‘Doctors’ help people seeking to advance, be happier
By Kevin Shalvey,PBN Staff Writer
Last year, a woman working as communications director at a nonprofit in New York came to one of Barbara Jackson and Lee E. Miller’s advanced-negotiating workshops. During a break, she approached Jackson with another problem: Her top-shelf position wasn’t fulfilling.
Previously, she had worked at a for-profit advertising agency and hadn’t liked the way everyone was motivated by the bottom line. But at the nonprofit, she had found the opposite problem – the bottom line wasn’t important enough to those employees.
PHOTO COURTESY YOUR CAREER DOCTORS BARBARA JACKSON, co-founder of Your Career Doctors, says the firm is moving away from services for businesses to provide more one-on-one counseling to people who want to advance their careers.
Jackson and Miller spoke with the woman after the seminar and suggested that she pursue a career in marketing.
“We said, ‘Let’s make sure you’re in the right field,’ ” said Jackson, co-founder with Miller of Your Career Doctors, a career management company. “It’s clear that you like communicating with people, but maybe being the person in charge of the newsletters, pamphlets and the e-mail blasts that are going out from your organization [is the problem]. Maybe it’s not the not-for-profit aspect, because the communications thing didn’t make you happy in the for-profit world either.”
The woman is now working in marketing in California, happily, Jackson said.
Jackson and Miller formed Your Career Doctors about three years ago to offer their expertise to businesses. Jackson’s background includes being former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld’s budget director and consulting for Harvard University’s School of Design, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and Time magazine. Miller is an adjunct professor of management at Seton Hall University, a bestselling author and managing director of NegotiationsPlus.com.
This week they will launch a new version of YourCareerDoctors.com, which coincides with a refocusing of the business on one-on-one services for individuals, rather than for companies.
“What Career Doctors used to be is a company that would come in and do training and help organizations with problems,” said Jackson. Now, she said, “we want to put individuals in charge of their career without necessarily having to go through their HR department.”
Over-the-phone help with r?sum?s, how-to-interview information and counseling will cost $125 per half hour. Also available is a $375 kit that includes an intake survey, online training and workbook, two career-oriented books and a 12-month membership for online training at CareerShield.com. A package with both – counseling for 90 minutes and the kit – will run clients $450, with $60 for each additional 20 minutes of counseling.
Although there is no Your Career Doctors office, the company’s 45 counselors – who are required to have at least five years in human resources or the field in which they consult – are spread across the country and are matched with clients by location and employment history.
The company’s three main client bases will be those who have lost their jobs because of outsourcing and downsizing, those who want a new job, or those who just to advance – either with their current company or with a new one.
“We have an awful lot of people – and I find this kind of amazing – that have only worked in one company or organization, and they don’t know how to go out to another organization to get a promotion,” said Jackson.
Work force statistics show the size of the firm’s potential market: One in three people changes jobs each year, about 50 percent of people are unhappy in their jobs, and almost everyone is likely to lose a job at some point.
“Certainly everybody graduating college now, I’d say nine out of 10 of them will probably, at some point, involuntarily lose their jobs. And I’d say almost all of them will have many jobs over the course of their careers. So there’s a real need,” said Miller. “And then you have the baby boomers, who are thinking, ‘What do I do next?’ I mean, that’s a huge group. They’re not ready to retire, but they might not want to be doing what they’re doing now.”
With many jobs – including government positions – that have age caps for retiring, many of those baby boomers are poised to make big moves, said Jackson.
“Maybe they’ve been in finance their whole lives and they’re not sure that’s what they want to do. But they’re not sure they want to go in the Peace Corps, either, so they’re not sure what to do,” said Jackson
Although the new Web site will change the face and structure of Your Career Doctors, it won’t alter the basic teaching methods that Miller and Jackson have been cultivating together.
“Lee and I have coached … hundreds and hundreds of people,” said Jackson. “We have probably done this type of training – like how to interview, how to do different aspects of this, for example, how to get a promotion without killing your career – we’ve probably taught 5,000 people in those over the last five or six years.”