What Color Is Your Parachute?

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2. Who will be counseling? And how long has this person been counseling?	-	-	-
3. What is your success rate?	-	-	-
4. What is the cost of your services?	-	-	-
5. Is there a contract up front? If so, may I see it please, and take it home with me?	-	-	-

You need to decide a) whether you want none of the three, or b) one of the three (and if so, which one).

Remember, you don’t have to choose any of the three coaches, if you didn’t really care for any of them. If that is the case, go choose three new names out of the Yellow Pages or wherever, dust off the notebook, and go out again. It may take a few more hours to find what you want. But the wallet, the purse, the job-hunt, and the life, you save will be your own.

As you look over your notes, you will soon realize there is no definitive way for you to determine a career coach’s intentions. It’s something you’ll have to smell out, as you go along. But here are some clues:

Bad Vibes, on Up to Real Bad Vibes

If they give you the feeling that everything will be done for you, by them (including interpretation of tests, and decision making about what this means you should do, or where you should do it)—rather than asserting that you are going to have to do almost all the work, with their basically being your coach,

(Give them 15 bad points)

You want to learn how to do this for yourself; you’re going to be job-hunting again, you know. That’s the nature of our world today. Job-hunting is a repetitive activity in human life.

If you don’t like the counselor, period!,

(Give them 150 bad points)

I don’t care what their expertise is, if you don’t like them, you’re going to have a rough time getting what you want. I guarantee it. Rapport is everything.

If you ask how long this particular counselor has been doing this, and they get huffy or give a double- barreled answer, such as: “I’ve had eighteen years’ experience in the business and career counseling world,”

(Give them 20 bad points)

What that may mean is: seventeen and a half years as a fertilizer salesman, and one half year doing career counseling. Persist: “How long have you been with this firm, and how long have you been doing formal career coaching or counseling, as you are here?” You don’t want someone who’s brand new to advising job-hunters. They may call this “their practice,” but what they mean is that they are practicing… on you.

If they try to answer the question of their experience by pointing to their degrees or credentials,

(Give them 3 bad points)

Degrees or credentials tell you they’ve passed certain tests of their qualifications, but often these tests bear more on their expertise at career assessment, than on their knowledge of creative job- hunting.

If, when you ask about that firm’s success rate, they say they have never had a client who failed to find a job, no matter what,

(Give them 500 bad points)

They’re lying. I have studied career counseling programs for more than forty years, have attended many, have studied records at state and federal offices, and have hardly ever seen a program that placed more than 86 percent of their clients, tops, in their best years. And it goes downhill from there. A prominent executive counseling firm was reported by the Attorney General’s Office of New York State to have placed only 38 out of 550 clients (a 93 percent failure rate). On the other hand, if they make it clear that they have had a good success rate, but if you fail to work hard at the whole process, then there is no guarantee you are going to find a job, give them three stars.

If any counselor shows you letters from ecstatically happy former clients, but when you ask to talk to some of those clients, you get stonewalled,

(Give them 200 bad points)

Here is a job-hunter’s letter about his experience with an executive counseling firm he was considering:

“I asked to speak to a former client or clients. You would have thought I asked to speak to Elvis. The counselor stammered and stuttered and gave me a million excuses why I couldn’t talk to some of these ‘satisfied’ former clients. None of the excuses sounded legitimate to me. We went back and forth for about thirty minutes. Finally, he excused himself and went to speak to his boss, the owner. The next thing I knew I was called into the owner’s office for a more ‘personal’ sales pitch. We spoke for about forty-five minutes as he tried to convince me to use his service. When I told him I was not ready to sign up, he became angry and asked my counselor why I had been put before ‘the committee’ if I wasn’t ready to commit? The counselor claimed I had given a verbal commitment at our last meeting. The owner then turned to me and said I seemed to have a problem making a decision and that he did not want to do business with me. I was shocked. They had turned the whole story around to make it look like it was my fault. I felt humiliated. In retrospect, the whole process felt like dealing with a used car salesman. They used pressure tactics and intimidation to try to get what they wanted. As you have probably gathered, more than anything else this experience made me angry.”

If you are dealing with a career counseling firm, and you ask what is the cost of their services, and they reply that it is a lump sum that must all be paid “up front” before you start or shortly after you start, all at once or