In the Career coaching problems from the professional environment are reflected upon and suitable solutions are developed. The following case study describes how career coaching can work.
Monica C. is in her mid-forties and works as a sales manager in a corporate group. The mother of two school-age children regularly works overtime and suffers from constant overload due to the high targets in her job and the associated pressure to achieve results and the large amount of time this requires.
As a result, she has too little time for herself and her children and can barely recover. Ongoing health problems and insomnia have prompted her to rethink her career. As she has sufficient financial reserves, she is considering making a career change and only working part-time in the future. With the help of career coaching, she is trying to find out what she can change or what other job she should aim for that meets her expectations, fits in better with her current life situation and can offer her a better quality of life.
After clarifying the general target criteria of the ideal job, i.e. the activities to be performed, the organizational, financial and time-related framework conditions, the Coaching the plus-minus interest list method is used for decision-making.
The first step was to brainstorm which professions Monica C. had already thought about that might be possible for her in the future and which ones she could think of spontaneously that seemed interesting to her. Each idea was written on a sticky note. Eight professions were noted down in this way.
She was then given the task of evaluating which of the professions written down was "plus", "minus" and "interesting". Each piece of paper was discussed individually. The aim was to find out what knowledge they already had about the profession they had written down, i.e. whether they had a clear and realistic picture of the tasks, requirements and entry criteria for this profession, and whether the requirements had already been met based on previous experience and training.
This meant that the "PMI list" was adapted slightly, in the sense that only those occupations were included in the "Plus" list for which the entry requirements were already fully met, i.e. which could be implemented immediately. The "Interesting" list included all occupations for which information or qualifications were still missing.
With this division, the slips of paper with two professions were then assigned to the "Plus" list, two to the "Minus" list and four professions to the "Interesting" list on a flipchart.
As Monica C.'s current life situation meant that it would not be possible for her to do any part-time training or retraining, it was decided that she would initially concentrate on the two professions on the "Plus" list. As she has acquaintances who work in these fields, it was agreed that she would interview them before the next coaching session to find out what requirements are necessary to enter this profession and what salaries would be possible.
For the four professions on the "interesting" list, it was agreed that she would gradually gather information, partly through internet research and by talking to people she knows who work in these fields, in order to evaluate whether one of these professions would be a possible medium-term prospect.