There are many self-proclaimed experts when it comes to career advisement. As you might have already discovered, many are snake oil salespeople with a smash and grab mentality interested in snookering a few bucks from the unemployed. With this in mind, it is important to define how to find a true expert in career advisement.
The Career Advisement industry is highly unregulated. Anyone with a pulse and a few bucks can setup a website and call themselves career experts, which has unfortunately become more the rule than the exception in this tumultuous job market. Some resume writers nobly adhere to the regulations created 19 years ago by PARW, thus certifying them as experts in resume writing and/or coaching and while this a great indicator that your writer and/or coach has a firm grasp of the traditional formats and techniques, it still doesn’t address the results of landing a new job.
When stripped down to its essentials, the measure of a resume’s effectiveness is the quality and frequency of interviews someone receives, while a coach’s value can be determined by the rate at which a job-seeker receives competitive job offers in their industry of interest. If either fails to deliver the results, the certified career professional becomes as meaningless as if a candidate simply posted their resume on the job boards and waited for the phone to ring.
There are 6 points to review before entering into a partnership with a career professional to ensure they are what they say:
1. Check references – Does the company offer testimonials? If so, how current are they?
2. Guarantee – While a job search offers no guarantee of employment, be sure to find a company that stands behind their work if you are not getting the results you expect.
3. Phone number – Make sure the company has a phone number. Often times, the sites that lack one indicate a “take the money and run” operation.
4. Work with a real person – Unbelievably, some companies perform everything through email, never taking the time to speak with the client one-on-one.
5. Office location – Does the company have an actual office you can visit? Not to say all career experts who work from their basements are poor quality, but a company with a brick-and-mortar location shows the credibility and stability of the organization.
6. Front-line experience – Your career professional should have recent experience in the employment industry. Whether they had success as a professional recruiter or as a decision-maker in the hiring process, for proper positioning of your candidacy they must have a strong understanding of the current job market.
Jon Davidson