Meeting our Clients’ Great Expectations
As I’ve mentioned before, literally thousands of executives come to us each year with expectations of how we can help them in their career development. Some of them have very specific needs and expectations (such as demonstrating transferability of skills across industries) while others simply realize that they might be great surgeons, lawyers, engineers, or other expert professionals, but in the business of finding that next better, more satisfying, and more lucrative job… they need help.
So, statistically, why do executives come to us?
Our clients’ expectations. We’ve done a little digging and, in the hopes that you might see some commonality in your own needs, we would like to share some of these insights here.
First, there is a definite bias in our sample toward higher salaries. For example, while 55% of those who contact us claim to have earned $100,000 or more in their most recent job, this number swells to over 85% amount those who actually become clients.
This bias plays out at the specific expectation level, too. However, let’s look at the universe of those who contact us first.
In a sample of almost 6,000 prospects, the distribution of how they expected the Barrett Group to be able to help them was surprisingly uniform:
- 18.8% Effective Job Campaign
- 16.3% Professional Career Plan
- 15.8% Superb Communication of my Resume
- 17.8% Demonstrating Transferability of Skills
- 14.2% Support in Interviewing and Negotiating
- 17% Facilitating Access to Decision Makers
Among clients, however, there was a stronger clustering on the Effective Job Campaign and the Facilitating Access to Decision Makers expectations, both coming in at about one-fifth. The uniformity holds up across all income categories for prospects, too, with only a slight trends toward Facilitating Access to Decision Makers as well as Effective Job Campaign and away from Support in Interviewing and Negotiating as income increases.
This trend is however far more pronounced among actual clients among whom the Facilitating Access to Decision Makers and Effective Job Campaign expectations together swell to about 44% vs. 39% among prospects.
As I’ve mentioned before, our Targeting Process, the Clarity Program©, is one reason we are so successful in fulfilling client expectations: more than 90% of our Clarity Clients rate the experience as “Excellent.” And that is largely because we look at the whole person when clarifying career objectives—not just the targeted title, compensation, and geography. Whether they are executives, lawyers, people transitioning out of the military, or other professionals seeking support—our Clarity Program© uniquely facilitates this process.
Whether you simply know you need professional support in your career management process or whether you need specific support on some aspect such as accessing decision makers, let’s talk. We can help.
Peter Irish
CEO
The Barrett Group
