Life Coaching Jobs Wanted – Who’s Hiring?

By dougnau on May 15, 2009 in Career Coaching, Entrepreneurship, Life Coaching

When I became a certified life coach several years ago, I jumped into the world of entrepreneurship and spent a significant amount of time and money building my life coaching practice from scratch. I knew that I wanted to work with people in the area of wellness, but my definition of wellness was so broad that the message I shared with prospective clients was unclear and impersonal. After about 2 years of unsuccessfully building a significant enough client base to support the bills, I began examining the market to see who was hiring for life coaches. Here’s what I’ve found.

Life Coaches Wanted

I did an extensive review of all jobs related to ‘coaching’ on the internet and came out of the process with a good understanding of this environment. This was coupled by a thorough networking campaign in which I spoke with numerous coaches who had successful practices to get pointers, tips and direction. Here’s the results.

The vast majority of what we traditionally call ‘life coaches’ – generalists in the world of supporting people at having a better ‘life’ are building their own practice. Most, like I was at the time, were either struggling to build their business, or had a long history which led them to the point that they were at. In short terms – persistence, devotion, and time committed to the practice matters. In this case you’re building your own book of business, so its not the same as finding a job that will pay on day #1. Most of these successful entrepreneurs were coupling coaching with seminars, writing, counseling, consulting, speaking etc. In essence, they were not typically one stop shops.
Who may be hiring? I’ve never come across a business looking for a ‘life coach’ with no other experience. I do believe, however that this job exists and its in the following arena. There are many companies that either sell life coach training, speak to groups regarding personal development, or lead personal growth seminars. There are a hundreds if not thousands out there. Keep in mind though, anyone hiring to work within their program is either going to look for a coach with a long history and potentially name recognition, or someone that has been developed through their program. So don’t be surprised if these companies already have a large pool of candidates that would love to work for them. Be prepared to suggest the talents that you offer to their business above and beyond coaching. Remember these are businesses looking at the bottom line not just coaches living a blissful life. A campaign of contacting all these providers should generate some leads. Its likely however that you may need to relocate if they require an in house presence (which may or may not be the case given the prevalence of telephonic coaching). I suspect they’ll want you to go through their program for yourself, so this might cost you some cash.
Who’s hiring specialty coaches? As soon as you start specializing, your odds of finding a relevant job increase exponentially. Are you a wellness coach? Are you an executive coach? Are you a relationship coach that works with families considering divorce? Are you a real estate coach? A wealth coach? A network marketing coach? Figure this out and opportunities arise. The problem with this is that many life coaching programs hammer into our heads that coaching is 100% client driven and that mentorship is a different job than coaching. If you can get over that stigma and recognize that no job is just one or the other, these career paths can have a happy medium. The great thing about specialties is that if you’ve got no experience so to speak as a life coach (maybe just some training), you can still tout years of experience in the field you wish to coach in. Its one way of beefing up the resume without needing to have been a coach for 20 years.
Using the web. Check out career builder and type in life coach. Here’s the top results I see:

Life skills coach – healthcare
Health Coach
Job Coach
Educational Coach, Academic Coach
Human Resources/Life Coach
Quality Analyst/Coach
Lifestyle Coach – wellness

These jobs are dispersed across the country, but if you finger through the results you’ll see that there are 141 pages of jobs which contain the words life and coach (as of today). If you are flexible, there may be one for you. Do everything you can to speak with the hiring agent rather than simply faxing over a resume. Of course, Google searches, any job board, and searching for coaching companies are all ways to find job postings. I suspect you’d have little luck looking in local newspapers unless you really hit the jackpot.

Large personal development companies. Tony Robbins, FranklinCovey, OneCoach – these are all large organizations with numerous employees committed to a mission of personal and business growth. Many others exist. Tony Robbins provides an email address for those interested in submitting a resume. While you might not see job opportunities listed on all these websites, rest assured every company needs people. Again, expect to offer specialization in your area of expertise when you offer your resume to such a company

A final note

The main message I’d like to share with this article is that there are jobs out there for people that are looking to become life coaches if you do not feel that you have the capacity, the energy, or the time to create a business on your own. There are not as many opportunities as there are for ‘store clerk’, but if you are willing to think beyond the mindset that may have restricted you from grasping at these opportunities in the past, you are willing to potentially relocate, and are willing to commit yourself to finding a job in a specialized focus, then your search will undoubtedly be one which can lead you to an incredible career in the personal development industry.

Be Well