You’ll hear hear a lot about career coaching at SOM. We talked about it over the summer, we highlighted it at Orientation and at some point in the coming weeks, someone will probably tell you, “You should talk to a coach.”
But what exactly does that mean?
More importantly: What should you expect from a career coach and what should you not expect?
Coaching Isn’t About Giving You the Answer
One of the biggest misconceptions about career coaching is that a coach’s job is to tell you what to do.
- What industry should I pursue?
- Should I apply for this job?
- Which companies should I target?
- Should I accept this offer?
A CDO coach can certainly provide perspective, share information, help you understand the recruiting landscape, and challenge your assumptions. But ultimately, those decisions belong to you.
Good coaching is less about providing answers and more about helping you ask better questions, evaluate your options, and make better decisions.
That distinction matters.
Your career will be filled with decisions for which there isn’t a single correct answer. Business school provides an opportunity to get better at making them.
Your Coach Is Your Thought Partner
Think of your career coach as a thought partner for your career.
You bring experiences, ambitions, questions, concerns, and decisions.
Your coach brings perspective, frameworks, pattern recognition, resources, and questions that can help you see things differently.
Sometimes your coach will help you zoom out:
- What are you actually trying to accomplish?
Sometimes they’ll help you zoom in:
- What are you going to do this week to move forward?
And sometimes they’ll challenge you:
- You’ve told me this is your priority. Does the way you’re spending your time reflect that?
Coaching should create space to think and then help turn that thinking into action.
A Coach can play multiple roles
What you need from your coach will change throughout your time at SOM.
- Early on, a coach may be an explorer, helping you make sense of industries, functions, geographies, and career possibilities.
- As recruiting kicks off, a coach may become more of a strategist, helping you think about targets, positioning, networking, and how you allocate your time.
- Before an important interview, a coach may become a challenger, pushing you to sharpen your story, articulate your value, and prepare for difficult questions.
- After a rejection or setback, your coach may become a reflector, helping you separate emotion from information and determine what—if anything—you should change.
- And when an offer arrives, a coach may become a sounding board, helping you evaluate the opportunity against what matters most to you.
Our role changes because your needs change.
CDO Coaches are Not Placement Agents
This is another important distinction.
Career coaching is not job placement.
CDO coaches don’t conduct your job search for you. We don’t decide which employers will interview you. We can’t guarantee that networking conversations will turn into opportunities or that an application will result in an interview or offer.
And we shouldn’t be more invested in your search than you are.
You own the process.
That means researching opportunities, developing relationships, preparing for interviews, following up, making decisions, and continuing to move forward when things don’t go according to plan.
Your coach helps you navigate that process more effectively.
Think about the difference between asking: “Can you help me get a job?” and “Can you help me build a better strategy for getting where I want to go?”
The second question opens the door to coaching.
You Don’t Need to Know What You Want
Students sometimes delay meeting with a coach because they think they need to have their career goals figured out first.
You don’t.
In fact, uncertainty is often one of the best reasons to have a coaching conversation.
You might arrive saying:
- “I have three different paths I’m considering.”
- “I’m interested in healthcare, but I don’t know what roles exist.”
- “I thought I wanted consulting, but I’m starting to question it.”
- “I know what I don’t want, but I haven’t figured out what I do want.”
Those are all perfectly good places to begin. Exploration is part of coaching.
Come With Something to Work On
You don’t need answers before meeting with a coach, but it helps to bring something to the conversation.
- A question.
- A decision.
- A hypothesis.
- A challenge.
- A goal.
Even: “I’m stuck and I’m not sure why.”
The more openly you engage in the conversation, the more useful coaching becomes.
You should also expect your coach to ask questions rather than immediately solve the problem for you.
That can occasionally feel frustrating.
You might be thinking – Just tell me what you think I should do.
But developing your ability to assess situations, make decisions, adapt, and move forward is part of the work.
Because eventually there won’t be a career coach sitting next to you when you’re deciding whether to take the promotion, change industries, relocate, leave a company, launch something new, or completely rethink your career.
Coaching Works Best as a Relationship
The most productive coaching relationships develop over time.
- Your coach begins to understand your story.
- They remember what you’ve said matters to you.
- They recognize patterns.
- They can challenge you when your actions and goals aren’t aligned.
- And you don’t have to spend every conversation starting from scratch.
That doesn’t mean you need to meet with your coach every week. It means that coaching can be most valuable when you treat it as an ongoing relationship rather than something you access only when there’s a crisis.
Some conversations will be tactical.
Others will be strategic.
And occasionally the most valuable conversation will have very little to do with the question you originally thought you needed to answer.
The Goal Is Bigger Than Your Next Job
Of course, you came to business school in part because you want opportunities.
- You want the internship.
- You want the full-time role.
- You want to make a successful transition.
Those outcomes matter. But there is a larger opportunity.
Your time at SOM gives you a relatively rare chance to intentionally think about your career while surrounded by people, resources, employers, alumni, faculty, classmates, and coaches who can help you do it.
Use coaching not simply to answer: “How do I get my next job?”
Use it to become better at answering:
- What do I want?
- Why do I want it?
- What am I learning?
- What assumptions am I making?
- What is within my control?
- What should I do next?
Because the real value of career coaching isn’t having someone who can tell you what to do.
It’s developing the ability to navigate your career long after business school is over.
At the beginning of the semester, coaching appointments can be hard to come by so reserve your time early.
