How long would saree shopping take? If you’d ask my mom, she might say a couple of hours. Ask my saree connoisseur friend, and she’d say three hours at least. But I take less than 20 minutes to shop for a saree. So, what is the difference between me and saree connoisseurs?
There are three differences.
- I buy a saree only when there is a pressing need, and I can’t make do with borrowing sarees from my mom or friends.
- I buy only from a small shortlist of shops.
- I buy based on how quickly I fall in love with a saree.
When you know what it is that you want, it becomes easier to make a decision. When you buy something you don’t have a pressing need for, you spend a lot of time browsing around for “What is available?” “What is the best amongst what is available?” You may not be in touch with your intention when the need isn’t great.
Your decision to pick a career coach or a career counsellor boils down to just that, “What is your need right now?”
We need some background information before deciding whether to choose a career coach or career counsellor.
Career Coaching or Career Counselling: Which One Do You Need?
We will explore the following questions in this article.
- What is Career Counselling?
- What is Career Coaching?
- What are the similarities between a Career Coach and a Career Counsellor?
- What are the differences between a Career Coach and a Career Counsellor?
- How do I know if I need Career Coaching or Career Counselling?
What is Career Counselling?
When I started growing plants years ago, I threw some seeds in the pot, watered them copiously, and then impatiently waited for them to grow.
Creating a balcony garden was a hit-and-miss approach.
Careers, too, are often built on a hit-and-miss approach.
When I was growing up, careers were not a matter of choice or intentionally crafting one that aligned with one’s personality, interests, or skills. It was about taking whatever job you were first hired into and building your career from that as a starting point.
My first job wasn’t even what I enjoyed, but that was the first company to hire me, and I ended up spending five years being a software engineer without my heart ever being in it.
This is where Career Counselling would have been very helpful.
Career Counselling helps individuals make informed career choices that align with their personal and professional goals while enabling them to navigate the ever-changing job market.
There are four things that Career Counselling helps an individual with.
- Discovery and Exploration of Self
- Insights from the External Environment
- Career Options Evaluation
- Setting Goals and Action Planning
Discovery and Exploration of Self
The Career Counselling process begins with a series of assessments, debriefs, and personal interviews that help the client and the counsellor deepen and expand the client’s understanding of themselves. The assessments and interviews focus on and draw insights from the client’s interests, skills, personality, and values.
Insights from the External Environment
Career Counsellors provide insights, information and data regarding future trends, job market requirements, earning potentials, and industry trends relevant to the client. This information is rarely available to clients beyond the opinions of peer groups or informal mentors unless they seek Professional Career Counselling.
Career Options Evaluation
Based on the results from the assessments, personal interviews, and external environment data, the Career Counsellor presents the clients with various career options.
The Counsellor explores these options in depth with the client, offering the opportunity to visualise many possibilities in the future and then picking one that best suits the client’s requirements.
Setting Goals and Action Planning
Once the career options are evaluated and chosen, the Career Counsellor helps the client set short-term and long-term goals that will help them pursue the desired career path.
Here is the ultimate guide to career counselling, which provides detailed information about career counselling.
What is Career Coaching?
Coaching is a process in which the coach partners with the client to navigate the client’s inner landscape, going on a journey of self-awareness to achieve a goal. It facilitates inner change that will help the client make the desired external change.
Career Coaching is helpful to clients when they would like to look inward and work with the coach on
- Explore what is causing dissatisfaction with one’s career and life
- How to move through being stuck without being lost
- How to set goals and achieve them without abandoning them
- How to navigate career transitions confidently
- How to unearth the learnings and experiences of the past and use them to navigate the present
- Getting clarity on professional and personal ambitions
- Identifying, celebrating and sharing professional and personal wins while being witnessed and acknowledged for the journey as much as the outcome
Here is the ultimate guide to career coaching, which provides detailed information about the process and everything you need to know.
What are the differences between a Career Coach and a Career Counsellor?
Think about a trip to London. You can do this trip in two different modes: Traveller Mode or Tourist Mode.
In tourist mode, you pick the top 10 monuments to see in London, look at a tour package that would give you the most value for money, buy fridge magnets and a couple of London buses, and be done with the trip.
In the traveller mode, you first figure out the important things you want to experience about London. Before researching online, you might write a few things you want to get out of the trip.
- Experiencing English Food, especially the famous scones and tea you read about in Enid Blyton as a kid
- Get a piece of British History, notably the East India Company
- See the Prime Meridian
- and so forth…
With this list as a starting point, you can tailor your London experience to your interests.
Working with a Career Counsellor is like being a tourist in London. You will get a bird’s eye view of everything London offers in a quick sequence from pre-tailored menus.
Working with a Coach is like being a Traveller in London. You will first go on a journey inwards, explore what matters to you, and then set out to change your professional and personal life anchored to your values, experiences, goals, and current needs.
There are three key differences between working with a Career Coach and a Career Counsellor.
