How to be a discerning consumer in the growing marketplace of academic career coaching and consulting.
Career-counseling businesses for academic clients are popping up more and more, offering a broad array of services to help Ph.D.s and graduate students either flourish in a faculty career (writing, productivity, time management) or make the leap beyond one. But before you go looking to hire a career coach, it’s critical to determine what kind of help you really need and what free help is already available to you:
- Start with the free resources on your own campus. Does the campus career center offer advising and support to doctoral students — as most increasingly do? If you’re a faculty member, what professional-development support is available via the offices of your dean, the provost, or both? Are there opportunities (research fellowships, mentoring, or leadership training) at campus centers and institutes tailored to your academic or professional goals?
- Know what (and who) you really need. Do you need a mentor (either academic or nonacademic) to explain the unwritten rules of a particular profession or industry? Do you need expert advice for executing a job search (either inside or beyond academe)? For that kind of help, your best bet would be to look to a faculty adviser or a senior professor, and if those people fall short, then to find a consultant. Or do you mostly need a listening ear and structured support for figuring out your career and life plans? That would be a coach. Sometimes you need a blend of more than one thing.
- Don’t take your peer-mentoring network — or the wealth of experience it contains — for granted. One of the first things a good career consultant will tell you, ironically, is to talk to other people already in your network. Academic peers can give you all sorts of free advice on time management, productivity, or how to prepare your tenure portfolio.
Continue reading: “Do You Really Need to Hire a Career Coach?” by Maria LaMonaca Wisdom
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