Do you feel stagnancy in your career growth, struggling to find a new job or switch careers? A career coach (career counselor or consultant), mentor, recruitment consultant or headhunter can help. A career coach, mentor or recruitment consultant support, motivate and provide encouragement. They listen to detect thoughts, feelings, and aspirations related to career decision-making. They also ask questions and provide feedback on clients’ strengths, insecurities, concerns, areas of need and career-related obstacles. They help clients develop goals and achieve a higher level of performance and satisfaction. But, are they all the same? In this post, Parinita Gupta will talk about the differences in working with a career coach vs mentor vs recruitment consultant.
Career Coach vs Mentor vs Recruitment Consultant vs Headhunter
By Parinita Gupta
We all have, at some point in our lives, been in a stage of our career where we are not sure of our next step. It could be as early as the start of our career, or when looking for growth opportunities or when switching to a different career domain. In these situations, we often seek pieces of advice from our friends and families who try their best to help us in their own ways but ultimately leave us more confused than ever. It’s advisable to always approach the experts in this field for right career advice.
Who are these experts? They could be a Career Coach (or Career Guidance Counselor) or Consultant or a Career Mentor depending upon the particular scenario. And in many cases, it could be a Recruitment Consultant as well who helps you in getting you the right job with high rewards.
Let’s talk a little bit in details about these experts and who can help you in which stage of your career.
Career Coach
A Career Coach is someone experienced who helps you in developing a goal-oriented professional plan. They are extremely valuable individuals who help you in deciding which career path to choose amongst multiple others. The process of career coaching is very individualistic in nature. A Coach ideally is very curious and has a high level of interest in understanding every client’s uniqueness, their interest area and suggest them the employment opportunities that totally suits their requirement and needs and provide them complete job satisfaction.
So Career Coaches are more into guidance and counseling and helping you achieve the change you want to see in your career path. He or She may not have the personal experience in your specific field and thus may not be able to deliver insights into nitty-gritty of your new career role.
Mentor
A Mentor is someone who basically has already been there where you are currently in your career stage. They have gone through the same professional challenges that you are dealing with currently. Therefore, A Mentor is someone who could provide you with insights and support you need specific to your job role or situation. They can help you grow professionally and navigate through tough situations by sharing their experiences and expertise that helped them during the same phase in their career path. But if you are looking for a major career alteration, a mentor does not guarantee the right guidance you are seeking. As long as you are in the same field that your mentor has been or a field that interests your mentor, they can help you with their expert advice and thus help you sketch milestones along the way.
Differences between a Career Coach and Mentor
A career coach and mentor more or less do the same job. But there are few differences.
A career coach is someone who helps you discover more about your professional individuality, strengths, and weaknesses to enhance your confidence, find you the right career fit, by providing informed decisions about your professional development and long-term career goals, and helps you attain greater job satisfaction. While a Mentor is someone to help you and guide you through the challenges you come across once you have already taken up the role as guided by your career coach.
A career coach will help you develop and enact a professional, goal-oriented plan (like a fitness trainer for business) for a fee.
Career coaches are professionals. Their fees vary widely. Most career coaches have their own sites, but not all of them list their fees there. You might also come across sites that list career coaches. Sessions can last anywhere from 45 minutes to three hours. Some coaches charge by session; others charge a global fee in the thousands of dollars.
Career coaches most commonly work with individuals hoping to make some kind of career change. They act more like guidance counselors and accountability partners to help professionals achieve changes they want to see in their careers.
A career coach may not actually have personal experience in your field and may not deliver insights into what you can expect in a new career role.
Mentors, on the other hand, are more likely to be industry, employer or role specific. They have personal experience in climbing the job ladder and can deliver insights into career-specific challenges and opportunities.
A mentor, like a career coach, can help you identify an appropriate career path and help you outline milestones along the way, but they may be best if you like the field you’re in and aren’t looking to change it. If you’re intent on making a major career alteration, a mentor isn’t a guarantee you’ll get the guidance you seek.
The focus of coaching is usually task and performance. The role of skills or performance coach is to give feedback on observed performance. Consequently, coaching usually happens in the workplace.
The coach is likely to set or suggest goals for the learner; measuring performance periodically as the learner develops new skills. This needs a good working relationship between learner and coach.
