Tickle: verb: Lightly touch or stroke (a person or part of the body) so as to excite the nerves and (usually) cause laughter, spasmodic movement, irritation, or annoyance.

Prospects often come to me after they have frustrated themselves developing their own message and after pursuing avenues for their career growth by trial and error that did not pan out. Typically, they start with recognizing that their career is stalling and that they need to do something different or to make a change in how they apply their past accomplishments and talents to move in a direction that they feel will help them regain their career momentum. Although some of these approaches “work,” clients often do not appreciate the opportunity cost of bootstrapping these critical initiatives without an objective and expert third party to help them in their transition. Much as the act of tickling yourself to laugh, no amount of effort without the right outside help produces the desired result.

Why is that?

Again, much like self tickling it is difficult for yourself to clinically look at your career history and your inventory of current skills to develop a message that excites the hiring manager, recruiter, or anyone looking at it objectively to engage you in something they want done. The other factor that plays a key role in developing a message that articulates your unique value proposition is your own inability to synthesize a compelling marketing message that goes beyond merely listing the tasks in a transactional way from your previous jobs.

Also, most people struggle with developing a coherent and synergistic message that is easy for the reader (recruiter or the hiring manager) to connect with their needs and to excite them to explore further with you. This difficulty is further exacerbated if your current role fails to show career momentum. Without this momentum jumping out at the reader, one is likely to make their transition laterally rather than moving up as they change jobs.

Yet another factor is the difficulty of self-calibration to see how you stack up in the current job market. What does this mean? It means that to rank high in every aspect of the transition, from initial positioning message, to interviews to, offer negotiation, it is difficult to any one person to assess their relative value in a competitive market. A professional, who deals with many such clients can provide a better perspective on how your positioning stacks up in such a job market, which can help you better present your case and derive the most benefit from that knowledge to further your career.

So, how does a career coach help in moving a person’s career in the right direction as they decide to make a change in their status? Here is a list of factors that may help you decide if you are ready to work with a career coach:

Dealing with Unconscious Incompetence: This is also called blind ignorance or “I don’t know what I don’t know,” state. I see this every day in my coaching practice when clients first come to me with their résumé, CV, or LinkedIn Profile that does not get them the response they expected. Even though many say they spent hours crafting their message, what matters is how it presents itself and how it stacks up in the marketplace with other messages. Developing a compelling message requires a good understanding of how your past chronology can be synthesized to show not only career progression, but also a direction in which it shows a purpose with momentum. This is not something that is easy for most to articulate, both because of their inability to have a perspective and often their limited capacity to articulate that perspective.

Yet another aspect of the Unconscious Incompetence is one’s not knowing the difference between form and function. Let me explain: When clients first call me and ask me how they can benefit from working with me, I tell them that I can make an assessment of their career and then develop a résumé based on how they want to grow. Their typical response is that they already have a résumé. They do not realize that it is not working and they do not know why it is not working. The same discussions repeat when we talk about interviews, and job offers.

Creating a forward-looking résumé: Most résumés start with a Summary at the top and when done this way automatically anchor your message to the past. A résumé must show a message of what you want to do tomorrow based on how you have succeeded yesterday, what that makes you today, and how that propels you to excel tomorrow. This is not an easy message to architect without a creative approach to how a résumé structure is architected and how your leadership narrative is put together.

Developing a coherent brand: Branding is one of the major areas of interest to most career professionals and to develop a brand one must understand what a good brand stands for and how to develop that brand in an effective way. Putting together merely what your past jobs entailed is not how a brand is built, developed, and promoted. It requires an understanding of branding principles, diligent and sustained efforts to keep trumpeting a consistent branding message, and testing the message in the right market to assess whether what you intended is what is coming through. This is not easy.

Networking: Before today’s social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter) platforms networking was a social sport—not merely connecting with someone digitally and exchanging transactional messages on important dates, such as a birthday or an anniversary. Networking to advance your career requires careful nurturing of relationships and knowing how to approach the right connections to get things done so that both sides benefit from that relationship. In today’s harried world most people rely on their transactional exchanges to protect their network and that yields limited results. A well-connected professional such as a career coach can help their client in making these connections more productive in their career management.

Campaign management: Once your message is built a good campaign design is a sine qua non. A shot gunning—spray and pray—approach to targeting companies of interest does not yield much results as follow-up mechanisms and feedback are absent in such approaches. Knowing whom to target in a specific company and knowing how to approach them is an integral part of a well-designed campaign.

Learning how to interview: When one reaches an interview stage the real “selling” begins. This is where many struggle through their message, both in how they present themselves and how they respond to interviewers’ questions. A careful scripting is a necessity in advancing your candidacy through each stage of an interview. Preparing for both technical questions and discussions about yourself—your leadership, successes and failures—cannot be done with impact without preparation and knowledge of how to deliver such responses to further your candidacy.

Learning how to close: Merely acing an interview does not always result in one’s ability to close and to get the desired offer. What to do after an interview, especially if one of the stops were not your best performances, is something people fret over because they do not know how to recover from such a setback after an interview. This is where a professional can help protect your options and help you recover despite a setback.

Getting the offer: It is easy to get an offer, but what is difficult is how to stage your logistics and campaign so that they line up within a short time of each other and then having the option to pick the best one with which to move forward. Most people pursue one target, especially when the interviews are going well and they realize that they have scuttled their chances of getting offers from other companies to pick the one that suits them best for their next job and for their career. This, too, requires a professional to guide you through.

Learning to negotiate: Almost everyone struggles through this critical step because they do not know how to negotiate and also because many believe that they will be given what they deserve, not what they negotiate. Negotiating your own package is an art and almost every negotiation can be structured for a win-win for both. This requires experience and confidence.

Starting your new job: The next job is a new chapter in one’s career that helps them advance it for their ongoing momentum. There is often a disconnect between what transpires during the interview process and what one ends up when their new job starts. This needs attention and knowing how to reconcile the difference to their advantage. Most new employees start their jobs without paying attention to these factors and without engaging in a careful 100-Day plan to map out their first year and the first Annual Performance Review. The excitement of starting a new job distracts them, where attention to these key aspects of managing their start and the first year get ignored. Working with a professional coach can help you better understand how to manage this critical transition for your ongoing career success, not just in your new job!

Career management is fraught with uncertainties, unknowns, and the unexpected. Working with a professional career coach can help you navigate through these waters so that you have better control over what happens and how you can manage that to your advantage. Tickling yourself to laughter is not easy!

Good luck!