Career Coaching and the Competitive Edge

Can high-caliber software engineers who are looking for work benefit from career coaching? Indeed Prime VP Terence Chiu recently told Fast Company that’s exactly what Indeed Prime is providing their candidates with to facilitate their job search.

Kudos to Indeed Prime for their insight!

How are your “soft skills”?

As an executive coach who works with clients ranging from C–suite leaders to recent college grads, I know that coaching can provide a major boost in confidence and increase a candidate’s success rate. Personalized coaching is extremely effective at helping candidates become aware of - and sharpen – the “soft skills” that will increase their ability to land – and succeed at a job.

Soft skills have a greater market value than ever, as employers look for applicants with not only the professional skills needed to meet job requirements, but also the skills that will make them a success within the company, its culture, and the ever-changing business landscape.

Brendan Browne, LinkedIn’s VP of Global Talent Acquisition concurs. Citing the results of LinkedIn’s Global Recruiting Trends study, he noted in the same Fast Company article: “More employers are rolling out ‘soft skills assessments’ to test job candidates on the cognitive and personality qualities you don't go to school to learn: critical thinking, adaptability, learning agility, communication, etc.” He goes on to say candidates need to “come to each interview armed with anecdotes about how you reacted to a major change”.

What does this mean for you?

Charting and navigating a career change, or entering the job market for the first time can be a stressful process. But, it can also be exciting and full of discovery as you learn exactly what utilizes your greatest strengths, taps into your strongest skills, and offers you the right balance of financial compensation and personal satisfaction.

A good career coach can help you not only map out this journey but also help you develop the soft skills that will give you a competitive advantage in dealing with a new assessment tool or not-so-status-quo question a hiring manager throws out in an interview.

Big thumbs up to companies like Indeed Prime that use coaching to ensure the best outcomes for their candidates.