Thanks for visiting TopUniversities.com today! So that we can show you the most relevant information, please select the option that most closely relates to you.
Thanks for sending your response.
Your input will help us improve your experience.You can close this popup to continue using the website or choose an option below to register in or login.
A good career management coach can help you find the direction and advice necessary to help you in your MBA career search. Marcel Kalis, head of career services at ESMT, shares some insights about career coaching and how the right advice can help find the right career for you.
How can a career coach help candidates assess their goals?
At ESMT, we have a career services department and we organize several workshops throughout the year to help students work on their career development plan. We think that it’s very valuable for students, and so we put each student in contact with a career coach.
What the coaches try to do is get answers to questions. You’re doing this MBA, what would you like to achieve in your career search? How are you going to get there? Then they help the students make their choices.
By asking the right questions and using personality testing tools (Career Leader, for example), a career coach can get a much fuller picture of the candidate’s ideas and thoughts. A good coach also ensures that the answers to a lot of these questions come from the student themselves.
How does career coaching encourage MBA graduates to focus both on the short-term (on graduating) and the long-term (five to ten years)?
I would say that the first priority is on the short-term. Most candidates who come to take an MBA would like to change something, which is sometimes very difficult because the country is new. They would like to move to another industry or to another role, and sometimes it can be very challenging to have all those changes at the same time. So, one aspect of the career coaching role at ESMT is to work with the students on that, to stay close to what they’re good at and what kind of changes are, in reality, both manageable and doable.
Interviewing candidates when they apply for an MBA program helps too. We ask about their short-term and long-term goals and discuss how the candidates can work on their résumé and career search to stay ahead of the competition.
The career search is a crucial part of any MBA candidate’s life. Can individual mentoring help ease the pressure of MBA career paths?
To a certain point, yes. It can be made easier by both discussing and understanding the best practice for your career search as well as by receiving feedback on cover letters and résumés, or even advice and tips about how to approach a certain person. It can also help to contact the coach after a rejection; it helps to talk about it and students find that coaches can lend a good listening ear if they are in need of one.
What should candidates not expect from a career management coach with regards to their MBA career paths?
A career coach is there to help people to come to the right decisions; they don’t come up with the answers. That is what students need to discover for themselves. I would advise people to speak with other candidates and to really think about what choice they are going to make regarding their MBA career paths.
The coach is not a magician, and he certainly can’t produce miracles. The effort has to come from the student. I would advise students to bring everything together, to sit down with the coach and find out what it is that they would like to do. Sometimes the coach can help with their own network or by putting people together. That can certainly ease the pressure created by the job search.
Sometimes people come here with big expectations that career services will have the magic silver plate with tons of jobs to choose from, but it’s not like that.
The success of the students is 100% related to the effort they put in themselves. In a coaching session, you’re in a private situation where you close the door and you have a professional asking you questions, which will hopefully give you a wake-up call and encourage you to act. This is needed, because you can talk about short-term MBA career paths, but it also means that people have to take steps to build the right network, looking out for their visions, contacting alumni and going the extra mile to come to a successful conclusion in their career search.
How do you choose a particular career coach for a candidate?
In the end, it’s not just about the candidate and the coach. It’s an interpersonal match as well and there has to be a situation of trust and confidentiality. If the students accept the sessions with a career coach, they know that they will be challenged to think, and that they will have to do their homework. The coach will never say to a student that a particular job is not suitable for them. It sounds clichéd but in the end, it’s a journey, not just an academic challenge.
How Career Coaching Can Boost Your MBA Career Search
By Riya Kartha
Updated UpdatedEvery MBA student needs career coaching.
A good career management coach can help you find the direction and advice necessary to help you in your MBA career search. Marcel Kalis, head of career services at ESMT, shares some insights about career coaching and how the right advice can help find the right career for you.
How can a career coach help candidates assess their goals?
At ESMT, we have a career services department and we organize several workshops throughout the year to help students work on their career development plan. We think that it’s very valuable for students, and so we put each student in contact with a career coach.
What the coaches try to do is get answers to questions. You’re doing this MBA, what would you like to achieve in your career search? How are you going to get there? Then they help the students make their choices.
By asking the right questions and using personality testing tools (Career Leader, for example), a career coach can get a much fuller picture of the candidate’s ideas and thoughts. A good coach also ensures that the answers to a lot of these questions come from the student themselves.
How does career coaching encourage MBA graduates to focus both on the short-term (on graduating) and the long-term (five to ten years)?
I would say that the first priority is on the short-term. Most candidates who come to take an MBA would like to change something, which is sometimes very difficult because the country is new. They would like to move to another industry or to another role, and sometimes it can be very challenging to have all those changes at the same time. So, one aspect of the career coaching role at ESMT is to work with the students on that, to stay close to what they’re good at and what kind of changes are, in reality, both manageable and doable.
Interviewing candidates when they apply for an MBA program helps too. We ask about their short-term and long-term goals and discuss how the candidates can work on their résumé and career search to stay ahead of the competition.
To a certain point, yes. It can be made easier by both discussing and understanding the best practice for your career search as well as by receiving feedback on cover letters and résumés, or even advice and tips about how to approach a certain person. It can also help to contact the coach after a rejection; it helps to talk about it and students find that coaches can lend a good listening ear if they are in need of one.
What should candidates not expect from a career management coach with regards to their MBA career paths?
A career coach is there to help people to come to the right decisions; they don’t come up with the answers. That is what students need to discover for themselves. I would advise people to speak with other candidates and to really think about what choice they are going to make regarding their MBA career paths.
The coach is not a magician, and he certainly can’t produce miracles. The effort has to come from the student. I would advise students to bring everything together, to sit down with the coach and find out what it is that they would like to do. Sometimes the coach can help with their own network or by putting people together. That can certainly ease the pressure created by the job search.
Sometimes people come here with big expectations that career services will have the magic silver plate with tons of jobs to choose from, but it’s not like that.
The success of the students is 100% related to the effort they put in themselves. In a coaching session, you’re in a private situation where you close the door and you have a professional asking you questions, which will hopefully give you a wake-up call and encourage you to act. This is needed, because you can talk about short-term MBA career paths, but it also means that people have to take steps to build the right network, looking out for their visions, contacting alumni and going the extra mile to come to a successful conclusion in their career search.
How do you choose a particular career coach for a candidate?
In the end, it’s not just about the candidate and the coach. It’s an interpersonal match as well and there has to be a situation of trust and confidentiality. If the students accept the sessions with a career coach, they know that they will be challenged to think, and that they will have to do their homework. The coach will never say to a student that a particular job is not suitable for them. It sounds clichéd but in the end, it’s a journey, not just an academic challenge.
This article is sponsored by ESMT.
This article was originally published in . It was last updated in
Want more content like this Register for free site membership to get regular updates and your own personal content feed.
Share via
Share this Page
Save