CAREER COACHING
You’re in the right place.
Maybe you’ve outgrown your career, or maybe you’ve never quite found your stride. Maybe you’ve been downsized, or you simply feel called to try something different.
Whatever led you to look for career coaching, chances are you’re here because you want this time to be different. I want that for you, too.
You may not know what “different” looks like, or how you’ll get to where you want to be. That’s normal.
Whether you’re excited about changing careers or doing it reluctantly, making a career transition often feels daunting.
Can I afford to make a career change? Can I afford not to make a career change? Should I go back to school to learn new skills or should I look for a career that uses the skills and experience I already have? These kinds of questions often weigh on career changers of any age.
“You aren’t generic. So we won’t use a generic approach.”
As you contemplate a career transition in midlife and beyond, though, you might have additional concerns and considerations. Am I too old for a career change? Should I just stay in my current role? Will I face age discrimination if I make a switch at this age? How will a career change impact my retirement?
Then, there are the considerations that people don’t tend to talk about much, but that often accompany career transition. Who will I be while I make a switch? What will happen to my relationships if I change careers? What supports will I need to make the change successful? Can I do this without blowing up the rest of my life?
While many concerns are common, others are deeply personal and require more than pat answers. You aren’t generic. So we won’t use a generic approach. When we work together, we’ll start by figuring out where you are and where you’re headed. The work takes shape from there.
As you’ve moved through life, you’ve likely left some pieces of yourself behind and picked up values, beliefs and interests that are based more on decades of shoulds, habits and other people’s expectations than on the core of who you are. Throughout our work together, I’ll help you identify what truly matters to you most in your next career move and I will help you reclaim the pieces of yourself that are true to you and the future you want to create.
From what matters to what’s next. When they’re useful, I will recommend tools, resources and assessments to help you gain more clarity and uncover potential career paths. Drawing on my decades of experience as a recruiter, we can work together on interview prep. We can also review your resume and public profiles to make sure you’re positioned for the career you want.
“Clients walk away with a renewed sense of self.”
Your life doesn’t stop during a career change. Change doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You have commitments, relationships, financial considerations, hobbies, concerns, needs and other elements that give your life texture. We’ll work with the most important facets of your life to find the balance that best supports the future you want. Our game plan will build on your unique assets and address potential roadblocks.
I will be your down-to-earth thinking partner, providing expertise and support for you to work things through without judgement. When you get stuck in thought loops, as we all do sometimes, I will help you tease apart the tangle in your mind. I will provide a gentle nudge and encouragement when you’re tempted to play small, but I’ll never pressure you. Career change isn’t typically instantaneous and there will be ups and downs along the way. I will be a steady presence who believes in you. And when you need it, I will help you believe in yourself.
We’ll typically meet virtually and you can choose 60- or 90-minute sessions. When we start our work together, I recommend that we meet weekly so that we can build momentum, but that will be your choice.
Clients tend to tell me that they walk away from our time together with more than an action plan for career improvement or change. They walk away with a renewed sense of self and new perspectives on challenges they carried with them for years.
It all starts with a 30-minute, no-strings conversation between you and me. We’ll talk about where you are, where you want to go, and figure out if I’m a good fit for you.
Change can be complicated, but you don’t have to do it alone.
No. You already have plenty of people in your life who do that. Telling you what to do doesn’t work. True transformation and change happen when we’re given the tools and support to make decisions and have insights for ourselves.
My role is to give you those tools and support. I will guide you, brainstorm with you, and provide information and perspective. I will help you evaluate your choices and come up with workable next steps. I will sometimes push back gently if you are limiting yourself.
I will help you understand yourself and your situation so that you will no longer feel like you need somebody or something else to tell you what to do.
Yes. For many years, in a past life, I was a recruiter. I will help you identify the kinds of questions you can likely expect and craft answers that highlight your capabilities. I will also help you identify common pitfalls and how to deal with them. We’ll discuss possible strategies to put you in the right frame of mind to put your best foot forward. We can also do mock interviews as practice.
