An insightful article from someone experiencing career coaching for the first time, coming to it somewhat questioning of the experience yet with an open mind. It highlights how important it is to be ready and willing to receive coaching, in order to benefit from the experience.
Mills makes a good point about the need to be 'un-British' and ensure that you highlight your skills and strengths. Recruiters read what they see in front of them, if they don't know you already, so you have to make sure that you jump off the page and out of your CV or LinkedIn profile. Evidence your skills and strengths, don't make the recruiter wonder whether you have them.
A careers coach doesn't set out to tell you anything new, but instead, is an active listener. As well as hearing what you tell them, they may also hear things you don't say. A careers coach can be a helpful and non biased ear. They can help to turn what you perceive as negatives, into positive attributes, and they can also help you to recognise and appreciate strengths that you either didn't know you have, or take as a given, without placing much importance on them.
Over the next two hours Mills tells me nothing that I didn't know – I just didn't know I knew it. It's the act of describing one's career history to an attentive listener, with the skills to decode it, that is so unexpectedly illuminating. I'm happiest listing my defects; she seizes them, inverts them and turns them into saleable virtues. I tell her that my career is largely down to luck. "There's no such thing as luck," she retorts. "It's what you make of opportunities." It's delightful to think that all those random openings I've attributed to good fortune could be down to my own skills in disguise.
https://jobs.theguardian.com/article/is-career-coaching-worth-the-cost-/
