Coaches, Consultants and Mentors: Who should help me with my career?

Career transition is complicated and career discussions can be highly personal, stressful and uncomfortable when you feel stuck and unsure how to move forward.

When you are considering a career change, how do you decide who to go to for help?

The answer depends on the type of support you are seeking.

This week, I thought I’d decode some of the differences between the various professionals who work to provide clients with career services.

Coaches: According the International Coach Federation, a leading certification body, coaching is a “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”

Coaches do not provide specific advice or recommendations. Rather, they enable and empower the client to discover their own answers. They use many different techniques to help clients overcome barriers and explore untapped possibilities and the approach is specific to each client but not prescriptive.

Clients “own” each coaching session and are responsible for the outcome.

Consultants: In contrast, other career practitioners or consultants have achieved a level of certification or designation in a particular area related to career transition. They provide specific advice and recommendations.

For example, a job search specialist might provide a client with a search strategy including a list of networking events and companies to target and a comprehensive, targeted review and revision of a client’s resume.

The practitioner may apply coaching techniques as part of the work that they do with the client but there is a clearly defined scope and deliverable expected from the relationship.

Mentors: Mentors are people who have gained experience in your field. They have inside knowledge and insight gained over years of working within the specific business environment.

While there are many training programs for mentors, there are no specific certification programs or requirements. Mentors may or may not have specific skills related to coaching or consulting. What they offer is technical know-how and first-hand experience navigating the corporate landscape.

Personality fit and experience level are two important factors to consider when selecting a mentor.

The Team Approach: At Challenge Factory, our clients are assigned a coach who has been through a certification process and has more than 10 years of coaching experience.

We also provide access to unique, highly skilled entrepreneurial, job search, resume and networking consultants that work co-operatively with our coaches.

Finally, our Expert community serves as one-day mentors for our clients. Clients get to spend a day immersed in the job that they would like to pursue. They benefit from the Expert’s technical know-how and business experience.

Our clients are able to benefit from the full breadth of professional expertise that the career services field can offer, without having to navigate and negotiate multiple agreements and arrangements.

Clients know that the team working with them are good at what they do and work well together.

If you are in the midst of looking for help with your career and aren’t sure which type of practitioner is best for you I hope you’ll give us a call. We’ll be happy to speak with you about your options and make recommendations based on your needs.