Career coaching is a bit fuzzy and ill-defined. It's been around as a term for some time in practice, both within the career development world, as an alternative or adjunct to career guidance or careers advice, and as a specialism within coaching. But the empirical evidence base to offer support for its effectiveness is sorely lacking.
Just to clarify what career coaching is, my definition (Yates, 2013) suggests that it can take place in a one to one or a group context, that it is underpinned by a non-directive, non-judgemental, humanist philosophy, and that it draws on the practice or understanding of theories, models and approaches from the fields of both coaching psychology and career development.
Career coaches looking to feel confident about the empirical evidence base behind their work, can take comfort in the evidence base underpinning coaching (see my earlier blog post for an overview: https://coachingincareers.blogspot.com/2018/03/) and career guidance (see Everitt et al., 2018 a review). But if you are looking for evidence that explores career coaching specifically, there is much less to draw from.
The last few years can offer a few examples of studies that show the positive impact of career coaching.
Evidence suggests that career coaching leads to higher psychological capital (Archer & Yates, 2017); reconciling work and life roles with values and needs (Brown & Yates, 2018); reduced career ambivalence (Klonek et al., 2016) (through MI); career optimism, career security and career goals (Ebner, 2019); and career optimism, and career planning (Spurk et al., 2015). It also leads to enhanced job search performance (Lim, Oh, Ju & Kim, 2019).
Group coaching has been shown to have a positive impact on career decision making self-efficacy, career planning and career decidedness with German adolescents (Jordan, Gessnitzer & Kauffield, 2016).
Some studies have also looked at career coaching within organisations, finding that the career coaching itself improves staff retention (Dugas, 2018) and job satisfaction (Fassiotto et al., 2018) and also that even having a policy that includes an offer of career coaching is linked to improved institutional satisfaction (Ling, Ning, Change & Zhang, 2018).
These papers provide an interesting starting point but we really need much more - qualitative exploratory studies, and quantitative studies to offer broader generalisations.
References
Archer, S., & Yates, J. (2017). Understanding potential career changers’ experience of career confidence following a positive psychology based coaching programme. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 10(2), 157-175.
Brown, C., & Yates, J. (2018). Understanding the experience of midlife women taking part in a work-life balance career coaching programme: An interpretative phenomenological analysis. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 16(1), 110.
Dugas, Jerelyn, "Career Coaching: A Study of Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Leaders'" (2018). Dissertations. 210.
https://digitalcommons.brandman.edu/edd_dissertations/210
Ebner, K. (2019). Promoting career optimism and career security during career coaching: development and test of a model. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 1-19.
Fassiotto, M., Simard, C., Sandborg, C., Valantine, H., & Raymond, J. (2018). An Integrated Career Coaching and Time-Banking System Promoting Flexibility, Wellness, and Success: A Pilot Program at Stanford University School of Medicine. Academic Medicine (Ovid), 93(6), 881–887.
Jordan, S., Gessnitzer, S., & Kauffeld, S. (2016). Effects of a group coaching for the vocational orientation of secondary school pupils. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 9(2), 143-157.
Klonek, F. E., Wunderlich, E., Spurk, D., & Kauffeld, S. (2016). Career counseling meets motivational interviewing: A sequential analysis of dynamic counselor–client interactions. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 94, 28-38.
Lim, D. H., Oh, E., Ju, B., & Kim, H. N. (2019). Mediating role of career coaching on job-search behavior of older generations. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 88(1), 82-104. doi:10.1177/0091415017743009
Ling, F. Y. Y., Ning, Y., Chang, Y. H., & Zhang, Z. (2018). Human resource management practices to improve project managers’ job satisfaction. Engineering Construction & Architectural Management, 25(5), 654–669.
Spurk, D., Kauffeld, S., Barthauer, L., & Heinemann, N. S. R. (2015). Fostering networking behavior, career planning and optimism, and subjective career success: An intervention study. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 87(1), 134–144.
