Conclusion
Where to Turn for Additional Help
This book provides comprehensive information for a job search or career change. My intent was to cover all the salient points in sufficient detail so you can implement your plan knowing what you need to do, why you need to do it a certain way, and how to do it.
No book can cover every situation for every job and career. If I did that, no one would buy all the volumes needed to cover everything, and reading them would be a career in itself. Besides, I don’t have all the answers. Many times, I need to send my clients on research expeditions to find answers that make sense to them. Answers are often found where you don’t expect them, and it may take some digging to find information you can rely on.
Some of my clients wind up in jobs neither of us even knew existed, and they occasionally find situations where I’ve been able to help them successfully create their dream job. There’s no magic to it. I trust the process I’ve described in this book because it just seems to work—consistently.
I was constrained by the length and dimensions of this book and, consequently, couldn’t include all the reference material or forms in a user-friendly size. If you go to the Career Center on my Website, www.ExecGlobalNet.com, you will find information on:
Profiles of the different Personality Types (Reference 1.1: Myers– Briggs Type Characteristics).
Recommended books covering specific career-related issues (Reference 1.2: Career-Related Reading List).
Where and how to find what you need to know (Reference 4.1: Where to Get Additional Information).
You’ll also find full-size copies of most of the worksheets shown in this book that you can download for your personal use. Putting them on my Website also enables me to keep them current, something I can’t do with a printed book.
After you’ve finished reading this book and completed all the worksheets, you still might have some unresolved questions or issues that relate to your situation. Here are some suggestions.
Contact Me!
E-mail me at [email protected] to see if I can help. If I can’t, I’ll try to point you in the right direction. I wrote this book for you! I’ll make sure I consider your questions when I release a revised edition.
Engage Me
If you have questions about some aspect of your career or your situation and would like to talk about it, you can purchase a one and one-half hour Career Overview session where we can talk. If you think you might need more help or assistance over a longer period, I can accommodate a limited number of coaching clients. E-mail your request to me at [email protected].
Engage a Local Career Coach
There are many excellent career coaches throughout the United States and in most Westernized countries around the world. I encourage you to find one you can meet. Here are some suggestions on how to find one:
Ask people in your network if they know a career coach. Some may refer to themselves as career counselors.
Search the Internet for coaches in your location.
Search the International Coach Federation Website (www.coachfederation.org) for career coaches.
Search the Website of the Association of Career Professionals—International (www.acpinternational.org). I’m a member of this organization and often refer people to other ACP International member coaches around the world.
Search the Professional Coaches and Mentors Association Website (www.pcmaonline.com). I’ve served on the board of this organization and know many good coaches. They’re predominately in California, but many travel extensively and/or work virtually with clients around the world.
You’ve done your research and found some career coaches. Now how do you choose who to select? Career counselors and career coaches may be very different or very similar. It’s not a well-defined industry. Consequently, there aren’t any academic degrees or uniform qualifications, certificates or tests that qualify or certify someone to be a career counselor or coach.
Most career counselors work in universities, colleges, and high schools, and most will have training and certificates in counseling. They’re more appropriate for working at the student level, where the individual has negligible work history and the counselor needs to do more testing to be able to draw out reasonable recommendations.
Career coaching, on the other hand, is a wide open market. No universally accepted career-coaching qualifications or certifications exist. I know people who claim to be career coaches, and do a lot of testing and work with people to help discover their true passion, but they don’t have a clue how to help an executive or manager find a job.
I’ve seen bad resumes prepared for executives by career coaches and resume writers who think they know what recruiters and employers want to see. The good news is that you’re most likely to find your next job through someone you know or meet during your networking. Your resume may not play an important role if a potential employer bases his decision on the recommendation of someone he knows and trusts.
My recommendations for what to look for in a career coach include the following, assuming you have several years of work experience and are at a senior staff, manager, or executive level. A good career coach:
Is familiar with and understands business, the positions in business, and functional career paths from her personal work experience, not from what they understand it to be as told to them by others.
Understands and is conversant in a range of different industries, like manufacturing, retail, professional services, etc.
Is NOT the expert on what you should be doing. Only you can do that.
Will have some success stories to share with you.
Can clearly explain to you how she will work with you and what process she will put you through. If it sounds confusing or proprietary, it may only be smoke and mirrors.
Will have some professional training and experience in coaching. Professional (not academic) career coaching educational programs were started by career coaches who saw a business opportunity in selling training programs to those who want to call themselves career coaches. Some of these programs are worthwhile for conveying the experiences of seasoned career coaches; others are only opinions of those who started their own training program.
I attended the Job and Career Transition Coach (JCTC) program facilitated by Richard L. Knowdell and felt that it covered all the areas I believed were important to a career-transition coach. Dick does an admirable job keeping his program practical, relevant, and up to date, incorporating the experiences of other coaches.
Other coaching programs, both academic and professional, teach techniques that are critical to a coach’s ability to work with a client without personal bias or trying to impart personal beliefs.
I suggest you ask prospective coaches about their professional training as well as their personal experience and make your own assessment as to the adequacy of their background and training. If a coach suggests his training enables him to tell you what career you should pursue, be wary. That’s not what coaching is about.
Coaching skills are important, and you should inquire about a coach’s professional training. Perhaps even more important will be his business experience—whether he has experienced his own job and/or a career change, and whether he understands how recruiters, employers, and the job market actually work.
It’s my belief that the most effective career coach for mid-level-and-above job and career changers will be one who has learned what’s important in the field, not in a classroom or training environment, where theories are the primary ideas communicated.
This book and my opinions do not come from a career coach training program where an instructor conveyed her theories about how to find a job or make a career change. They came from my own job and career changes. I experienced firsthand how recruiters and employers make decisions. I couldn’t have gained this insight from a program that taught career coaching.
If a career coach suggests he thinks a such-and-such approach would work, he’s not expressing knowledge, only a theory. Look for career coaches who know from personal experience what works and what doesn’t, not from what they heard from another career coach about something she found “helpful.”
A Final Thought
If you have questions about any of the content in this book, want clarification of any point, or have found an error that needs to be corrected, I want to hear from you.
I’ve tried to use personal examples to illustrate and support my “process.” I don’t have all the answers and haven’t experienced every possible situation. I’m learning new things all the time and will include them in future revisions. If you would like to share your own experience with others in future revisions, I encourage you to write and tell me about it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned—and keep learning over and over again—it’s this:
THERE IS NO ONE WAY THAT WORKS FOR EVERYONE.
Thank you for reading my book and I hope it helps you find the career of your destiny.
Carl J. Wellenstein
ExecGlobalNet, Inc.
P.O. Box 1194
Downey, CA 90240
Tel.: (562) 923–0615
E-mail: [email protected]