Career Coaching vs Career Strategy Coaching
Which Path is Right For You?
By Safaa Amer
The world of work is changing faster than ever. Markets shift, technologies evolve, and the way we define success continues to transform. In this landscape, simply chasing the next job title isn’t enough. At Clevera Group, I believe that bold minds deserve clear paths, and choosing the right kind of support can make all the difference in your journey.
You’ve probably heard the terms “career coaching” and “career strategy coaching” used interchangeably. While they’re closely related, they serve different purposes and lead to distinct outcomes. Understanding which approach fits your current needs can help you invest your time, energy, and resources where they’ll create the most meaningful impact.
What Is Career Coaching?
Career coaching is practical, action-oriented support designed to help you navigate immediate challenges and achieve specific goals. Think of your coach as your partner in execution, someone who helps you build momentum, stay accountable, and take confident next steps. In summary, when we talk about career coaching, this is what you should be thinking of:
Focus - Short to mid-term goals like landing a new role, preparing for promotion, or executing an effective job search.
Approach - Through structured conversations, strengths-based reflection, and direct feedback, I help you clarify what you want and create an actionable plan to get there.
Typical framework - It takes on average 3 to 6 months with an average of two sessions per month
Outcome - You’ll walk away with concrete tools, a compelling resume, sharper interview skills, and a clear narrative that positions you effectively in the market.
Best for - Professionals who know where they want to go but need guidance, accountability, and practical support to make it happen.
What Is Career Strategy Coaching?
Career strategy coaching takes a broader, deeper approach. This isn’t just about your next role; it’s about designing your next chapter. We look together at who you are, where the market is heading, and the meaningful impact you want to create over time. This is where neuroscience-informed insight, market intelligence, and authentic personal brand development come together. Hence, for career strategy, the outlook is as follows:
Focus - Building long-term career alignment, leadership presence, and strategic resilience that transcend any single job.
Approach - We start with strategic diagnosis, understanding your values, strengths, and vision, then map that against market realities. Together, we craft an adaptive roadmap that positions you for sustained success and fulfillment.
Typical framework- It takes approximately 6 months to a year with an average of 2 to 3 sessions depending on stage.
Outcome- You develop an integrated professional identity, gain clarity on high-impact opportunities, and build the strategic thinking that helps you navigate change with confidence.
Best for - Established professionals and leaders who are ready for a major pivot, seeking deeper purpose, or wanting to align their work with their authentic values and long-term vision.
How to Choose Your Path?
As you think about your next move, consider the following.
Career Coaching may be right for you if:
You’re actively seeking a new role or promotion and need practical guidance
You want to strengthen specific skills like interviewing, networking, or personal branding
You’re clear on your direction but need accountability and support to execute
You’re ready to take action and want momentum now
Career Strategy Coaching may be right for you if:
You’re feeling misaligned in your current trajectory and want to redesign your path
You’re ready to step into leadership or make a significant career pivot
You want to build a career that reflects your authentic values and creates lasting impact
You’re willing to invest in deep reflection, strategic thinking, and purposeful transformation
The good news? These approaches aren’t mutually exclusive. Sometimes you need tactical coaching to navigate an immediate transition, and strategic coaching to design what comes next. What matters most is being honest about where you are and what you truly need right now.
The Clevera Group Approach
At Clevera Group, I bring both perspectives to our work together. Whether you need focused guidance to land your next role or comprehensive strategy to redesign your entire career trajectory, my neuroscience-informed, market-aware approach is designed to help you cut through the noise, build genuine clarity, and move forward with purpose.
I believe that lasting progress begins with clear direction. Your career should honor who you are, leverage your unique strengths, and create the impact you want to see in the world.
Stagility
What is Stagility?
A Skills-Based Strategy for a Stable and Agile Workforce
By Safaa Amer
The Employment Landscape
Today’s job market is defined by tension. TestGorilla (2025) highlighted that 63% of employers report difficulty finding talent, while 70% of job seekers say it is harder than usual to land a job. A recent strategy adopted by employers to address the shortage and widen the applicant pools is shifting to skills-based hiring and moving away from a qualifications list based on educational degrees. To meet the current job market demands, “stagility” – a blend of “stability” and “agility” – provides a practical framework for both employers and job seekers to navigate skills-first hiring, reskilling, and the future of work. This marks a pivotal moment for career professionals to guide clients and organizations through an evolving landscape.