- Approach – Directive Vs Discovery
- Outcomes – Singular Vs Expansive
- Credentials and Professional Training
Approach – Directive Vs Discovery
Career Counselling is a very directive approach. The Counsellor leads and directs the client through a format and structure. The process involves gathering, processing, sorting, and finalising information to help the client decide on their future career path and next steps.
In this process, the Counsellor is the expert, whereas in Career Coaching, the client is the expert on themselves.
Coaching is a discovery approach. The Coach works with the client to unearth the intentions, resistance, barriers, and beliefs that stand in the way of change for the client. Coaching is about facilitating the client’s inner process of the change so that the client can make the external change they desire.
Outcomes – Singular Vs Expansive
In Career Counselling, the outcome is giving clients a set of career options tailored to them and helping them set short-term and long-term goals to achieve their desired careers. This is the objective of every single Career Counselling Session.
In Coaching, the main objective is to effect change for the client. The coach and the client set and contract the outcomes for the overall engagement. Then, the coach partners with the client to set outcomes for every session. There is flexibility in changing the outcome and direction of a session, even midway through the session. This way, the outcomes of the sessions are expansive and flexible for the client, while the coach holds the boundaries of exploration so that the client does not get lost in exploration but can get into action.
Credentials and Professional Training
The credentials for a Career Counsellor depends on which country you live in. But as a rule of thumb, the Career Counsellor should have a Bachelors or Masters Degree in Career Development (if available), Counselling, Psychology or Human Resources.
The Career Counsellor would also have professional training in career development and counselling from any recognised or accredited bodies in that country.
A Coach should have credentials from an internationally accredited body like the International Coach Federation (ICF), European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) or Board Certified Coach (BCC). A Coach might also have other degrees, professional training or work/ life experience that enhance their coaching skills and give them technical expertise to go deep into the coaching journey with the client.
What are the similarities between a Career Coach and a Career Counsellor?
Despite the differences between a Career Coach and a Counsellor, these two professions are close enough that people mistake one for the other. Here are three similarities between a Career Coach and a Counsellor.
Three similarities
- Intention is to help the client feel good about their work
- Exploration of options
- Focus is the Client
Intention
The Career Coach and the Career Counsellor aim to help clients feel satisfied, happy and energised about their work and career prospects.
Exploration of Options
Often, it is hard for us to see beyond what is right in front of us. Sometimes, we are not able to even see that. The Career Coach and Counsellor help us see what is right there in front of the client and beyond what is visible. They help the client look ahead and see the possibilities, options and adventures beyond the past and the present.
Focus
The focus of the Career Coaching and Career Counselling sessions is on the client. The client’s needs, wants, goals, dreams and challenges take centre stage with both the professionals.
How do I know if I need Career Coaching or Career Counselling?
You’ll be looking to work with a Career Coach or a Career Counsellor when you want to make a change related to your career.
A Career Counsellor is best suited for those looking for external information about industry trends, market insight, viability, and earning potential to make a career decision. This decision could be about committing to a specific career/academic path, making a radical career change, or returning to work after a long career break and evaluating your path ahead.
A Career Coach is best suited if you want to work on your inner game and influence your external environment. Things like burnout, navigating challenging work relationships, exploring work dissatisfaction, conflicts at work, confidence issues, productivity and performance blocks, levelling up into a new role managing people, preparing for a career transition and working with feedback.
Summary
I’ve worked with both Career Counsellors and Career Coaches throughout my career. Career Counselling was incredibly useful when I was at a crossroads in my career. I was tolerant of the work I was doing and wanted to see what other careers would suit my profile and what could bring me greater satisfaction. Working with a Career Counsellor eventually led me to my training as a coach in 2014.
Moving from a freshly trained coach in 2014 to a radical career change from Corporate to a Business Owner has involved navigating various life and career decisions. I’ve been able to prepare, execute and navigate that change gradually over the past decade with the help of Coaching. What started as a seed of thought, “Oh, I like Coaching”, to starting a business and establishing a private coaching practice meant watering the seed, germinating, nurturing, waiting patiently for it to grow and continuing to tend to it. I would not have made the transition if I had not paid attention to the seed of thought and had other coaches’ coaching.
Career Counselling is like a nursery that gives you a selection of seeds to grow in your garden. Coaching is about taking those seeds, examining them to see the appropriate time and place to plant them, germinating, watering, tending, fertilising, keeping them free from pests, and nurturing the garden continuously while you navigate your everyday life.
If you’d like to discuss the decision between a career counsellor and a career coach, you can book a 30-minute free “no-obligation” discovery session. Siri will be able to answer any questions you have, and if we have time, go through a “Wheel of Life” assessment that will give you clarity on what areas of your life need focus right now.
P.S. You may find words on the website that are spelled differently, like “Counsellors” instead of “Counselors”. I grew up with the British spelling system so some words will be spelt differently. If you think there is a mistake in grammar or spelling, don’t hesitate to email me (email address below the website). No mistake is too small to fix, and I’d be delighted if you took the time to give me feedback. I send a bar of chocolate for the best blooper of the month! Cheers.
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