What is a Job Coach or Mentor?

What is a Job Coach or Mentor?

There is one constant in the professional arena, and that is the inevitability of change.  Sometimes, in your work life, you might feel you’ve just adapted to the last significant change when excitement about the next innovation starts to build.  Change can be exhilarating and is necessary in this ever-evolving world, but it can occasionally leave you feeling like you’re always a step behind.

At any given moment, most people in the workforce are in the process of adapting to change.  You might be moving from one company to another, one department to another, or from one role to another.  You might be transitioning from one career field to something entirely new. Or you might be learning new skills in your current role.

Perhaps you’re working toward a promotion or feeling pressure from internal and external competitors.  If bonuses or objective-specific merit increases incentivize your job, you could be experiencing some anxiousness about your performance.

Currently, you might find yourself in an employment gap and are trying to determine where to head from here professionally.  These are just a few of the many scenarios that might cause you to consider asking for help.  The question is, what kind of support makes sense for you? 

People sometimes use the titles Job Coach and Mentor interchangeably, but they are structured differently and serve entirely different purposes.  Knowing the differences between the two can help you decide which would be most helpful to you.

What is a Job Coach?

A job coach is an individual you hire because of their expertise in helping clients reach their desired goals.  Coaching relationships are usually short-term professional relationships that happen for a mutually agreed-upon cost for a designated timeframe. 

Your relationship with your career coach or job coach is performance and task-driven, strictly professional, and highly structured.  You’ll have a regular schedule of meetings during which you’ll identify and prioritize goals, hone the skills necessary to reach those goals and work toward specific and measurable outcomes.

Your job coach will evaluate you, offer feedback on your progress and performance, and enable you to find your own best answers.  You’ll be guided and supported as you lean into your innate strengths and learn behavior changes that will help you reach your desired results. 

What is a Mentor?

A mentor is an individual you seek assistance from because of their expertise in your field, role, or area of focus.  Most of the time, mentors volunteer their time to establish long-term, on-going relationships with mentees.  A mentor is someone that has already had success in the area you are seeking to grow and develop. 

You might already have a personal or professional relationship with the person you ask to mentor you.  Your mentorship will be less structured than a coaching relationship would be.  You might meet informally without a regular schedule to follow, prescribed agenda, or goal for your meetings, and you’ll be dependent on your mentor’s availability.

Working with a mentor takes a more development-driven approach, focusing on long-term career growth.  The knowledge, experience, and connections a business mentor brings to the table can be an enormous help to someone just getting started in the industry.

Another tangible benefit of working with a mentor who is an expert in your industry is networking.  Often, mentors will invite the mentee into their professional network and introduce them to contacts that could open advancement opportunities in the short and long term.  This is rarely the case in job coaching relationships.

Which is better?

Rather than asking, “Which is better?” the more pertinent question might be, “Do I need both?”  Remember, a coach is a highly skilled expert in helping other people reach their goals, and a mentor is a highly skilled expert in your field.  Both offer invaluable benefits and contribute to your successful growth and development, but in entirely different ways.

Occasionally you’ll find a professional that can serve as both a paid job coach, to provide short-term, skill-specific support and a paid mentor to offer long-term career strategies and development. 

But you’ll likely find it most helpful to seek out a volunteer mentor who’s an expert in your field and hire a proven job coach to set up a structured development plan that will help you sharpen the skills you’ll need to reach your short and long term goals.

Seeking career help is not a sign of weakness but rather a display of strength and purpose.  Sometimes that help is freely given, and sometimes you must pay for it.  Both coaching relationships and mentoring relationships can yield a fantastic return on investment, so don’t hesitate to go after the support you need to help you develop the best version of your professional self.