Executives who are looking for a career change or for better opportunities to exercise their skills, frequently turn to help in the form of executive career coaches, executive outplacement services and/or to executive career consultants. These executive consultants charge substantially for their services, but are executives seeing the return on this investment? Do executive career consultants help you find the right placement at the right salary for your situation?

When considering an executive career consultant, it is important to recognize that most firms that offer these services are catering both to companies as well as individuals. It is not a stretch to say that many of these companies primarily derive their revenue through engagements with corporations. In these engagements the executive consultants are trying to put together a program to develop executives internally. This is not a negative -- as this type of insight into executive programs may frequently help these consulting companies help you as an individual. Having said that, it is important to know where the primary allegiance of these firms lie, and the limits to which these executive career consultants will stretch themselves in helping you find the right position.

Alternatively, one can seek executive consultants who are exclusively focused on individuals. In such situations, it is important to find out how do these coaches and consultants remain connected with their industries? How do they know about the unadvertised jobs? Are they well-established names in the industry who get called upon for advice by companies and prominent individuals in the industry?

While most executive career consultants claim to work across the board, it is important to get a list of their references and case studies to really learn which industries are they really tied into? Even though human resources is a cross-industry discipline, no one has deep contacts across all industries. Knowing the areas where a firm is particularly good at will quickly let you know whether they are the right executive career consultant firm for you or not.

Executive career consultants really come into their own when you are ready for them -- and this means if you are facing one of the following situations:

1. Hitting a plateau in your leadership or interpersonal skills
2. Seriously considering how to take the next step up your career ladder in the same corporations
3. Seriously considering changing jobs to a more challenging environment
4. Wishing to learn how to develop core competencies for a profitable executive career

Overall, when you are ready, we would highly recommend getting the help you need -- we all need a mastermind group to really leverage our full potential, and an executive career consultant service is a part of that answer.