Finding Your Clients’ Best Career – as They Define Best

“82,365,000 Americans aren’t happy in their jobs”

    ̶  Statistica Survey, November 2024

Not one of those more than 82 million workers intentionally chose a career they knew would be bad for them.

Please don’t misunderstand. Lots tried to find the best jobs. But because they weren’t working with the career coach, two factors worked powerfully, but subtly against them.

First, they chose unreliable sources which presented data rather than information. Those sources might include friends, family members, coworkers, lists of “top jobs,” and unsupported social media postings from so-called “influencers.” 

Second, they never defined what success would mean to them.

In this article, I’ve laid out an approach which counters these two distractions. Because you’ll be guiding clients to find the best careers, they will see you delivering even more value than they could have imagined.

There are just three questions that will give uncertain clients clear and compelling proof that they found the best career field for them as they define “best.” Of course, you provide the guidance. But it’s important your clients do the work. After all, the decision can only be theirs.

The three questions define a hierarchy which will keep your clients on track and deliver the best possible answers. The order you follow them removes distractions. Finally, because you’ll encourage your clients to initially consider any career field, they’ll never look back after they’ve chosen the one that’s best for them.

To be clear, a career field is a collection of knowledge, skills, abilities, and passions that meet employers’ needs. Career fields are much approximated by job titles. They are also just the opposite of being too narrowly focused. That’s because most career fields exist in the private sector, the public sector, and the nonprofit sector. They also exist in nearly every industry.

Question #1: what must the client be seen to do on the job to be acknowledged as the go to expert by their boss, their colleagues, their customers, and most importantly by themselves. This approach provides an ironclad defense against Imposter Syndrome.

If a client cannot, or doesn’t want to, do the things that are required to ensure success there is no point in going any further. It doesn’t matter how many jobs there are in that field, or how much it pays. Working in the wrong field does not result in a career. It  imposes a punitive, long-running sentence.

Keep your clients focused. “Leadership,” “being professional,” “being dedicated to working hard,” “having strong communication skills,” those are all admirable traits. However those are the minimum standards for any job that doesn’t require the holder to wear a paper hat that has “Trainee” printed on it. Keywords are not career fields. They are usually general traits that don’t define excellence.

Top practitioners in the field can spell out precisely how the best must perform on the job. These leaders are often speakers at conferences, directors of executive professional organizations, or authors of leading articles. The questions themselves are quite specific. But the details are best left for a separate article.

Question # 2 has two elements. First, how many jobs are there in this field? Your clients can get a good indication of this by searching job boards for the job titles that come closest to the field. The second element describes the workplace. How many positions are office based? How many are virtual? How many are remote? How many would require your client to relocate? Finally, how do people advance in this field?

Question #3 describes compensation. That includes salary, benefits, perks, bonuses, and severance. There are many sites that can give you objective data by career field. Ask your client how important each part of compensation is to them.

Question #3 also considers the culture. Many career fields and industries have typical cultures. For example, consider how different the culture is in a law office compared to a manufacturing plant. Later, as you guide your clients in doing due diligence and preparing for the interview they will soon get a sense of what the values of a particular company looks like.

As you coach your clients to answer all three questions they will soon find themselves with one or two career fields. Reviewing the answers they got to the three questions will help them make this choice. But of course, it is always the clients’ decision, not ours.

Let’s consider an example summarized by the table below. It compares the answers to the three questions against two career fields that were still in the running.

Table 1: Comparing two career fields

One client may choose career field A. They will say: “I know career field B pays more. But there’s more to life than money. Since I only go around once in life, the work I do is very important to me. That’s why I chose career field A.”

Another client may choose career field B. This client says: “Of course rewarding work is important. But I have plans for my family. I just cannot walk away from $50,000 more each year.”

In summary, consider the benefits of guiding your client to find the best career field. They will remain focused. They will no longer be chasing a series of disconnected positions. Their career campaign is coherent and focused. Each step reinforces the next one. Of course the job search documents, their Linkedin profiles, social media posts you helped them write, all match the power of your clients brand with the field they are targeting. Said another way, you provided your clients with something even more valuable than a solid path to the next job. Thanks to you they have wisdom that will guide them for the rest of their work life.

Remember the number at the top of this article? Those 82 million people define the potential size of this market. And the match between what you offer and how those potential clients will guide your marketing, your sales, the kinds of quality you deliver, and show you as in the best in your career field – because you defined “best.”