It’s All About You

Work is personal. Your self-worth often extremely intertwined with your career achievements. A job loss, whether it’s called a lay-off, a RIF, or an involuntary separation, can take an enormous toll on your emotional well-being (in addition to your finances). As such, it’s incredibly important that outplacement companies remain committed to individualized counseling that is tailored to the candidate’s unique needs.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that outplacement firms are “struggling to do their job," favoring a one-size-fits-all approach that dehumanizes the recently laid off workers they claim to serve. The very companies that exist to help workers transition out of one job and into another are doing things like sending out inaccurate, typo-filled resumes and offering cookie-cutter information that can be found online.

Because career transition is so personal, every candidate has their own individual needs. At Mulling Corporation, a consultant has no more than 20-25 candidates assigned to him or her at any given time. This allows individual programs and time to discuss very important, sometimes private, issues in their career search.

Here are Mulling Corporation’s Top Tips for Choosing Career Consultants:

1. Look for experience. Your consultant should have experience in the career transition industry, but he or she should also have experienced outplacement themselves. All of our consultants at Mulling Corporation have held senior level corporate positions and have been through outplacement at some point in their careers. This makes them well qualified to provide an individual approach to career consulting.

2. Expect a permanently assigned consultant. Group consulting negates the candidate’s ability to ask the real questions that will make him successful in his search. If a candidate can’t open up to her consultant, she won’t get the answers she needs to avoid misemployment and find a good fit.

3. Demand accessibility. Your career consultant should return your phone calls and emails promptly, period.

4. Seek out customized tools. The firm you work with should have a unique perspective or assessment tool that sets them apart. (The Mulling Factor is an assessment that helps individual candidates identify how they work and with whom they work best. It’s the most important piece of information we use to find not just any job but the right job for our clients.)

5. Ask for testimonials. If the career consultant is hesitant to give you a reference, there’s a reason.