Such spelunking worked like a charm for Erica Hamilton of Stamford, Conn., a marketing manager who was laid off in May. Before hiring the career coach she's working with, Hamilton sniffed her out at a networking event.
"Seeing the career coach make a presentation allowed me to assess her coaching style before getting into the relationship," Hamilton said. "Because she was so available in the market, I knew what I was getting."
Once you have a coach in mind, ask to see his or her resume or CV if they don't list one on their Web site. Yes, 10 years experience working as a corporate recruiter in their former 9-to-5 life is impressive. But you also want a coach with extensive experience working with people in your field -- and industry and the references to prove it.
A reader of this column I'll call "Terry" learned this the hard way. A Seattle Web developer who works for the software industry, Terry has a high aptitude for all things digital. Unfortunately, the career coach he hired to help him find a new job in 2007 did not.
"Much of my coach's advice was best for paper applications, physical networking events, face-to-face meetings," Terry said. "We argued a while about search engine optimization of resume terms, having a generic resume permanently up on the Web and leveraging Twitter and other online networks. She learned a lot from me."
It's perfectly acceptable to ask a coach for a few unpaid minutes of their time to suss all this out before you reach for your wallet. In addition, you'll want to know if your coach prefers to meet in person, by phone, by e-mail, or a combination of all three. Like rates and experience level, these will vary among coaches.
You'll get the most bang for your buck if you enter into a coaching relationship with a specific goal in mind, be it revamping your resume so you can move from the nonprofit to corporate sector or learning how to better negotiate salary.
Hamilton, the laid off marketing manager, hired her coach solely to help makeover her resume and develop a more effective cadre of cover letters. But there was an added bonus: "Working with her on my resume opened my eyes up to different position titles that I had not been using in my job board searches," Hamilton said.
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