If you are a career coach working with a recent grad or someone re-entering the workforce, then you’ll likely need to help them get career-ready.
Jumping into the workforce can be intimidating and overwhelming—it can feel like moving to a new country where you don’t speak the language.
This is where you come in.
You can help shepherd your clients back into the workforce and find momentum in their careers. You can teach them the skills and instill the right mindset so they overcome their trepidation and thrive.
In this article, we’ll go over all the key aspects of career readiness and some of the major blocks your client may be facing.
What is Career Readiness?
Career readiness refers to how successfully a person can transition into the workforce. It includes finding a job, keeping up in a professional setting, excelling in their role, and pursuing long-term career growth.
Career readiness can look different depending on the role and industry. But being career-ready typically includes the following skills:
Work ethic. Finding the drive to produce high-quality work.
Dependability. Reliably meeting deadlines. Doing what they say they’ll do. Showing up when needed.
Technical skills related to a particular field. Developing hard skills required to excel in a role or industry.
Communication. The ability to give and receive feedback, speak up their ideas, and share openly with their manager. According to a LinkedIn analysis, communication is the most important career skill today.
Pro-activity. Looking for opportunities to add value instead of twiddling their thumbs and waiting for work to come to them.
Teamwork. Knowing how to collaborate, play to their strengths, and trust others.
Time management. Working with focus and efficiency and prioritizing the most important/urgent items.
Here’s a more comprehensive list of the soft skills employers are looking for.
If your client has those key skills and enough confidence to put themselves out there, then they’ll be set.
Common Barriers to Career Readiness
The following list includes some of the most common barriers to career readiness your client might face.
Lack of self-understanding. If your client doesn’t know their interests, career goals, values, or strengths, then finding a career path will feel like a crap shoot.
Skill gaps. If they possess no marketable skills (or their skillset is outdated), getting hired will be a challenge.
Fear and doubt. Whether fear of failure or doubt in their own abilities, your client’s lack of confidence can get in their own way.
Poor networking/social skills. While social skills aren’t a must, they can drastically help your client find mentorship, collaboration, and opportunities.
Overambitious expectations. Many younger adults expect to have a perfect career right away. The reality is, it usually takes years of trial and error to carve out a meaningful career. Accurate expectations will save them frustration and prematurely quitting. Or worse, they get laid off because they're seen as difficult or for shirking their responsibilities.
Procrastination and time management. If your client can’t make it through a workday without getting hooked into hours of TikTok, then they’ll be in trouble.
In the rest of this article, we’ll go over tips to help your client soar past these hurdles.
How Career-Ready Is Your Client Right Now?
First things first, get a sense of how career-ready your client is right now.
Through incisive conversations, figure out which career readiness skills they possess and which they lack. Tune into how confident or hesitant they are about diving into work. Note what you can teach them or what actions they could take to become more career-ready.
Additionally, here are a few tools you may use with your client:
Holland Code. This is a career test that breaks up career interests into six buckets: building, thinking, creating, persuading, helping, and organizing. The Holland Code can help your client get a sense of what type of work would call to them.
Myers Briggs. Try this personality test, which demarcates sixteen personality types based on the following four spectrums: introversion/extroversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving. Myers Briggs might help your clients better understand how to express their personality through their work.
DISC Assessment. Here’s a test that will help your client understand their work style and communication preferences.
Clifton Strengths Finder. This comprehensive assessment will tell your client what their top strengths are, which can help them pick a career path that they can excel at.
Sparketype. This career assessment will help you identify how to find joy in work. There are ten archetypes based on the type of work that “sparks” you the most.
The First Step in Becoming Career-Ready
The first step in career readiness is self-discovery.
If a person doesn’t know who they are and what they value, then how can they know what they want out of their career?
Of course, you can’t expect them to have perfect clarity about their dream job from day one. It can take time and experience to figure that out.
Your client doesn’t necessarily need to know how to get to the top of the mountain just yet. They only need to know the step right in front of them.
The dangers of applying for jobs without knowing oneself
There are two risks of your client entering the workforce before doing any self-reflection.
Risk 1 is that they feel aimless. They lob their résumé without focus. And they feel anxious when applying for jobs because it’s not connected to a greater plan. Even if they land a job, they may struggle to feel committed without knowing how it fits into their career path.
If your client figures out their dream job, or what they want out of their next role, then great. Problem solved.
But if they feel clueless about their career path, try reframing the purpose of this job as learning and career exploration. This new job, whatever it may be, is simply a way for your client to learn about their preferences. All of a sudden, they aren’t lost and throwing darts in the dark. They are exploring. And that’s a huge difference.
Risk 2 is when your client isn’t sure what they want out of a job, so they apply for the types of jobs they think they should apply for.
That typically means applying for jobs they think their parents or guardians would want them to have or jobs that might make them seem impressive to their peers. But neither of those paths will lead to a fulfilling career.
So the first step is to get your client acquainted with themself. Help them find clarity on what they care about and what they might enjoy in a job. Then you can start to move forward on their career goals.
Here are a few ways to help them do just that.
Ask your client powerful questions
Sit down with them and help them figure out what their strengths are, what makes them tick, what gives them meaning, and how they want to help others.
This might take some digging on your part.
And with your knowledge of the job market, you can help them identify some career options to try out.
Ask your client to research career paths
Additionally, you can give your client homework to learn more about what’s out there. Here are some ideas:
Ask them to look at job postings on LinkedIn for an hour. All kinds of job postings! Which ones looked exciting to them and why?
Ask them to browse different company websites online. Which mission statements and company pages resonated with them and why?