What is Stagility?
Stagility captures a growing need in the workforce to maintain reliable structures with the right mix of people, roles, and skills that allow organizations to achieve their goals (e.g., workforce composition, job architecture, skills framework, workforce planning, culture, and technology). Such a structure is based on clear job descriptions, relevant skills, and expertise needed for each role. However, it also needs to remain flexible enough to respond to change. It reflects a dual priority, preserving core operations while staying ready to pivot, and is driven by:
Technological disruption such as AI, machine learning, and automation, which are reshaping job requirements (Paradis, 2024)
Changing employee expectations, where workers are prioritizing flexibility, values alignment, and growth opportunities
Global market volatility, leading organizations to continuously adapt to evolving risks and opportunities
Deloitte’s Human Capital Trends Report (2025) painted a clear picture where 75% of workers seek more stability, and 85% of business leaders believe organizations need more agile ways of working. In parallel, the World Economic Forum Report (2025) revealed that 70% of employers are hiring based on new skill sets and 66% are actively seeking AI competencies.
Stagility becomes a guiding principle in this dynamic environment, which demands a flexible workforce that is stable at the core but ready for what comes next. For employers, it means creating a talent strategy that values adaptable and skills-driven workers (Sigelman et al., 2024). For job seekers, it elevates the need to showcase their transferable skills rather than relying solely on credentials. For career practitioners, it involves proactively working with job seekers to identify areas where upskilling and reskilling are needed to remain relevant and employable.
Employers are Putting Stagility into Practice
Forward-thinking organizations are already putting stagility into practice. For example, Microsoft (Boyd, 2025) maintains strong internal training structures (stability) while continually adapting roles and skills to meet emerging tech demands (agility). A product manager might be hired for core strengths like leadership or data analysis and then reskilled into AI competencies as the company evolves. This internal development approach helps organizations to avoid over-reliance on external hiring, reduce talent gaps, and build a more resilient and loyal workforce. According to ThriveSparrow (n.d.), organizations that prioritize stagility are better equipped to thrive in uncertainty while maintaining operational continuity.
In addition, a wide range of employers are moving away from strict degree requirements in favor of demonstrated abilities and experience, with an increasing shift to skills-based hiring (Bushey, 2024). TestGorilla’s 2025 report found that 53% of employers have dropped degree requirements and 85% are using skills-based hiring models (TestGorilla, 2025). Industries leading the way for skills-based hiring include tech, trades, customer service, and public sector roles. In 2024, 25 states including Massachusetts, Maryland, and Pennsylvania removed degree requirements from government jobs to widen their talent pools (National Governors Association, 2025).
This shift is driven by pressures faced within the labor market. This includes talent shortages, inefficiency in the use of degrees for filtering job applicants (Peterson et al., 2024), and emerging industries like green jobs and AI (Gonzalez & Stephany 2024).
Skills-based hiring results in better hiring outcomes and more inclusive hiring. Statistics show that 90% of companies report fewer hiring mistakes when using skills-first hiring, and 94% of these companies say skill-based hires outperform degree-based hires (Pong, 2024). Skills-based approaches also open doors for self-taught workers and career changers, widening the pool of applicants (Gandall, 2024). However, it is important to note that degrees still matter in highly regulated fields like medicine, law, and engineering.
Practical Strategies for Career Professionals
As skills-based hiring takes hold, career professionals play a critical role in helping clients and organizations develop stagility in a job market where adaptability and skills matter more than ever. The following strategies can strengthen coaching practice, empower job seekers, and support organizations:
Support Internal Mobility - Career professionals can work with their clients to identify transferable skills and facilitate reskilling for new roles within an organization. This proactive approach boosts retention and business continuity.
Personalize Upskilling Paths - Effective workforce learning must align with both business needs and employee goals. Career professionals can help their clients design development plans that make upskilling relevant and achievable.
Promote Future-Ready Career Planning - Career professionals can help individuals map their skills to emerging opportunities, not just traditional job titles. This mindset encourages agility and adaptability in career planning.
Leverage Skills-Based Tools - Practitioners can incorporate assessments, digital portfolios, and AI powered career platforms into coaching sessions. This helps clients showcase competencies and align with technologies used for hiring (Gupta & Kaushik, 2024).
