Career Coaching and the Recruitment Process
At the most basic level, career coaches and recruiters want the same thing: candidates and clients who present a professional cover letter and CV, a successful interview and job satisfaction. What then, is the relationship between career coaching and the recruitment process and how can recruiters and career coaches compliment each other’s individual skills more effectively?
What does everyone want?
Employees want the best career opportunities and employers want the best candidates for the jobs they advertise. Recruiters want to place their candidates in the right job as this is how they earn their commission, whether directly from the candidate or from the company whom they represent. It is therefore in their interest to have candidates who are confident and who qualify according to all the demands of the advertised position. This is exactly where career coaches and recruiters might work together.
According to Louise Trance who runs the free recruitment website www.ukrecruiter.co.uk, a recruiter should have interrogation and interviewing skills. More specifically, a recruiter would be expected to “write a job description, person specification and full company briefing document. He or she should then be able to create competency and skills based interview questions to pose to each candidate they meet.” Asking probing, challenging and solution-focused questions is the basis of coaching so once again, we see a similarity in the two roles.
What role could a career coach play in supporting the work of a recruiter?
In the first instance, job seekers will see either a recruiter or a career coach because they would like to find a new job or to change jobs. Both the recruiter and the career coach would help the candidate to produce the best CV and covering letter as well as improve his or her interview skills. This is a common factor linking recruiters and career coaches. However, a recruiter is paid when a candidate is placed, not while the candidate is still unemployed. It stands to reason then that the recruiter is less likely to have the time or inclination to spend weeks with various individual candidates allowing them time for introspection, for exploration of their ideal job or for personal development. And let’s face it, that is exactly what some candidates might need. Numerous job seekers are not really certain about what it is they really want to do and often cannot seem to identify the source of their dissatisfaction. They are facing the pressures of the current job market and often feel obliged to take whatever is available in order to put bread on the table. They might even have to take salary cuts or drops in levels of responsibility in their new employment. Undoubtedly, this will lead to problems later on if these issues are left unresolved. This is another area in which the career coach can play an important role in supporting recruiters and prospective employers in the recruitment process.
The role of the coach in terms of motivation
Motivation is perhaps the most crucial ingredient in terms of success in every professional situation. Whether you are seeking the motivation to get off the couch to find a job or seeking the motivation to improve your performance at work or to aim for promotion or a pay rise, you need to discover a sufficient source of motivation. Your recruitment agent or your employer will both play a vital role in providing you with extrinsic motivation to apply for a job or to improve at work, but it is your coach who is your biggest ally in terms of helping you to find the most effective and long-lasting form of motivation, intrinsic motivation.
How does a coach help you to secure a high level of intrinsic motivation?
Your coach will encourage you to engage in different exercises of introspection. Depending on your individual situation, the coach might ask you to consider the following questions:
1. What tasks do you enjoy doing at work? After what type of day do you return home satisfied?
2. This feeling of satisfaction, is it linked to a particular talent or skill? In general, are the tasks you enjoy doing directly linked to your level of skills?
3. Are you getting to use your talent and skills extensively in your current job? Are you given enough time and encouragement to develop these skills?
4. Are your work conditions positive or are they part of the reason you are considering alternative employment?
5. Are you staying in your job because it responds well to your skills and passion or are you staying because you’re comfortable, happy with your colleagues and don’t want to start again, or because you think you do not have what it takes to do something else?
6. What prompted you to go for your current job? Have these reasons been justified and is this what you expected in terms of the job delivery?
7. What type of person are you, reflective or active?
8. Is interaction with your colleagues important, like in teamwork, or are you more of an individualist, preferring to work alone?
9. Do you like to plan and organise things yourself or do you prefer being told exactly what to do?
10. Are you good at solving problems, do you like making important decisions and are you more rational or more emotional?
By allowing you time to answer these challenging questions (and many others), your coach begins to understand what it is that motivates you and at the same time, is able to formulate a programme that will help you to find and to secure a deep resource of self-motivation. Your career coach will also encourage you to make a list of things that you do at work and at home, covering a period of several days. We do this because we often discover many extra transferable skills of which our clients were not even aware. For example, a client might mention helping a friend fix their computer over the weekend, not realising that they had computer skills which could be used in their current or their future job.
What is the main source of self or intrinsic motivation?
In my opinion, the main source of self-motivation lies in one’s values. Every coach will take time to question their client on their values. We do this because our values are the driving force behind true motivation. If we believe in something and the good it brings us, we will be more motivated to follow that path. When a client’s values are not nurtured or respected in their career, or when there is no correlation between the client’s values with the values of the company, then there is every chance of unhappiness, dissatisfaction and low performance.
What then is the key difference between recruiters and career coaches and how can the two work more closely together?
The key difference is time; recruiters are under extreme pressure to place candidates on time and effectively. Coaches have more time than recruiters to explore deeper issues that might be preventing the candidate from achieving a successful placement, such as extreme nervousness during interviews or not knowing exactly what it is the candidate would rather do. Recruiters could encourage their candidates to have one or two sessions with a coach in order to ensure that the candidate enters the interview confident by strengthening verbal and non-verbal communication, and enters the new employment certain of what it is they actually want to do by ensuring that their own values as well as those of their prospective employer, are aligned.
CoachExec runs successful coaching clinics with leading recruiters and their candidates either during the intake process or during the review stage when candidates have not yet been successfully placed. Combining the knowledge and skills of the recruiter and the coach can only lead to more successful placements, ensuring that employees, employers, recruiters and coaches have all achieved a common goal, that of ensuring that the candidate finds the job they’ll love and loves the job they have.
For further reading, buy “How to get a job you’ll love” by John Lees. Highly recommended.