How to leverage career advice when you're not qualified to give it?
May 28, 2018 3:41 PM Subscribe
England is all about qualifications. I have found I have niche abilities in providing excellent, mostly spot-on career planning advice through a self-developed review and writing process. I have so far done it unpaid. I want to create a business from this but can't really figure out how to make it work as I am not a qualified career counsellor. Do I need to be?
Over the last several months, I have spent days volunteering with a community group for young people who simply need access to support and advice about their career planning. Most of the people I worked with had an extremely specific job interest (e.g. working as a museum curator or becoming a sous chef) but lacked substantial skills. I work with them to get on the ladder and create educational, financial, and individual planning and projects to expand their knowledge and expertise in the field of work they are interested in.
Then, through a business activity, I was able to do this with two mid career mental health professionals. The results were exciting: one found a job on her doorstep doing what she loved and reduced her commute from two hours to 15 minutes. The other went from a high stress, unsupported care management role to a fantastic, secure hours opportunity at a well respected and integrative healthcare organisation.
I have a day job but considering at least moonlighting as a career development counsellor. I am struggling with how to actually begin this. My thinking is to start locally, but I don't even know how to price it. In the cases of the young people it took an average of 8 hours to move them towards success, but it was over a four month period due to organisational issues. For the mid career people, it took around 16 hours because there was more to unpack.
I am considering creating two plans of attack for this. What would you pay for objective assistance to find and take action for jobs you really wanted? Would you want to do this in a group setting or would you require one on one time? I have delivered this both one on one and in groups, both to a good reception.
This is obviously a challenging idea to work with but I really enjoy the challenge of the work. Any assistance or ideas to make it something I could do more often would be greatly appreciated.
Over the last several months, I have spent days volunteering with a community group for young people who simply need access to support and advice about their career planning. Most of the people I worked with had an extremely specific job interest (e.g. working as a museum curator or becoming a sous chef) but lacked substantial skills. I work with them to get on the ladder and create educational, financial, and individual planning and projects to expand their knowledge and expertise in the field of work they are interested in.
Then, through a business activity, I was able to do this with two mid career mental health professionals. The results were exciting: one found a job on her doorstep doing what she loved and reduced her commute from two hours to 15 minutes. The other went from a high stress, unsupported care management role to a fantastic, secure hours opportunity at a well respected and integrative healthcare organisation.
I have a day job but considering at least moonlighting as a career development counsellor. I am struggling with how to actually begin this. My thinking is to start locally, but I don't even know how to price it. In the cases of the young people it took an average of 8 hours to move them towards success, but it was over a four month period due to organisational issues. For the mid career people, it took around 16 hours because there was more to unpack.
I am considering creating two plans of attack for this. What would you pay for objective assistance to find and take action for jobs you really wanted? Would you want to do this in a group setting or would you require one on one time? I have delivered this both one on one and in groups, both to a good reception.
This is obviously a challenging idea to work with but I really enjoy the challenge of the work. Any assistance or ideas to make it something I could do more often would be greatly appreciated.
Best answer: Feel somewhat qualified to answer this as I'm based in the UK and tried for a while to establish a side-gig as a career counsellor. I do have a (generic) coaching qualification, but not a career coaching one, not sure you would really need that although it does help to have some training and support.
If I remember correctly, you are based in West Midlands (so am I, Black Country to be more precise)- there's a very good network for coaches https://coachingconnectionsmidlands.com/ that may be helpful for getting contacts and tips.
In line with what lunasol wrote above, the big thing for you will be marketing and getting people to actually pay for your services. I still do loads of coaching and mentoring on a volunteer basis because I enjoy it and I may actually be good at it, it is however a very different proposition to get people to pay for your your services. My experience was that six months of very hard work at trying to market my services using blogs (own blog and guest blogging) /guest podcasts etc. got me one paying client and then I realised I enjoy the coaching side of things, the marketing side not so much.
You may also want to look at how some successful career counsellors websites, I like www.careertree.org.uk and also this one https://121interviewcoaching.co.uk/ I know both of them through my professional networks and they are very good at what they do and have managed to eke out a career out of providing career counselling. Their websites should also give you a good idea re: pricing and packaging your services.
Feel free to PM me if you'd like to talk through some more.
posted by coffee_monster at 4:21 AM on May 31, 2018
If I remember correctly, you are based in West Midlands (so am I, Black Country to be more precise)- there's a very good network for coaches https://coachingconnectionsmidlands.com/ that may be helpful for getting contacts and tips.
In line with what lunasol wrote above, the big thing for you will be marketing and getting people to actually pay for your services. I still do loads of coaching and mentoring on a volunteer basis because I enjoy it and I may actually be good at it, it is however a very different proposition to get people to pay for your your services. My experience was that six months of very hard work at trying to market my services using blogs (own blog and guest blogging) /guest podcasts etc. got me one paying client and then I realised I enjoy the coaching side of things, the marketing side not so much.
You may also want to look at how some successful career counsellors websites, I like www.careertree.org.uk and also this one https://121interviewcoaching.co.uk/ I know both of them through my professional networks and they are very good at what they do and have managed to eke out a career out of providing career counselling. Their websites should also give you a good idea re: pricing and packaging your services.
Feel free to PM me if you'd like to talk through some more.
posted by coffee_monster at 4:21 AM on May 31, 2018
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She has what I think is a great business model for creating a new client funnel- she gives a day-long seminar once a month on job searching which is basically a well-structured download of everything she knows. She takes participants from the process of figuring out what you want to do, to finding out what skills/qualifications you need, to identifying opportunities, to networking, to actually applying. She charges $90 for this.
She has amazing SEO, so that when I googled "[MY CITY] career coach" this seminar was the first result that came up. And I thought, "hey, that's not a lot of money, and it's just one day, let me try this out and see what I think." She didn't do a hard sell for her own services at the seminar, but I was so impressed with her knowledge and approach that I signed up for a two-hour session, which turned out to be all I needed. I suspect this is how she finds most of her clients.
You might look into doing something like that. Blogging on LinkedIn might also be good. Don't be afraid to give away your knowledge or insight into your process/model. Most people, when they hire a coach, are not looking for information they can't find elsewhere - they're looking for someone to guide them and hold them accountable. You might work with the community organization to offer your program as a class to others - doing it in a more formalized way with an established charity would give you a bit more legitimacy.
Also, if you have any interest in this, you might offer resume/cover letter writing/editing as a service. That's the kind of thing there's always demand for, and it would help you build up a client base, and a funnel for coaching clients.
posted by lunasol at 4:47 PM on May 29, 2018