Harness AI and Build AI Literacy - Career professionals can demystify the way hiring platforms screen for skills, guide their clients to optimize resumes and profiles, and introduce AI tools for job search, career exploration, and upskilling.
Stagility for Building Meaningful and Resilient Careers
The most effective strategies today blend credentials with demonstrated competencies – an approach that values both education and skills. For career professionals, this shift underscores an opportunity to lead. By embracing stagility, they can help clients build careers that are both meaningful and resilient while supporting organizations in achieving their aspirations. This renders stagility as a powerful concept in which career professionals can strengthen their role as trusted guides in shaping the workforce of the future.
Published on NCDA Career Convergence Web Magazine.
Career Clarity in a Shifting Job Market
2025 mid-year job market
Mid-2025 Update on the U.S. Workforce
By Safaa Amer
The U.S. workforce is undergoing a profound transformation in 2025 driven by rapid technological advancements, AI integration, post-pandemic shifts in employee expectations, and growing economic uncertainty both at home and abroad (World Economic Forum, 2025). These forces are changing not just how we work, but who is working and what it takes to succeed.
Public Sector: At the Center of the Storm
No sector has felt the impact more dramatically than the federal government. Following early 2025 guidance from OMB and OPM to reduce the federal workforce by one-third (roughly 700,000 positions), sweeping layoffs and reassignments have followed. By mid-February, over 30,000 federal employees had been laid off. That number surged past 58,500 by mid-July (CNN, 2025).
And that’s just the beginning.
These figures don’t include the dismissal or reassignment of up to 220,000 probationary employees, or the 76,000 employees affected by voluntary early retirement (VERA) and buyout offers. Looking ahead, according to the State of the Federal Workforce (GovExec, July 2025), over 107,000 more federal jobs are expected to be eliminated in FY 2026, with a continued hiring freeze and a stringent 4-to-1 replacement ratio. This marks one of the most significant federal workforce reductions in modern history.
Private Sector Fallout & Economic Ripples
The public sector downsizing has sent shockwaves across industries. Government contractors are downsizing in response to reduced federal spending. According to ADP (June 2025), the private sector lost 33,000 jobs in June. College students are feeling the impact too, with internship opportunities being rescinded. Meanwhile, tech and media firms continue post-pandemic corrections through ongoing layoffs.
Hiring across sectors is slowing under the pressure of:
Elevated interest rates
Weakness in manufacturing
Global economic uncertainty
The accelerating use of AI to replace routine tasks (CNBC, June 2025).
Worker Sentiment: Staying Put, Burning Out
With fewer opportunities on the horizon, voluntary quits have declined. Many workers are opting for internal mobility, reskilling, and role-shifting as a survival strategy. Millennials and Gen Z are reporting rising levels of burnout, navigating constant change while trying to establish career stability. Job satisfaction is increasingly driven not by engagement or mission but by security and trust in leadership (DHR Global, 2025).
Job Seekers Face a Competitive Landscape
For those re-entering the workforce, conditions remain tough. The job market is saturated with highly skilled professionals recently laid off. As a result, job searches are stretching beyond the five-month average reported earlier this year. The number of long-term unemployed (27+ weeks) has risen to 1.6 million (Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 2025), and experts warn of further deterioration.
Bright Spots Still Exist
Despite challenges, opportunity is not gone—it’s just shifting.
Growth remains strong in:
Health care (making up nearly 45% of new job growth)
Transportation and warehousing
Financial services
Social assistance
Leisure and hospitality
These sectors are actively hiring and evolving.
What Can Professionals Do Now?
This moment calls for intentionality and adaptability. Here’s where to start:
Reskill & Upskill: Especially in AI, data literacy, and adaptive soft skills
Network Intentionally: Leverage personal and professional connections to uncover hidden opportunities
Craft a Compelling Brand: Tailor your résumé, LinkedIn, and interview story to shine inan AI-filtered world.
Consider a Strategic Pivot: Roles adjacent to your experience may offer more stability
Invest in Coaching: Personalized support can help you navigate change, build clarity, and make confident moves
Final Thoughts
The 2025 job market may be challenging but it’s not insurmountable. With the right strategy, grit, and support, professionals can adapt, pivot, and even thrive.