Career coaches are known to be experts in skills such as career planning, resume building, negotiation and interviewing. With this form of coaching, career counsellors offer advice and support to their clients in order to help manage their journey through life, learning, and work changes. This can include career assessment, career choices to make, and switching careers, among other career-related issues. The relevance of this to one’s career growth is rooted in the ability an individual gets in terms of identifying and achieving their career goals. Chris Bardwell, a career development consultant, notes that people choose to work with career coaches when something urgent, compelling or exciting is at stake, when there is a gap existing in knowledge, skills, confidence, or resources, or when one lacks clarity with choices to be made or has a desire to accelerate results. He points out that one of the advantages of having a career coach is that, as experts, they will listen and observe what you have to say and customise their approach to an individual client’s needs, and elicit solutions and strategies to move you forward. He also adds that a career coach can provide you with personalised goal setting, help you focus on your progress and provide you with continuous support over a course of coaching sessions. “Working with a coach can help you set better goals than you would probably do on your own, and help you be accountable for achieving what you committed to working towards,” Bardwell says. According to Maureen Asimwe, a human resource manager, a career coach will help you build a clear action plan on how to move ahead and make progress in terms of your career growth. She notes that an employee who seeks the services of a career coach has higher chances of career growth than one who doesn’t. Asimwe adds that being coached by an expert can boost your confidence as an employee, but it also has the ability to improve one’s performance at work, and to also build effective communication skills among other essential skills. “If you want to have a clear understanding of yourself from a career and work perspective, then seeking the services of a career coach is the right step to take. These experts can help you with identifying the right position you will thrive in, and can also guide you in terms of knowing the right steps to take in terms of your career growth,” she says. Asimwe highlights that setting goals for your career requires that you build a roadmap to where you want to go in your career. This is where goal setting comes in, all of these steps are essential to your progress at work, and that it is your career coach who can best help you identify where you are going and create targets to get there. “Support from personal career management has the ability to enable you to get promotions at work. Even in your current role, they can guide you in making informed decisions about the progress of your career,” Asimwe says.
