Laid off and Looking: How Career Coaching Helps
Note: This post was published today in The Wall Street Journal’s blog, “Laid Off and Looking.” The career coaching that Kenneth talks about in his post is one of the many career services offered to all UNC Kenan-Flagler MBA for Executives students and alumni.
The day I was laid off, I sought out the director of career management for executives at my alma mater. My first priority was to begin building a relationship with the career center and to launch my job search. My career coach, which the center provided to me free of charge, has contributed to my search strategies and has provided ongoing feedback in several areas.
During the first month, we met every week and we’ve since lengthened our meeting interval to every two or three weeks. The initial month of my job search was focused around strategy development and working on my resume and cover letter. My earliest coaching discussions also explored interests and skills that I had developed outside of work as an entrepreneur. My coach refers to this as the “who are you and where do you belong?” exercise. My coach provided professional contacts so I could discuss alternative career paths and I gained greater insight into how I could market my transferrable skills. I quickly determined that I wanted to spend my energy targeting business development and product management roles. Also, my initial discussions narrowed my targeted industries and companies to themes such as software as a service, virtualization, hosted services, and smart energy (i.e. follow the stimulus money).
The sessions have also expanded my thinking about professional networking to become a more active alumnus. If I want to achieve greater network externalities, I need to plug-in a little deeper to grow my circle. To this end, I now volunteer my time to help plan alumni activities with the school’s staff, which in turn creates face-to-face network opportunities to help garner job leads. We also evaluate my job search actions during the meetings to determine where I need to expend additional energy to increase the effectiveness of my search tactics. I keep a spreadsheet that tracks all the jobs that I am actively pursuing and we review it together. We discuss strategy, tactics, and how I can improve my search.
Feedback is a vital part of my job search. As a job seeker, I constantly receive information and feedback from company recruiters, company insiders (as networking contacts), professional recruiters, and many other sources. My spouse is a great source of love and encouragement. My former work colleagues and friends provide assistance in the tactical aspects of my job search. However, my career coach can see the whole picture. The opening question whenever I meet with him is always ‘how is the search going?’ Bringing these pieces together in a dialog is very useful to diagnose the blocking issues and to formulate alternative approaches.
What approaches have you found to be helpful in your job search? Share your thoughts by submitting a comment at the bottom of this post.
