3 Ways to Find a Career Coach
If you’ve ever searched the words “career coach” in Google, then you know how overwhelming wading through the results can be. In fact, I just tried it out myself and got about 1,040,000,000 results (no biggie) and most of the top results were just links to articles about WHY you need a coach or how to find one near you… not links to actual coaches.
So, how is one expected to find a career coach, especially if you’re already feeling strapped for time, emotionally burned out, or just out of your element in the career coaching space?
How do you know if the person you are considering is worth the investment, really knows their stuff, and has helped people like you before? How do you know they didn’t just throw up a quick website and make some false claims about how they can get you that “dream job” you’ve always wanted?
As a career coach myself, I care a lot about making sure everyone who needs one is able to find a legitimate coach to work with. So, here are my top three tips to find a career coach who is worth partnering with:
1 - Through Referral
Referrals, in my mind, are the number one way to find an amazing career coach. When someone you know personally can vouch for the value and benefit of a specific coach, it’s better than a hundred anonymous reviews online. In fact, Nielsen has found that 92% of consumers will take into account a personal recommendation from friends and family over all other forms of advertising.
Here’s the dirty truth: anyone can generate buzz for themselves with paid advertising or through more sneaky means like buying bots to comment on and “like” their content. These things make them look more popular than they really are, and therefore, make it difficult for people to assess how good they actually are at getting results.
If you know someone who has worked with a coach, ask them who they worked with. Or, you might want to create a post on LinkedIn asking people to recommend career coaches that they know personally. I guarantee you’ll get some great leads if you do this versus trying to wade through the literal millions of career coaches on Google.
2 - Social Media
These days, social media pretty much runs the world. If you’re looking for a good career coach and you haven’t been able to get a referral from your network, you could definitely try finding one on social media. There are a few things you’re going to want to watch out for, though:
Lots of bot comments and very few “actual” comments on their posts. This tells you that their audience is mostly made up of people who have never actually worked with them.
Lots of followers but very few posts. This is suspicious because it means that they may have purchased followers. It takes time to build a genuine following, so if someone has a suspiciously large number of followers and not a lot of posts, I would be skeptical.
No actual success stories. A coach who is worthwhile should have some solid examples of how they helped people. If you’re scrolling their feed and they haven’t talked ONCE about how they actually helped someone, I would move on.
These days, social media is kind of like the wild west. It is up to you to spot any red flags like the ones I listed above, especially if you’re going to be investing a lot of money with someone.
If you find someone on social media that you think you vibe with, let that be the start of the vetting process. The next step would be to send a message and ask to hear about their recent success stories or even ask for the contact information of a few clients that can vouch for them. Trust me, it’s not out of line to do this, and a good coach would be happy to share that information with you.
3 - Professional Organizations
This is another great way to find a worthwhile career coach that is actually going to be able to help you. Here are just some examples of professional organizations where you can find reputable and vetted career coaches:
The coaches you will find on these websites have gone through the process of getting certified and they’ve invested the money to learn the skills required to get real results. You can have peace of mind that these aren’t fly-by-night coaches who really just want to be Instagram influencers (and we have all seen plenty of those). These coaches are the real deal, and definitely worth the added effort to seek out and at least book a discovery call with.
Do you have any questions about finding a career coach to work with? I would be more than happy to share my thoughts and experience with you! Message me anytime or leave a comment for me below!