Career coaching is an act of guidance to people who are confused about what career to choose.
Who is a career coach?
A career coach helps people in finding the career that suits them. They look into their clients’ skills, strengths and interests, wants, needs and suggest them with a suitable career.
Your knowledge on different fields
The first thing required in order to do career coaching is to have knowledge about the different careers and fields. Then only will you be able to guide your clients to a career that is best suitable for them. Plus, when you will know about various careers and fields you will have more options to give to your clients. Remember your part is only to suggest and not to impose your decision over your client. The final decision of selection will be of your client’s so they should have a number of options to choose from or else they will leave dissatisfied.
Are you open to lots of questions?
You need to be welcoming to different and weird and moreover, lots of questions. The clients coming to you might already be depressed and may have tons of questions in their mind and will be looking forward to you for clearing them all. So you will have to answer them all with politeness.
Can you keep repeating?
Sometimes your client might not understand you and this would mean that you will have to rephrase your words so they get what you are trying to say. This may seem easy, but if your client asks you to repeat several times this might get a bit annoying. This also includes clients not being satisfied with your answers and so you will have to come up with a different suggestion in a short time.
Do you have enough patience?
All in all, tackling with lots of questions and repetitions will require you to be patient. You can only handle such clients if you are patient enough to answer them and keep explaining to them if they don’t get you.
How good are you at explaining?
This needs to be answered honestly by you. Can you explain well? You can know this by the way people have been with you. Were people who communicated with you understood you or you had to clarify yourself again. You should know about the different techniques in making people understand your concept better. For instance, you may use examples.
How influential are you?
Apart from everything mentioned above, you have to be influential. Being influential means that you have to make your client believe that you will always guide them to the right career and whatever you will say will be for their good. This will make your client more agreeable and satisfy them in the end.
Will your earning from career coaching be enough?
Just knowing the right techniques and being patient is not enough to jump to career coaching. You also need to consider your financial needs. Research about the average pay career coaching provides and see if it matches with your financial needs. Starting with a career which does not get you the required money is seriously of no use.
Do you have enough resources?
Last but not the least, you need to have a workplace, a good amount of money to create an office, advertise and give your career a professional look. So you should only start this career if you have all these resources.
To sum it up, meet other career coaches and research more about this field over the internet to know everything about it.