Desperately seeking career coaching

July 24, 2018 10:47 AM

I’m at an inflection point in a very quirky (yes, that's a euphemism) career, and need to figure out how to finally get a real job after 10+ years of exciting and compelling - though somewhat random- projects. I’m hoping AskMetafilter can refer me to a career coach who can help with the big picture (defining what I’m looking for and what will make me happy) to the picayune details (does my resume need a complete rewrite? How on earth do I create a decent LinkedIn profile given the patchwork quilt I have to work with?)

I definitely need a deep dive in identifying a general career direction based on the skills and assets I’m bringing to the table and my personal strengths and goals, but I also need someone who can give me very practical advice on things like resume formatting and which job titles to search for in Indeed. I’m very grateful for your recommendations. I’m based in the Bay Area and it would be great to find someone who’s familiar with the ins and outs of this particular job market but I am happy to work remotely.

posted by foxy_hedgehog to Work & Money (8 answers total)

Does your university have any career services or other resources you can use?

For what it's worth - I've found those surveys showing interest usually aren't the best in terms of giving useful outputs.

You can always try us - tell us your history. The hivemind can usually come up with some good ideas!
posted by bbqturtle at 10:58 AM on July 24, 2018

I live in a different region. However, I am aware of people who do this work by reading my LinkedIn feed. They are often friends of my friends, who post, like, and comment. They have a large presence in the networks they work in. I'd look at your current feed to see who's around who does this work with your network.
posted by Kalmya at 11:26 AM on July 24, 2018

I just wanted to say we think of a career coach as being this all encompassing person, but for most people, it's not. The person who is great at figuring out what good career options are may not be great at the nitty gritty details like industry specific interviews or formatting resumes.
posted by Aranquis at 12:03 PM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Aranquis, I’d be grateful for your recommendations for both.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 1:22 PM on July 24, 2018

Label unrelated jobs with different categories in a distinctive font style. If you're like most people, you may end up seeing links among categories that you never really noticed before, once you start to write out accomplishments, skills, and other ROI selling points for yourself.

For example:

HEALTH
Blahblah Medical assistant, Place, date

INSURANCE
Clerk, Place, date

Now you may think of health and insurance as separate categories, but if your clerical job involved working with medical records, then voila: It, too, goes under Health. In this way, you start to build a history, and you emphasize it in a few sentences or a box at the top of your resume, so it's clearly pointed out as a strength.

For example:

Health background — From the perspective of both a family-owned medical practice and the corporate offices of a national insurer. Skill X, Skill Y, Project Z, and so on.
posted by Violet Blue at 1:30 PM on July 24, 2018

Building on what Violet Blue said above, there is such a thing as a functional or Skills-based resume. Rather than ordering the information on your resume chronologically or by employer, you collect your experience under the skills that you used. I worked as a recruiter for a number of years and we would work with the folks we recruited to "redefine" themselves or reorganize how they presented their experience to get them into jobs that might not have felt like a good fit at first. Obviously, we would try to smash a square peg into a round hole because we didn't want to disappoint our client, the potential employer. But with some creative thinking we often found really good candidates who were exactly what the client wanted. So, think about talking with recruiters in your area and see what they say.
posted by agatha_magatha at 1:40 PM on July 24, 2018

p.s. Check your memail.
posted by Violet Blue at 1:42 PM on July 24, 2018

Response by poster: Hi, thanks for all your suggestions. I should have been more specific- I am looking for your recommendations for a career coach who can help me.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 3:17 PM on July 24, 2018