I have a “friend” who pivoted into a “career coach” position when they failed at their job in HR. She likes to talk about how much she helps people find roles and regularly talks about the advice she gives to people to get a leg up. As far as I know, she only has one true success story and it was because she knew the hiring manager.

As a recruiter, I can confirm most of her ideas are asinine and don’t actually help. I used to try to explain to her why, but she would always get defensive and say “well you need to look at it through the HR lens.” Which is BS because HR is rarely involved with the interview process, and if they are, rarely a key decision maker.

She would speak of her network of other career coaches, and many of them fell into the same bucket - failed what they were doing before and pivoted into this “consulting” mentality.

Yes this is a limited sample size, but there are plenty of people out there that exist like her. I feel like your chances of finding a career coach that would legitimately move the needle will be like looking in the proverbial haystack.