Coaching isn’t just for athletes anymore. In any instance where you’re trying to move from one career spot to another, you can virtually always benefit from the help of a career coach, or an interview coach.
Coaching
isn’t just for athletes anymore. In any
instance where you’re trying to move from one career spot to another, you can
virtually always benefit from the help of a career coach, or an interview
coach.
Think
about it. Most people don’t do job
interviews very often, right? It
follows, then, that most people aren’t very good at it. In addition, interviews are one of the most
stressful situations you can participate in…which makes success even more
difficult.
Even
Olympic athletes, with amazing natural talents and countless hours of practice,
use coaches to gain that extra edge. So
even if you’re good at communication and promoting yourself, the constructive
criticism of an expert will put you ahead of the pack. That edge could mean the difference between
the top spot and second-best.
One
of the most effective ways a coach can help is to role-play interview questions
with you. There’s a tremendous amount of
advice you can find in books and online for how to answer job interview
questions, and some of it says to practice your interview answers with a
friend, or video yourself so that you can play it back to see your weak
spots. It’s good advice. The flaws in these particular plans are:
(1) a friend might just tell you what you want to hear; (2) if you’re
critiquing a video of yourself, the problem becomes “you don’t know what you
don’t know.”
Role-playing
interviews with an objective, experienced industry expert can give you so much
of a boost in your interview skills that you will not only do well in the
interview, you will crush it and just
blow the interviewer out of the water with your confidence, competence and
style. Not only can an interview coach help you shape your answers to
interview questions, he/she can help you spin difficult situations into
positives (or at least neutrals), and help you pinpoint and develop those
intangible qualities that are ultimately job-winners.
The
job interview is a sales process (even for careers far removed from
sales). You’re trying to convince the
decision-maker to “buy your product,” which is your skills and talents in that
role. A career coach shows you the best
way to market yourself.
I
provide interview
help for candidates in sales and medical sales, and maybe I’d be a good fit
for you–and maybe not. Either way, it’s still a good idea for you to get
some outside help in this competitive job market, and I believe that it’s even
more critical for entry-level
candidates, who have the “lack of experience” issue working against them.
Find
someone who is an expert in your field that you are comfortable working
with. Hiring an interview
coach is a small investment in yourself that will pay off big for you when
you land the job of your dreams.