The role of the mentor is to build capability. The Mentor Helps the Learner Discover their Wisdom.
The developmental mentor helps the learner discover their own wisdom by encouraging them to work towards career goals or develop self-reliance.
The mentoring relationship is off-line — that is, the mentor does not have authority over the mentee — and centers on the learner’s personal goals.
Because the relationship is mutually beneficial strong bonds are often forged. And these may outlast the lifetime of the mentoring relationship.
Recruitment Consultant
Recruitment Consultant is an intermediate between their clients who are organizations willing to recruit and the individuals who are looking for a career opportunity. They assist employers in identifying the right fit for their vacancies by attracting candidates for the jobs and matching them appropriately with the job vacancy profiles.
The role of a Recruitment Consultant is seen more like a sales role or a marketing role, who attract business from the client organizations and attract individuals for their respective job profiles. The process involves primarily building and developing a relationship with the client and understand their requirement and their work culture, followed by advertising for vacancies through media, shortlisting candidates, reviewing applications and managing interviews, negotiating remuneration with selected candidates, and also advising clients and candidates both on pay rates, training requirement and career opportunities.
Headhunters
Headhunting is a method used to find the most suitable professional for a specific role whether they are openly looking for a new challenge or not. They are also like recruitment consultants only. But, there are differences.
When a company has a vacancy that they need to fill, they normally task a recruitment company with finding a suitable individual to take up the challenge. More often than not the person who gets the role will be an ‘active’ jobseeker. Someone who is actively applying to roles, contacting recruitment companies or posting their CV onto job boards. With that approach clients (employers) miss out on large numbers of suitable candidates.
Headhunters (also known as executive search agents) take a different approach to their task, in that they look for the best individual for the role and approach them directly, rather than waiting for them to approach the recruiter. It is very common for the most suitable individual to already have a role, so it’s a case of finding them.
Headhunters target the “grey area” of the market i.e. people who are not actively looking for jobs but when presented with an opportunity may move. We estimate this is somewhere around 70% of the workforce and when we find these candidates, we find out that they are not registered with recruitment agents or actively interviewing anywhere. They are a great pool of candidates.
How do you differentiate these roles?
- Recruitment Consultants or headhunters have jobs to offer you, while Career Consultants or Mentors enables you to get the right jobs and fair well through it.
- Recruitment Consultants are only making transactions between client organizations where they sell jobs to individuals seeking a career change or move. For Recruitment Consultants, both organizations offering job and individuals seeking a job, are their customers. However, for Coaches and Mentors, it’s more about building a relationship with the individuals to understand their interest area and unique identity to help them find the right jobs, and also assist them during the challenges they face along their career path.
How and Where to find them?
Career Mentor Search: It’s definitely important to introspect what you need help with before you start finding your mentor. Whether you need help with developing your strength, or leadership capabilities or business communications and decisions or overcome a weakness, identify your need first and then choose the right mentor to achieve your goals. You could find you mentor in the following ways:
- Sign up for Mentor-Mentee official programs.
- Reach out to experienced professionals whom you look up to.
- Use your PR skills and try to reach out to your idol who has grown in the same field you want to grow.
Career Coach Search: Similarly while you are looking for a Career coach do an appropriate research on what kind of coach you would need. Whether you want industry specific coach or career specific coach. Your research is more important here because career coaching comes with a fee, so you must benefit from your investment. For finding the right career coach:
- Research online and compile a list of Career Coaches.
- Consult experienced and trusted colleagues or your alumni association for references.
- Interview a career coach to ensure they would be the right fit for you.
Recruitment Consultant: There are a plenty of recruitment consultants out there with a variety of jobs, but not all of them are specialists in the area you are working or seeking a job. Therefore it’s critical for you to find the right consultant, who is intended to find the right job for you and not just any other job which can leave you frustrated. To find the right recruitment consultant, you need to consider the following aspects:
- Understand the territory the consultant comes from and if it matches yours.
- Whether your consultant works on commissions- If yes, Chances are high they can over-sell you a job that not even matches your interest area.
- International Move- Ensure to find a recruitment consultant who is physically based out in the international location you want to move to so that they can give you the local knowledge and experience which will help you to decide if the location will suit you or not.