Do You Need A Career Coach?

Where your work life is concerned, you don’t always have to stay in your lane. In fact, seeking professional help just might revive your career.

- Joyce Chua

When Shio*, 38, decided to return to the workforce after a five-year hiatus to take care of her first child, she had immense difficulty finding a job. After receiving no calls or e-mails despite sending out more than 200 applications, she lost her confidence.

Prior to her break, she was a branding and marketing manager at an insurance agency, where she led a team of four. But trying to re-enter the job market in early 2018 made her realise that she had been phased out.

“While I was jobhunting, I saw that the job requirements were very different from before,” the mother of two explains. “Minimum requirements for a brand manager now include expertise and experience in other areas like social media marketing and data analytics, which wasn’t the case previously.”

She then decided to seek the help of a career coach she found on Mums@work, a site for mothers who want to work flexitime or run their own business.

As a result of the coaching, she applied to roles outside her comfort zone and is now an operations executive in the financial sector. (Read Shio’s story in the sidebar.)

WHAT IS CAREER COACHING?

While a life coach guides and supports clients in various stages of their lives, from personal to professional, a career coach zeroes in on work matters, taking clients through the four main stages of career development: exploring the self, exploring options, setting goals, and taking action.

With a series of carefully crafted questions such as “What does success mean to you?”,

“What do you value most in your work?” and “What difference do you want to make?”, a coach helps clients navigate and make decisions on the direction they are headed in.