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Fastest Way to Find a Job - Tip 21 Career Coaching

Topic: Interviewing SkillsFeaturing Peggy McKeePublished Recently added

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Career Coaching If you’re in the job search, you have certainly heard advice about job boards, networking, or even temporary work. But have you ever considered a career coach as a path to a new job? When I say “Career Coach,” I do not mean the kind of life coach who helps you decide what you should do with your life. Don’t get me wrong, they have their place, but what I’m talking about is a coach who helps you with your career: finding and getting a job that will help you further your career goals. This one is near and dear to my heart, because I am a career coach as well as the CEO of Career Confidential. In my career coaching role, I help people on an individual basis knock down the barriers that are holding them back. These barriers could be anything from negative internal voices that cause them to not step out and do the things that they should; to resumes they think are good because they were professionally written but don’t actually sell them as a candidate; to people who don’t know how to sell themselves in the interview and only need coaching on how to answer interview questions (practice and role-playing interview questions is incredibly helpful). That’s the kind of career coaching I do. That’s mostly what I do, although I do have a few people calling me to talk about what they want to do when they grow up. Maybe you need a career coach to talk to you about what career field you should be in. If they know a lot about that field, they are an incredible resource for you. To me, that’s more valuable than a personality test (although I do think personality assessments are valuable) because that’s first-hand knowledge that you can tap into and see if you think it would fit you or not. I have a lot of people who want to talk to me about transitioning into medical sales because I have such a strong background there. A lot of people I just shepherd into the role they want, but one man spent time with me talking and learning about medical sales and eventually got enough information that told him that career was not for him. That time he spent with me as a career coach saved him hours and hours of effort and a large amount of money that he would have spent on getting himself ready for that career. It helped him clarify. When you are choosing a career coach, make sure the person you’re listening to has real experience. Either someone in your direct industry with experience there, or a recruiter who understands what hiring managers are looking for and can show you how to sell yourself for the job. Your coach should be an expert you can learn from and grow with.

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Newspapers (or Craigslist) If you know that I’m not very fond of job boards as a job search resource, then you must be really surprised that I would talk about newspapers or even Craigslist in a series about the fastest way to find a job. I’m sure you assume that I think newspapers belong to the Dark Ages and Craigslist is just the online version of classified ads. Which it is…but bear with me.

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Alumni Organizations Alumni organizations are great networking resources for you, which means they are also great resources to help you find a job.

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Industry Organizations Industry organizations are some of the best job search resources anywhere. These can be fantastic because they are a direct connection for you to people in your field—including potential hiring managers, but that’s not your only benefit here. You can expand your network, you can learn a lot about your field, and you can often find out about jobs that aren’t necessarily listed on national job boards. For instance, I was a part of several organizations when I was in clinical diagnostics sales: The American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC)r

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What will you contribute to this job? This job interview question is very similar to “Why should we hire you?” Or, “Why do we want you over the other candidates?” The job interview is a sales process in which you are the product and the hiring manager and company is the buyer. Your salary is the price of the product, you and your skill sets. It’s fair for them to ask, “What are we going to get for our money?”

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