Help them set up some informational interviews with professionals from different fields with successful careers to help them learn what the ins and outs of a given job might feel like.
If you get trained as a career coach, there are also proprietary models you may learn. For example the International Association of Career Coaches teaches their coaches to use the Career Compass to help clients find direction.
Once you’ve helped your client with this initial step, and they know what types of jobs to apply for, you can then help them develop a full plan to get career-ready.
Build a Career Readiness Action Plan
One survey found that 40% of business leaders think that recent college graduates are not ready to enter the workforce.
Fortunately, you can help your client take the following steps to ensure that they are one of the ready ones.
1. Build a dossier
It’s very unlikely your client will land a job without a strong résumé and cover letter.
Here are three key principles to keep in mind to build a killer dossier:
Tailor the formatting to the company. Make sure to match the formality and style of these documents to the potential employers.
Do your research. The more effort and research it looks like your client puts into an application, the more their dossier will get noticed.
Treat these as marketing documents. Remember that your client doesn’t need to list their whole life story, just their relevant experience that demonstrates how awesome a candidate they are.
If you’d like more specific tips, here’s a great article on How to Write a Good Cover Letter and here’s one on How to Write a Great Résumé.
2. Create a LinkedIn profile
Most new grads aren’t on LinkedIn. But as you know, LinkedIn can be a huge hub for job opportunities and networking.
If your client doesn’t have an account, help them build one pronto!
3. Practice interviewing skills
If your client has never had a job or has been out of the game for a while, then interviewing probably feels nerve-wracking.
Fortunately, as a career coach, you can clue them into what questions to expect. Further, sitting down with them and going through a formalized mock interview can do wonders for their confidence and readiness.
For more detailed advice, check out this article on How to Show Off Your Growth Mindset in Interviews as well as this Ultimate Guide to Interviews.
4. Network
Another way to get career-ready is for your client to connect with other professionals.
Just having casual coffee chats with folks in their desired field will teach your client a ton about what to expect and how to prepare.
Encourage your client to attend an industry conference or to ask friends and family for introductions.
For more ideas on where to find people to network with, here are 9 Tips to Expand Your Network.
5. Get some real-life experience
This tip can be especially helpful if your client is feeling overwhelmed about jumping into the deep end of a full-time job.
Instead of going straight into work, your client could consider getting practical experience through a volunteer position or internship.
Both of these roles will have far less pressure and expectation than a full-time role. But they will still teach the invaluable skills of accountability and professionalism.
And even if the role isn't in their desired industry or field it could still help them develop and showcase soft skills that are critical for career readiness.
Plus your client might learn a bit more about what they want out of work and they’ll come away with a shiny new addition to their résumé.
Try VolunteerMatch to find non-profits that speak to you.
6. Build skills
Your client may feel insecure that they lack the technical skills needed to work a job. In fact, according to one survey, 63% of Gen Z workers feel they lack the necessary skills to compete in the job market.
While employers don’t expect masterful skills in entry-level positions, it still could be a good idea for your client to seek out courses or programs to uplevel their abilities.
More skills make your client more confident and hireable.
Here are some possible routes to boosting their skillset:
7. Build confidence
When you look at your client, you may see that they have solid technical skills, a good work ethic, and professionalism to match. And yet, they swear to you they aren’t career-ready yet.
In these cases, their lack of readiness is purely a product of their confidence level.
Your client may have a fear of failure, hesitance about feeling in over their head, rejection sensitivity, or imposter syndrome. But you know better—you know they are readier than they realize.
The baby bird may not feel ready to fly, but the mother pushes it out of the nest knowing full well that the young bird’s wings will work.
This is a huge part of your job as a coach.
Believe in your client when they cannot believe in themself. See their readiness when all they can see is fear. Help them move forward when their confidence falters.
Sometimes all it takes is for them to go through the job application process knowing that you’re just an email away.
8. Excel in the first 90 days of a new job
Once your client lands a role, it’ll be helpful if you teach them how to blow their manager’s expectations out of the water.
Here’s a helpful framework from leadership expert Michael Watkins that categorizes the first 90 days of a new job into four parts: Think about how to help your client in each phase:
The Define Phase (days 1-29). This is when your client will immerse themself in their new position and study their job duties, the company performance metrics, their manager's preferred communication style, and the company culture.
The Learn Phase (days 30-59). In this stage, your client really starts to understand the company culture, managerial expectations, and organizational structure. Usually, most of this learning comes through hands-on experience with challenging assignments, some through mentorship and coaching, and a minority from formal training.
The Build Phase (days 60-89). In this period, relationships deepen, and your client will start to establish trust with their team. They’ll start to grow their network and find opportunities to leverage.
The Do Phase (day 90 onward). At this point, they've accumulated sufficient knowledge and relationships to excel at their role. By now, you’ll likely reduce the frequency of check-ins with your client.
If you want to learn more about how to make a stellar first impression from day 1 to 90, check out this article.
How to Become More Helpful to Your Clients
Working with clients who are entering the workforce is an exciting experience. You get to usher them through the workforce threshold and support this pivotal stage of their career journey.
The first step in developing career readiness is for your clients to know what they want. Once they have direction, they can take action.
After that, just remember to help them with the following:
Build a dossier
Practice interviewing
Network
Get real-life experience through volunteering or interning
Develop marketable skills
Build confidence that they are ready
Crush their first 90 days on the job
If you’d like to up your skills as a career coach and provide even more benefit to your clients, consider our Senior Professional Career Coach Training.
It’s a 9-week cohort-based course, with expert teachers, and a graduate community, where you’ll learn everything you need to know to help clients find and excel in their dream jobs.
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