As a former recruiter, I will review your resume and LinkedIn profile and point out areas where you can present yourself more effectively. However, the resume and application landscape is shifting so rapidly that your resources are not best spent on having me write your resume for you. Instead, we’ll use available tools to help you navigate the resume and application process based on the requirements of each specific role. If you would still rather have somebody write your resume for you, I will provide referrals for that part of the process.
We’ll work together to set you up as well as we can and we’ll factor real-life conditions into our work, but I can’t guarantee that you will find a job or that you will create a successful business, if that’s where your path leads. There are too many factors, such as economic/geographic/political conditions and client decisions, over which I have no control.
I have had clients who identified a new career path and secured a new job within about a month. That’s not typical, but it happens. Generally, I recommend committing to meeting weekly for at least three months to develop and start implementing your plan. Many clients choose to keep working together after that on a less frequent basis as they move through the job-search process.
Session time is your time. You can use it however you wish. Sometimes, we’ll work through targeted tools or activities together. At other times, I will provide the support and expertise to help you think through and create the future you want.
Typically, our sessions will start with time for you to recap your successes and challenges since our last session. Then, we’ll identify an outcome for the current session and we’ll spend time working toward that outcome. From there, we’ll create action steps and commitments to yourself for the week ahead.
I will be ready to suggest strategies for us to explore, but the process is fluid. If we are working on a research phase and you come to a session and tell me you have an interview scheduled, we can switch gears and move into interview prep.
To get where you ultimately want to go, we’ll devise action steps for you to take between sessions. We’ll also employ strategies to help you commit to yourself and overcome obstacles. The more willing you are to commit to yourself and our work together, the more you will get out of our time.
Ah, the loaded question. The honest answer is that there is quite a lot you can do on your own. The internet can be your friend in this process. There are plenty of books out there.
But:
I can see blind spots that you can’t. I can see your body language, hear changes in your voice and identify when you’re leaving things unsaid. I can tell when we need to spend more time with a thought or idea instead of rushing you to make a decision. I provide genuine encouragement and, when needed, pushback, to make sure you’re getting what you truly need based on who you are.
The thing I hear from clients in nearly every session is, “I never thought of it that way before. I’ve never been given this kind of time and space to think about any of these things.”
There is no replacement for being guided through and witnessed by a qualified person in the change process. You’re not an algorithm. Neither am I.
The general answer is, “No.” There is no globally accepted definition of “too late.” There are people who change careers in their 80s and 90s. There are people who retire from a primary career and start a new one. In fact, for a host of reasons, most of my retirement coaching clients at least discuss potential options for some sort of work in retirement.
There are many, many ways in which there’s no such thing as “too late.”
I believe that to my core.
And…everyone is different. If you’re concerned that time isn’t on your side, our starting point will be to figure out what “too late” means for you. We’ll look at your career and retirement goals, and examine non-career pieces of your life and see how they fit into your unique puzzle. We will also look at potential challenges and opportunities based on your situation. Without knowing you, there’s no straightforward answer to your question. However, we can find your answer together.
I am currently finishing up work toward the Associate Certified Coach designation through the International Coaching Federation (ICF). I am a Certified Professional Coach and Certified Career Coach through the World Coach Institute, an ICF-accredited school. I am a Certified Professional Retirement Coach through the Retirement Coaches Association.
I have a particularly strong interest in the neuroscience of change and have completed an intensive professional development program in Applied Neuroscience and Brain Health through Dr. Sarah McKay. I am in the process of completing an additional program in the neuroscience of coaching through Dr. Irene O’Brien.
I was born, raised and educated up through university in Canada and spent my early career there. Canada uses the British spelling for many words. When I moved to the United States, I had to leave many things behind, but the extra ‘u’s followed me. Full disclosure: The metric system also followed me. I still don’t understand Fahrenheit temperatures.
