Whether you need direction or motivation, a career coach can help you take the next step in your beauty business journey

Building a career in the beauty business can feel like navigating without a map. As a hairstylist, it’s not always clear where to go next or how going there will help you succeed. Should you develop new skills, or do you need to develop your personal network? What do you hope to achieve in the next year (or ten)? If asking those questions triggers an anxiety response, it’s time to hire a career coach.

Career coaches can help you set goals for yourself, motivate you to chase them, and support you on your journey. A mix of a therapist, a cheerleader, and a guru, these professionals can make sure your career is on the right track. Here’s how a career coach can guide you toward success, plus a few tips on finding the right coach for you.

How career coaches help

Guiding career advancement

The phrase “career path” makes it sound like there’s a special road through the working world just waiting for you to find and follow it. But the truth is that every career is full of twists, turns, and forks. It’s not always easy to know which road you need to take, especially if you aren’t exactly sure where you want to end up.

A career coach can help you find some answers, starting with what you want to achieve. Are you hoping to get a promotion at your current job? Or are you curious about opening your own salon? A career coach gives you the chance to talk through your thoughts and ambitions. They can act as a sounding board, teaching you more about yourself and where you hope to end up. You can use that clarity of purpose to focus your self-improvement and make meaningful changes in your career.

Turning ambition into action

It’s one thing to know where you want to go, but knowing how to get there is another story. What skills do you need to gain to reach your goal? Where can you learn them? How do you measure your progress, and how do you keep yourself accountable?

A great career coach can draw on their experiences and those of other clients to point you in the right direction. Together, the two of you will assemble a list of skills you need to learn, whether that’s balayage or budgeting. Your coach can then share books, online classes, and other resources that help you to gain and refine those skills. They can break each skill down into smaller steps so that you can chart your progress over time. And if those mini-goals alone aren’t motivating enough, your coach can provide encouragement and accountability. If they do their job, they’ll inspire you to greatness.

Speeding up the job search

In today’s working world, having the know-how for a job is only the starting point. Demonstrating that knowledge to an employer is a skill in its own right. Career coaches are experts in crafting resumes, writing cover letters, and nailing interviews. They’ll help you highlight the right experience and show employers why it should matter to them. Coaches can also run you through practice interviews, helping you to hone your answers and prepare fun and engaging anecdotes that show your value as a worker.

Building the network

It’s a cliche because it’s true: Career advancement is as much about who you know as what you know. The more meaningful connections you have in your industry, the easier it will be to find an apprenticeship, a job, a mentor, or anything else. Career coaches have made a science of networking. They can teach you how to flesh out your network and can clue you into industry events where you can put those tools to use. If there’s an important conference or seminar coming up, a career coach will give you a heads-up so you can make the most of it.

Tips for choosing a career coach

Know your needs

Finding a career coach isn’t hard — a simple Google search will return more results than you’d ever need. The trick is finding the right career coach. You need a coach who communicates in a way you understand, who feeds you the right balance of tough love and sweet talk, who knows your field and can help you navigate it. Essentially, you need a coach who fits your vibe.

But what is your vibe? Are you looking for an unconditional hypeman or a no-nonsense deadline enforcer? Do you need direction toward new hard skills, or are you trying to improve your networking? Consider what you want to achieve and how, and then you can look for a coach who fits those criteria. Telling your coach what you’ve learned will also help them modulate their approach to meet your needs.

Seek out referrals

How do you know whether or not a career coach is good at their job? There may not be customer reviews for a coach online, and even if there were, it can be difficult to trust them.

The solution? Referrals. Ask your friends, family, coworkers, or managers about coaches they’ve worked with. What did they work on together? What was the experience like? Did they meet the goals they set with the coach in the timeframe they hoped for? Getting these answers from someone you trust is the best way to gauge whether or not a coach will be a good fit for you.

If you don’t know anyone who can recommend a coach, you can still use referrals to your advantage. When you find a promising coach, get in touch with them and ask if they have any previous clients willing to talk about their experiences. Great coaches will have the confidence (and the closeness with their clients) to give you names and contact information. If a coach won’t share testimonials, take that as a warning sign.

Keep expectations clear

To get the most out of your sessions, look for a coach that communicates clear expectations from day one. Before you have your first session, your coach should tell you about any questionnaires you need to fill out. They should also tell you what you’ll need to bring to each session and establish a regular meeting cadence. When a coach immediately gets down to brass tacks, you can trust they have plenty of experience.

But remember: Every coaching relationship is a two-way street. A coach should also tell you what you can expect from them. For instance, how available will they be to answer questions outside of coaching sessions? How can you reach them, and how quickly will they respond? If a job offer arises, a quick phone call with your coach can give you a game plan for negotiations — but only if your coach gets back to you in time.

It can sometimes feel like you are against the world. That doesn’t have to be the case. With the right career coach in your corner, you can get some much-needed support and direction that leads you to industry success.