I'm 26 years old and have used two career/life coaches in my life so far.
The first time I approached one I was 17 years old and in my last year of high school. I was unsure of what I wanted to study when leaving school and the resources available at the school to help me in this regard where quite limited. My parents had heard great things about a husband/wife business in an adjacent city who specialised in career guidance and coaching for all ages, but with a particular focus on younger people so we did a day trip to see them.
The experience was a few exercises and questioners prior to meeting him and a three hour analysis of who I was as a person, what my skills, interests, values, etc were. We analysed all sorts of things and I felt I understood myself more as a person after doing this initial analysis. We covered what sort of industries I'd consider working in and at the end of the session, we decided on the course of university study I'd do, which was a Bachelor of Applied Science in a joint major Horticulture and Agribusiness. I wanted to get into the business side of farming and exports essentially. I live in New Zealand's largest city and had never been a farmer or anything similar so was essentially a city slicker but enjoyed the concept of outdoors and the creativity and number crunching and analysis of rural business. So that's what I did for the next three years of study.
During my second year of study, I got pretty dis-heartened that this career path might not be what I wanted to do. I heard people say things like "follow your passion and you will never work another day in your life." This sounded like pretty good advice for a 19 year old so I looked a changing my degree to something biomechanics and nutrition related or accounting and property degrees. I love health, outdoors and the in depth scientific jargon of exercise science as I'm quite a keen hiker and cyclist. However, I found out that I couldn't cross credit any papers, so would have to do another three years study and perhaps four if I wanted to do post graduate study. Meaning I'd be at university for 5-6 years and the last two years of study would be a waste of time. I decided the best course of action was to finish my current degree which was only one year longer. I was getting over the ridiculousness of the university system, writing reports and being constantly poor as a university student. I really wanted to get out into the workforce and start making some money.
So all well and good. I finished my third year of university study on the Thursday and the next Monday started my first job in a fruit exporting company with a total staff of four people. I found the small nature of the company and the fact that I did all my work in two hours a bit tiresome, especially over the winter when we weren't exporting any fruit. I lasted in this role for 11 months before I resigned. However, I wanted to leave after around 9 months but it took me a couple of months to find a new role.
I was certain that if I found a role that combined my skills that I studied and my passion of investments, money and finance that I'd be happy. So I found a job as a bank teller at one of New Zealand's largest retail banks. The idea was to start at the bottom and work my way into the rural banking part of the company. What better way to combine my skills? I learned so much about handling money by talking to the banks clients, how they structured businesses, loans, properties, savings, etc. I worked there for around two years but found moving out of the branch into rural or head office roles extremely difficult. I made it to the top 10 candidates for a graduate position in corporate/investments/funds management but didn't get any of the roles. I found working in the bank it was all about sales. Flogging credit cards down peoples throats and setting them up with insurance they didn't need which I found morally wrong. It was never about benefiting the customer, it was always about getting your two sales a day. I just couldn't do it and eventually got so desperate to leave the bank that I took a role in a worldwide shipping company after being at the bank for almost two years.
So the shipping company role was in export documentation. I figured this would be a good opportunity to work in a big company (which I definitely preferred) as opposed to a small export company. Learning the process from a shipping line I figured would be great skills to learn and could open up opportunities to work in freight forwarding, exporting, at airports or shipping ports, etc. I was feeling very positive. However, on my first day, I would say hello to people in the lunchroom and they would just say nothing. My boss was useless and the processes in place were so bad I knew only after a couple of hours in the role I'd made a huge mistake.
That night I searched Google for life/career coaches in my city and found a woman that specialised in it. I made an appointment to see her that weekend. I was so desperate to leave this new role and so confused as to what to do I was willing to pay for a career coach to help give me some guideance. I saw her the following weekend also and went through exercises and we talked and discussed and brainstormed all sorts of ideas. I also went back to see the same career coach that I saw when I was 17 to do the similar exercises to see how my personality and preferences had changed over several years. After three weeks in the shipping company role, I gave my one weeks notice to my employer and got out of there as quick as I could. I didn't even say goodbye to people on my last day as I'd only learned a handful of peoples names by then. As luck would have it my mother who worked for New Zealand's largest retail group knew of the shipping department there looking for a temporary replacement for eight weeks on contract. I figured this was perfect as it allowed me an eight week window to find something permanent and I'd heard from my mother that the company culture was fantastic.
So off I went to my contract role. It was such a huge contrast to by shipping lines company culture and I thrived in it. I saw the career coach once more and things started to become much clearer. After six weeks of my eight week contract I got another six month contract role (maternity leave cover) in the domestic transport side of the business. Once I started working in this role, everything just clicked. This was the industry I wanted to work in! This is what I can see myself doing, applying my skills and the type of personalities and company culture that I'd want to be associated with. This was based at a distribution centre which up until now I had no idea what one was. I loved being able to see the stock coming in on trucks, containers and being stores in huge state of the art warehouses with automatic conveyer systems and going out on trucks to our stores. My role involved ensuring everything arrived on time to the stores, trouble shooting and doing other various tasks. I'd finally found something where I felt I could excel in. After this six month role finished, I was presented an amazing opportunity.
The company created a graduate supply chain role pretty much just for me. It was a two year rotation of the entire supply chain and I spent a 1-3 months in over ten different departments with the company. I had access to people that could mentor me, I went on training courses and I was being primed to move into a management position. I absolutely loved this role. This was the first time when people would ask me "how is work going?" I would say "brilliant, I'm really enjoying it" rather than saying "ok" or "yea, alright".
I've now finished the role and have moved into a supply chain analyst type role which isn't ideally what I'd like, but as soon as a supervisor/manager role comes up where I'm managing a team of 5-15 staff I'll take it.
So in summary. I've spent the past nine years really unsure of what I wanted to do with my career, I plodded along with not much direction and just went to work to pay the bills. However, only in the past 6-12 months have I really had a clear idea of where I want to be. The reason for this is firstly I wasn't afraid to move around constantly to find something worthwhile. I'd hear that it looked bad on your CV to be 26 and have worked seven different jobs. I didn't care, I'd rather try things than be unhappy and wait around. I also found being proactive and using career coaches and their expertise to help me to understand myself better and ask me the tough questions. Using their knowledge of people, careers, industries, etc and steering me in the right direction helped me to almost stumble across what I now thoroughly enjoy doing and can see myself making a career from.
I thoroughly recommend seeing a career coach. However, do your research beforehand on what they offer as they are all different. Some specialise with different industries, age brackets and life stages. I've spent $1000+ on these two coaches in a nine year period, but in terms of life happiness and overall sense of personal satisfaction from a career, it is money well spent in my opinion.
