2019 Year in Review, Laura Close Career Consulting 

2019 was an exciting year, we nearly doubled the number of clients served from 2018. Two dedicated staff were hired to uplevel the customer experience. Our brilliant career coaches Olivia Kidd & Rich Luby have increased engagement, training and coaching for the duration of the client’s stay in the practice. Further, in 2019 two resume writers were hired to attend to client demand. Each of these gems has added value, insights, process improvements and powerful client coaching opportunities. As founder I feel incredibly lucky to work with this high vibe set of humans.

As a result of the increased staffing, we have been able to serve almost twice the number of clients from the previous year and grow our public footprint through conference presentations and the development of basic marketing mechanisms.

[ Tip: Some of you are aware that we host only 1 dedicated public event per year, a wonderful opportunity for networking and sharing conversation over drinks. Please join me on 2/27 at 5 pm at the Good Bar mezzanine nearby to my office.]

Career development themes we loved in 2019:

• Start working for the employer the second you come into contact for them (regardless of your seniority). This means treating all stakeholders along the hiring process as the customer, striving for their delight through all touch points including deliverables, presentations, insights.
• Read Source Materials: First of all: read. Second of all, don’t just read the newest biz lit book. Gain competitive advantage by reading the books which originate the concepts.
• Your Ex-Coworker Network: The studies are in — the “friend of a friend” method of networking is dying. With such high turnover and job changing, it makes sense: Your personal network of ex-coworkers is your golden key to future opportunities.
• Executives Learning Classic Book Writing techniques to strengthen your ability to tell the stories that the human brain craves: a story with an arc and a hero, that points us/your followers towards the better, improved destination.

Life hack: Hire an executive coach to feed you titles, keep your strategy fresh, and challenge your tactical choices…

What does 2020 hold for Laura Close Career Consulting?

We have laid the groundwork for expansion in New Haven, CT, and Austin, TX and are growing a presence in both cities. Our tiny muscle marketing efforts are ramping up with content across video, podcast and a self-published book under production. 

For our structured senior level job seeker track, we are learning as we grow after a boom year. Our first improvement rolled out in Q1 2020 has been increased personal engagement clients experience with their resume writer in order to drive further customization and precision. 

A second improvement is that we are raising the bar on our clients’ ability to think critically with improved and pragmatic self-evaluation tools aimed at reducing the (all too human) tendency of asking for more from your market fit than is reasonable.

Part of our promise is skill transfer. We show our work to each client as we go. This is a training mechanism that improves your ability to self navigate for years to come. By raising the bar on your initial understanding of your market fit, by creating more rigor in your capacity to self assess, we are looking to see smarter, faster and more frequent positive outcomes for clients. We must always seek the truth about your candidacy even if it on occasion it is an uncomfortable truth. Our goal is to prepare you to seize upon and engage a correct opportunity set each time it appears.

For our executive coaching clients, we have heard and seen your need for access to the PR tool kit. Even small amounts of public exposure done correctly can positively influence your professional goals. It’s 2020. Everyone is online. In response to this need, as we closed out 2019, I assembled a package of choices now available to all executive clients spanning digital audit, to professional ghostwriting, guidance on senior level online influencing, network refresh and more. This toolkit is naturally included on top of our suite of career discernment and growth coaching, as needed per client. 

One ongoing theme we do not like in our industry of career and executive coaching is opaqueness. Lack of roadmaps, lack of deliverables, lack of insights, lack of proof, lack of process improvements and even lack of self-evaluation. Granted, delivering these professional services is tricky as the client themselves strongly impacts the outcomes of each coaching engagement (as you’ll see referenced in our numbers break down). 

However as demand for executive coaching continues to grow, in this era of data-driven decisions, coaches should at least strive for increased transparency across the field, at minimum. 

So we are seeking to differentiate ourselves to some extent and to educate our readership by drawing back the curtain on the business. We aim to deliver insights and increased visibility for those of you who are playing along at home for fun as well as for those of you who might consider hiring us. Here we go:

2019 Insights:

Total Clients Served:  101

Clients who sought exclusively executive coaching services: 36

Clients who sought to prepare for a senior level job search: 65

Titles Most Commonly Held by Incoming Client, ranked:

#1. Director

#2. Sr. Manager

#3. Manager

#4. Partner

#5. Chief/Executive 

Industries Most Clients Originate from, ranked:

#1. Big Tech

#2. Startup

#3. E-Commerce

#4. Public/NPO/Research

#5. CPG

Subject Matter Expertise Clients arrive with, ranked:

#1. Marketing 

#2. Software (Engineers, Architects, TPMs)

#3. Business Development & Partnerships

#4. UX, Design, Creative

#5. AI / ML

2018 Year in Review

National statistics say that an unemployed job seeker will take 12 months on average to find their role and a job seeker who is employed will on average take 6 months to find their new role.

Judging the outcomes of 2019’s job-seeking clients would just be premature, the results are still out for many clients we served – particularly in Q3 & 4. However, we did conduct an analysis of 2018, a smaller year for the business — a year with less staff, less roadmap, and a more limited capacity to deliver. That said despite the smaller group, trends documented among the 2018 group of clients hold true for patterns emerging in the 2019 group. 2018 Insights:

• Total Clients Served: 59
• Clients focused exclusively on executive development/staying in company: 21
• Clients preparing for a job search: 38
  • Number of these 38 clients who are in a new role as of Jan 2020: 25
  • Total average length of time for client to secure their new role: 7.6 mos
    • Attributes of clients with longest search times (12-24 mos): Self-employed with no direct reports, remote worker with no direct reports, noteworthy difficulties with the experience of being interviewed, and luxury searches which are long and slow due to client’s high economic status/lack of urgency.
    • Attributes of clients with the shortest search times (2-4 mos): Currently employed in a business office environment, clear cut technical capacity as it relates to their ideal role, applying to roles they are a strong – 90% match for, active human relationships that can assist with internal referrals.

  • Number of these 38 clients who instead of a new company/new role, went on to a promotion internally: 5

  • Most frequent occurring fact among the 10 clients who began their job search in 2018 are are still unemployed: Most recent role was ‘self employed with no direct reports’

If you are considering retaining our services and would like to discuss your choices, I encourage you to email me directly: Laura@lauraclose.com

For those of you who are graduated clients – you have heard us use this language before but it remains true: it is our privilege to be entrusted with your career growth and development projects.

Each person’s career is personal to them symbolizing their legacy, self-image, means of income, status, and sense of place in the world. We care about your outcomes and are so pleased to have had the chance to add value to your path.

Here’s to a great 2020. May your leadership be wise, your code be elegant, and your network expand.

Cheers,

Laura

P.S. For a deeper dive on career growth, executive coaching and senior level job seeker trends, I encourage you to join us for our intimate drinks event in Seattle on 2/27. This would make an excellent longer discussion topic and I’d be happy to dig in with you.