Career Coaches near you

If a business is running an employment agency or employment business, it cannot charge a fee to a work-seeker for work-finding services. That prohibition sits in the Employment Agencies Act and is fleshed out by the 2003 conduct regulations, which carve out only a narrow exception for occupations listed in Schedule 3, essentially entertainment and modelling, and even then any fee may consist only of a charge or commission payable out of the work-seeker's earnings.

The other duties attached to that status are substantial. Agencies cannot stop someone working elsewhere or ending their contract, cannot require someone to name a future employer, cannot withhold payments due, and must provide a key information document and written terms of engagement before they start looking for work on a person's behalf.

For a buyer, the test is what you are actually being sold. Advice, preparation and practice are services to you. Introducing you to named employers with a fee attached to the outcome is a different activity with different rules, and the exception that permits it is narrower than most people assume.

Useful career coaching begins with evidence rather than aspiration: what you have actually done, what you were good at, what the market for that currently looks like, and what you are unwilling to accept. Only then does it move into positioning, applications and interview practice. Work that starts with a personality questionnaire and never reaches a live application tends to feel insightful and change nothing.

Agree the shape before you pay. How many sessions, over what period, what you are expected to do between them, and what happens if you get an offer in week two. Agree also what documents you leave with, because a rewritten CV you cannot maintain yourself is worth far less than a structure you can update for the next role.

Timing matters more than most people expect. Coaching bought in the first fortnight after redundancy often gets spent on shock; the same money spent a month later, with an assessment of finances and a target list already in hand, usually goes further.

A recruiter is paid by the employer to fill a role and owes their duty there, which does not make them unhelpful, just differently motivated. A careers adviser, including the free National Careers Service in England, gives information and advice about jobs, careers and training without any stake in where you land. A CV writer produces a document. A career coach works on your decisions and your approach over time.

Outside England the equivalent public services differ: Skills Development Scotland, Careers Wales and Northern Ireland Direct provide careers support in their nations. Plenty of people use several of these at once, and there is nothing wrong with that provided you are clear which one you are speaking to at any given moment, and who is paying them.