When looking for direction in your career, undoubtedly two roles come up in common searches: career counselors and career coaches.  Both are important roles and help lead a client towards a common direction, but different in their approach. In many cases, when done in a transparent setting, having both a counselor and coach can be very effective and complimentary.

There’s an important distinction between a career counselor and a career coach.

Think of the career coach as a forward thinking co-pilot that focuses on the present and future. A career counselor will inspect and troubleshoot problems often in the past that affect your career.

We’ll use sports as an analogy.

The coach develops plans for practices, plays, and game strategy while staying focus on the task at hand: prepare for the present, one game-at-a-time, and improving play IQ.  They will teach players how to play the game but ultimately the players execute the plays.

A counselor may not be the coach, but plays a significant role in understanding any underlying issues preventing the player from performing and provide tools to overcome those challenges. This deep inspection requires a process of looking backwards and analyzing which can eventually lead to a career path.

Counseling is highly oriented towards diagnostics and assessing past performance before moving forward. 

Coaching motivates the client to discover and grow through a self-learning process. It assumes the client is the expert in their field and needs a partner to realize their full potential. 

Consider a counselor if you need to look back and analyze your career before moving forward with career choices.  Hire a coach to help in the present and moving forward to continually grow your talent, and/or need a partner throughout your career journey.

To further explain, here is an example.

An executive in the same role for the past decade is looking to make a career change but isn’t sure about whether they want to remain in the same industry or role. They have a reputation for being very demanding and results-oriented which can be view as strong traits for other employers but has also led to other organizational issues preventing them from past promotions.

Role: Counselor

A counselor will begin by revisiting the executive’s past. This may involve knowing why and how the executive first started their career and how they landed in their current role. The counselor may involve a long process into some of the executive’s behaviors behind their existing role and how that manifests into their career. 

After much analysis behind their past performances and revisiting their developed skills over time, the counselor will begin the process towards possible career tracks that could suit this executive. This may include additional tests and practicum that could identify the executives natural traits against specific roles.