Why the best time to learn how to steer your career is right at the very start.
Most people come to coaching later than they should. It tends to show up when something has gone wrong, when a promotion has stalled, or when someone is senior enough that the company is willing to invest in them. By then, a lot of habits are already set. How we handle feedback, how we make decisions, how we react when a plan falls apart: these are shaped in the first few years of working life, often through osmosis and somewhat subconsciously.
That’s why I believe coaching belongs at the beginning of a career and not only at pivotal transitions.
Early intervention is a good thing
The early years of a career are when everything is forming. You’re working out what you’re good at, what drains you, how workplaces really operate and where you might fit. It’s also when you’re most open to new ways of thinking, because you haven’t yet built up years of “this is how I’ve always done it”.
Coaching at this stage works a bit like learning good technique before you build up speed. Small shifts in how you think about your work, made early, compound over decades. Someone who learns at an early stage to pause, reflect and ask good questions about their own development carries that into every role that follows.
A broader perspective from the start
When you’re starting out, your view of what’s possible is usually shaped by a small number of sources: your degree, your parents, your friends, the graduate fairs you went to and whatever LinkedIn decides to show you. That’s a narrow lens for a potentially very broad career.
A coach can help you to widen it. Together you look at what you actually value, which skills you enjoy using, and what kinds of roles and organisations might suit you, including ones you hadn’t considered. A broader starting perspective doesn’t mean you need to have everything figured out. It means you’re making choices with more information and more self-awareness than you would on your own.
Learning to question, challenge and embrace change
One of the most valuable things early career coaching gives you isn’t a plan. It’s a way of thinking.
Good coaching is built on questioning: asking what’s really going on, what you want, what’s getting in the way and what you could do differently. It involves challenge, the respectful kind that asks you to test your assumptions rather than simply accept them. And it encourages you to treat change as something to work with rather than something to fear.
When you experience these methods early, you start to use them on yourself. You get better at asking yourself the hard questions before a big decision. You learn to challenge the story you’re telling yourself about what you can and can’t do. And when change comes, as it always does, through a restructure, a new manager, a redundancy or a career pivot, you have a way of meeting it.
Always improving, always developing
Every stage of a career has something to teach you. The first job that wasn’t what you expected. The manager who brought out the best in you, and the one who didn’t. The project that went sideways. Even the roles we’d rather forget leave us with something useful, if we take the time to look for it.
Coaching builds the habit of looking. It encourages you to reflect regularly, to notice what’s working and what isn’t, and to keep developing rather than waiting for an annual review to tell you how you’re doing. People who build that habit early tend to keep growing long after the structured training of a graduate programme has ended.
Your career is yours to drive
This is the one I’d most like every graduate to hear: your career belongs to you. Not to your employer, your manager or your HR department.
Good employers will support your development but it’s crucial to take ownership of it yourself. Managers move on, priorities shift and organisations restructure. The person who is with you through every role, every company and every career stage is you. Taking ownership early means being clear about what you want, asking for the experience and support you need, and making active choices rather than waiting to be noticed.
That can feel like a lot of responsibility when you’re starting out. Coaching makes it feel manageable, and gives you the confidence to speak up for your own development.
Don’t be afraid of the sideways step
Career paths are rarely straight lines, and the best ones often aren’t. A lateral move can give you new skills, a different perspective and a broader network, all of which make you more valuable in the long run.
I’m living proof of this. I started out as a solicitor, moved in-house as legal counsel, then moved into HR, and now I run my own coaching practice. None of those moves looked like a typical “next step” at the time, and I couldn’t have mapped that route out at the beginning. But every stage gave me something I still use today, and together they’ve made me better at what I do now.
Thinking outside the box early on means being open to the role that doesn’t fit the expected pattern and this is often where real growth happens.
Where Clarico comes in
At Clarico, we work with people at the start of their careers to help them build this foundation. Through our Career Coaching, we support individuals who are finding their feet, weighing up their options or wondering whether they’re on the right path.
We also work with universities, colleges and graduate programmes to bring coaching to students and new joiners at scale, through Corporate Workshops and Employee Coaching designed for early career talent. For employers, it’s an investment in people at the point where it makes the biggest difference. For graduates, it’s a set of tools they’ll use for the rest of their working lives.
If you’re at the start of your career, or you run a programme for people who are, I’d love to talk. Get in touch at claricocoaching.com.