It’s been an exciting week on the job-hunt front. The best news is that I was able to speak with people at two companies which provide coaching services to corporate clients. One of them sent me a job application on the spot, which I sent in yesterday. I was reasonably pleased with how I was able to demonstrate significant coaching and business expertise to bring value to this company and their clients.
There’s a number of things that I’m learning through this:
First, don’t give up on your passion. There’s times where I despair that I’ll ever be able to do a real career in coaching, but that’s mostly based on a fear of the unknown. There’s lots of rumors running around the coaching community about how nobody’s ever able to make a living at this. Despite that, there’s a number of large companies that have their entire business structured around coaching and organizational improvement, and are doing quite well, thank you.
Second, don’t sell yourself short. Despite the fact that I’ve rarely had a job that had coaching in the job description, much less job title, I have a lot of value to bring to these companies. Better yet, they’re recognizing that value and giving me lots of encouragement.
Third, look outside the box. The normal job search consists of looking on websites for job openings, and responding to them. But the job I applied for this week is not posted on the company’s website, and I’m not sure it ever would. The opportunity was based on talking directly to the person who manages all their coaches in North America.
Fourth, be flexible. These jobs require that I go into business myself as a consultant. This may well be a great business model in the future for many “employees”, not just coaches, and it’s really not that scary. So it’s good that I’m considering it seriously.
Finally…
Job interviews can be scary as hell. So what I need to do is to prepare my information, prepare my mental state, and then …….. just trust in providence. I do the best I can, learn from my mistakes, but don’t get too freaked about the whole thing. Trust myself, and trust in God.