SIDE BARS

Blue Kilowatt president Jeanine O’Donnell helps professionals to “fine-tune” their skills.

Career coaches can save businesses money, according to a Seacoast woman who has made helping others with their jobs her profession. For instance, a career coach helped the Deloitte & Touche law firm save $83 million in training and hiring costs by retaining 550 jobs, according to Jeanine Tanner O’Donnell of Hampton.

Career coaches help people define their skills and interests. This results in greater career satisfaction, in companies willing to align employees’ jobs to the work they love best.

O’Donnell has built a niche job for herself as a career coach out of a background in Human Resources. “I also do corporate consulting,” said O’Donnell, who started Blue Kilowatt in 2001.

“Companies come to me and ask, why am I losing people? (They’re) coming to me saying, what we can do? You’re going to see a huge trend in this.” O’Donnell has written “Find Your Career Path: A Revolutionary Guide to Career Satisfaction,” to help people define their inner motivations which will steer them to using the skills they enjoy.

For corporations, she charges $300 a month for executive coaching, done for one hour a week for at least three months. “I show them their professional strengths as an executive,” she said. “I talk to them about their style, give feedback. It allows them to fine-tune their skills.” O’Donnell said she’s “as busy as I want to be.” Career coaching is becoming as mainstream as going to a doctor or dentist, she said.

John DiFrancesco is the owner of Make It Happen Coaching in Epping. His career coaching business helps people understand how their personalities impact their job satisfaction. Human resource departments would save themselves grief later, he indicated, by not advertising positions which require an applicant to have two conflicting personality types. “When HR is writing a job description, a knowledge of type helps them envision the types most attracted to the position,” he said. They could ask themselves, he said, “are we coming up with a set of job responsibilities that has built-in conflict with interests? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen job postings wanting attention to detail, well-organized, good time management, combined with the ability to be spontaneous, flexible, and the ability to thrive in changing environments. One of those things will come easy to someone, another will be a challenge.”

Both O’Donnell and DiFrancesco take individuals through an assessment process. “I take people through an assessment process, their work style, interaction style,” said O’Donnell. “I need to know their passions and interests and unique gifts. This is one of the hardest things to understand about yourself.”

For DiFrancesco, the challenge is for people to align what they do with who they are. He uses a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test based on Carl Jung’s work in the 1920s. DiFrancesco looks at four core areas: a person’s natural preference, what they’re comfortable doing; their enthusiasm for the work, because what comes naturally doesn’t always mean it’s what they want to do 40 or more hours a week; their values, the feeling that what they do is important; and finally, the reality check, that what they do will earn them enough to live on. “When we look at people at the top of their game, the best, they make it look easier, they love it, they eat, sleep and breathe it. In today’s competitive marketplace, the only way to succeed is to eat, sleep and breathe it. If you’re not there, there will be someone else.”

For corporations to get people at the top of their game, he said, they should be willing to provide an opportunity for employees to shape their careers, “because you can’t change who you are. There are plenty of companies which have high turnover positions, that’s for a reason.” DiFrancesco is a former mechanical engineer who currently works as a software consultant along with career coaching. He uses “coach” instead of “counselor” to designate that his degree is not in the counseling field. He’s had formal personality type and coach training, the latter through the Coaches Training Institute in California in 2004.

O’Donnell said career coaches are different than career counselors. “A counselor to me is going to work on the tactical elements,” she said. “In coaching, you understand where you want to go first. Then you seek a counselor to design your resume.”

Both are putting their focus on young people, believing they can supplement the work of high school guidance departments, which are already stretched in how much they can work one on one with students.