Career decisions are very important in a person's life. Not only do they have significant impact of all the facets of a person's life; they are also very hard to change once made and there is always a cost associated with changing the career decision. This cost can be financial as well as in terms of lost time and experience. Since the career decisions are so important it is advisable to take professional career advice when making important career decisions.
Usually there are several agencies providing career advice when you need them. The question is how reliable they actually are and how to select a reliable career advice agency. Following are some things that you should consider and verify before deciding to select and actually selecting a career advice agency.
- Need of Professional Advice
This is the first thing to consider. There are lots of career advices available on the internet and most are for free. Not all situations in your life require individualized career advice. In general the personalized career advice is suited for major decisions like choosing a certain career, making a decision of changing job or even career, searching for a job etc.
Generic career advices are usually enough for resume building, interview preparation etc; as the advices that are concerned with these are very little affected by the individual concerned.
- Reference
If a career advice agency or consultancy is good, you will more than likely find some people that would recommend it. Also you should put more value to the recommendations of the people you already know. Some agencies may claim to have helped many people and have the thank you letters to show for it, but don't pay much attention to them. It would be a good idea to search the internet discussion groups to see if someone something positive or even more importantly negative to say about the agency.
Positive references from a reliable source can be the best way to differentiate the good career advice agency for the scamming sales sharks that are only after money.
- Process Followed
When you go to a career advice agency it is mostly for the personalized career advice. In order what is the right career decisions for you the agency specialist must first follow some process to know more about you. These processes may involve aptitude tests, various psychological test to judge your inclinations etc, along with personal interview with the advisor. Do some research and find out which processes are usually followed before giving career advice. This would give you some idea of how much you should rely on a career advice agency. These psychological and aptitude tests can be can be online or at the agency location, but you should be very skeptic of a career advice agency if the processes does not include a face to face or at least telephone conversation with the expert.
- Adviser
You should find out about the credentials of the adviser who'll be giving the actual advices. The various tests and other method only result in bits of data. It is the job of adviser to correlate all the raw information and draw the right conclusion that is appropriate to your situation. You should consider the qualification as well as the experience of the adviser which is related to your career line.
- Career Advise / Job Consultant Agencies
Career advice agencies and job consultancy are different things although their areas of responsibilities cross at some points. A career advice agency only give you advice about what decisions you should make or provide you with information about your strengths and weaknesses, job market conditions etc. A job consultancy on the other hand sometime gives you career advice but they also help you find a job. You should decide which one you need. Also be extra careful when choosing a job consultancy as a lot many more scammers are posing as job consultancy as compared to career advisers. They charge more as well. Some things that you should consider are what are they charging you as well as whether they are charging before providing you with job or after, is there a guarantee of them getting you a job etc. In any case all the points that you should consider with career advice agencies are doubly applicable to these as well.
There are unfortunately a lot of career advice agencies that are in the business of fleecing their clients instead of helping them. The points above cover only the major things you should consider before choosing a career advice agency. In general if the promises of an agency seem too good to be true it's most likely they are too god to be true.
