A job search coach can help you land a job, but they aren’t recruiters. Recruiters work for employers to find talent for specific job openings; job search coaches teach you how to be the type of candidate that recruiters and employers want to hire.
A job search coach can…
1. Ensure that your career focus is sufficiently clear and specific enough. If you don’t know what you want to do, it will be extremely hard to convince recruiters and hiring managers you are the best choice for a job! (This part is my professional specialty. I help clients choose a career focus so they can launch an effective job search.)
2. Teach you how hiring managers and recruiters think.
3. Evaluate your personal marketing materials like cover letters, resumes, and your LinkedIn profile to determine how effective they are, and I make specific suggestions if you need to improve them.
4. Recommend networking strategies that work with your strengths and personality to enable you to meet more people in your career field.
5. Practice with you what you will say when you are connecting with people who may know of job opportunities that would be a good fit for you.
6. Coach you to prepare for job interviews. It takes skill and practice to be confident and persuasive rather than passive/timid or aggressive/arrogant.
7. Support you emotionally when the job search takes longer than you would like it to take (which is very common, as hiring cycles can be long). A job search coach can help you with staying persistent and resilient if you are discouraged, and help you use time and energy management strategies that keep you feeling your best as job searches are often stressful.
8. Brainstorm ways to earn survivor income while you keep looking for the right job.
9. Assist you with salary negotiations.
10. Guide your decision-making process to choose between multiple job offers so that the job you accept is more likely to be congruent with what is important to you.