidence is an expensive gift. A full face-to-face course that identifies desires and options, details job search strategies and hand-holds in the application and interview process, costs up to £ 4,500, although online meetings and a program for new graduates are cheaper alternatives. The investment seems right, as personal career management statistics show that 83% of clients find jobs that attract them and 11% set up their own business. “A lot of career counseling companies look at your resume,” Says Mills“But do not analyze who you are as a person, your needs and aspirations.”

Recitation of a promising employment history

Who I am as a person remains vague, as my career has never required a written resume and I have left the sheets on identifying your accomplishments mostly blank. A memory popped up about saving a couple’s anniversary through a help column for my consumers, but mostly my 20 years in the press merged into a pleasant blur. It’s now that Mills’ skills are being released. She asks me to tell my work history and pounces when I start leaving university. “Which university?” “Cambridge”. “So why did you not say?”

I sketch my first years in the European newspaper that is now over, and I explained that I did a wine column when I never drank wine and took responsibility for the arts section when I knew nothing about the arts. I’m about to add how this miraculous scam ended in redundancy, when Mills pounces again. “Obviously,” She says“You’re used to throwing various niche things at yourself. You adapt.” We register “adaptable”. Even redundancy becomes an asset. Mills considers my adrenaline-fueled overture to competing newspapers as proof of Rising to the Occasion and we are recording it.

Make the most of job opportunities

For the next two hours Mills did not tell me anything I did not know – I just did not know I knew it. The act of describing a person’s career history to an attentive listener, with the skills to decipher it, is so unexpectedly illuminating. I am most happy to list my flaws; She grabs them, turns them over and turns them into virtues that can be sold. I tell her that my career depends mostly on luck. “There is no such thing as luck,” She replies. “That’s what you make of opportunities.” It’s delightful to think that all these random openings I attributed to good luck could be because of my disguise skills.

So, is career coaching worth the price?

To answer the question; Is career coaching worth the price? I believe that over time she would help build my skills into a seductive resume and teach me self-marketing. As it is, she instructs me to set up a website to display my recently identified wares and snack on cocktail sausages with influential people. I explain that the latter is impossible. I’m not good at networking. How then, she asks, did I manage a smooth sequence of media jobs? I admit that my secret lies in tea bags. I have always kept my colleagues well watered and they remember my efficient waitress when I needed to.

Mills snores. “Willingness, caring, empathy, good personal relationship …” We write them all down and ring them with markers so that my career history dances before me in an inspiring way in the pattern of rainbow-colored circles in the cloud.

On the way home I feel she was invented fresh and equipped to embrace the adventures of middle age. The meeting may, and may not, assure me of a satisfying professional future, but it has made me appreciate the past in an encouragingly different light. I’m even tempted to pay a few thousand to hear more. But, for now, I’m going to the mirror to see if the recently translated self is visible to the naked eye.


Is career coaching worth the price? Originally Posted in The guardian and Guardian Jobs.

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