Richard Bolles - What Color Is Your Parachute?

Consider the listings as just a starting point for your search. You must check them out. You must do your own homework. You must do your own research.

So, how do you go about this research toward the goal of finding a good career coach or counselor, if you decide you need more help than this book can give you? Well, you start by collecting three namesof career coaches or counselors in your geographical area.

How do you find those names? Several ways:

First, you can get names from your friends: ask if any of them have ever used a career coach or counselor. And if so, did they like ’em? And if so, what is that coach’s or counselor’s name? And how do you get in touch with them, so you can ask them some questions before deciding whether you want to sign up with them, or not?

Second, you can get some names from the aforementioned Sampler in Appendix D. See if there are any career coaches or counselors who are near you. They may know how you can find still other names in your community.

Need more names? Try your telephone book’s Yellow Pages, under such headings as: Aptitude and Employment Testing, Career and Vocational Counseling, Personnel Consultants , and (if you are a woman) Women’s Organizations and Services .

Once you have three names, it’s time to go do some comparison shopping. You want to talk with all three of them and decide which of the three (if any) you want to hook up with.

What will this initial interview cost you, with each coach or counselor? The answer to that is easy: when first setting up an appointment, ask . You do have the right to inquire ahead of time how much they are going to have to charge you for the exploratory interview.

Some—a few—will charge you nothing for the initial interview. One of the brightest counselors I know says this: I don’t like to charge for the first interview because I want to be free to tell them I can’t help them, if for some reason we just don’t hit it off .

However, do not expect that most coaches or counselors can afford to give you this exploratory interview for nothing! If they did that, and got a lot of requests like yours, they would never make a living.

If this is not an individual counselor, but a firm trying to sell you a “pay-me-first” package up front , I guarantee they will give you the initial interview for free. They plan to use that “intake” interview (as they call it) to sell you a much more expensive program. They will even ask you to bring your spouse or partner along. (If they can’t persuade one of you, maybe they can persuade the other.)

When you are face to face with the coach or counselor, you ask each of them the same questions, listed on the form below. (Keep a little pad, notebook, or PDA with you, so you can write down their answers.)

After visiting the three places you chose for your comparison shopping, you can go home, sit down, put your feet up, look over your notes that evening, and compare those places. A chart like this, drawn in your notebook, may help:

You need to decide a) whether you want noneof the three, or b) oneof the three (and if so, which one).

Remember, you don’t have to choose any of the three coaches, if you didn’t really care for any of them. If that is the case, go choose three new names out of the Yellow Pages or wherever, dust off the notebook, and go out again. It may take a few more hours to find what you want. But the wallet, the purse, the job-hunt, and the life, you save will be your own.

As you look over your notes, you will soon realize there is no definitive way for you to determine a career coach’s intentions. It’s something you’ll have to smell out , as you go along. But here are some clues:

If they give you the feeling that everything will be done for you, by them ( including interpretation of tests, and decision making about what this means you should do, or where you should do it )—rather than asserting that you are going to have to do almost all the work, with their basically being your coach,

You want to learn how to do this for yourself; you’re going to be job-hunting again, you know. That’s the nature of our world today. Job-hunting is a repetitive activity in human life .

If you don’t like the counselor, period!,

I don’t care what their expertise is, if you don’t like them, you’re going to have a rough time getting what you want. I guarantee it. Rapport is everything .

If you ask how long this particular counselor has been doing this, and they get huffy or give a double-barreled answer, such as: “I’ve had eighteen years’ experience in the business and career counseling world,”

What that may mean is: seventeen and a half years as a fertilizer salesman, and one half year doing career counseling. Persist: “How long have you been with this firm, and how long have you been doing formal career coaching or counseling, as you are here?” You don’t want someone who’s brand new to advising job-hunters. They may call this “their practice,” but what they mean is that they are practicing… on you .

If they try to answer the question of their experience by pointing to their degrees or credentials,

Degrees or credentials tell you they’ve passed certain tests of their qualifications, but often these tests bear more on their expertise at career assessment, than on their knowledge of creative job-hunting .

If, when you ask about that firm’s success rate, they say they have never had a client who failed to find a job, no matter what,

They’re lying. I have studied career counseling programs for more than forty years, have attended many, have studied records at state and federal offices, and have hardly ever seen a program that placed more than 86 percent of their clients, tops, in their best years. And it goes downhill from there. A prominent executive counseling firm was reported by the Attorney General’s Office of New York State to have placed only 38 out of 550 clients ( a 93 percent failure rate ) . On the other hand, if they make it clear that they have had a good success rate, but if you fail to work hard at the whole process, then there is no guarantee you are going to find a job, give them three stars .

If any counselor shows you letters from ecstatically happy former clients, but when you ask to talk to some of those clients, you get stonewalled,

Here is a job-hunter’s letter about his experience with an executive counseling firm he was considering: