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Preparing for your appointment

Please read the advice below on how to prepare for your coaching session.

Career Coaching is a collaborative process, so the more research and preparation you do in advance, the more you will be able to get out of your session.

Essential instructions 

Don't forget to send the job advert, job description and/or Person Specification to career.service@rcn.org.uk ahead of your appointment.

How to prepare for your session

Have a look at these pages before your appointment.

The more you prepare and practice before your appointment, the more your Career Coach can give advice on fine tuning your techniques and answers.

Useful tips

Make sure you save/download any job advert, job pack, Person Specification and Job Description. Once the deadline for submitted applications has closed, they will be taken offline so you'll be unable to access them.

If this does happen, you will need to contact the employer and ask them to send you a copy.

The role of the coach is to help you explore and understand what it is you want, encourage you to problem solve, and empower you to move forward. 

If you're thinking of changing roles but don't know where to start, we recommend you research 3 types of jobs or clinical areas that interest you before your session.

Remember, your coach can't tell you what job to do, which courses to take, or offer advice and information about different roles and their requirements.

Useful resources

Exploring jobs outside of Nursing

Sending in your CV

You may wish to send a copy of your CV to career.service@rcn.org.uk


We understand this could be a difficult time for you. It’s important to explain however that our Career Coaches can’t advise you on which jobs would or would not be suitable for you or your health, or suggest possible roles for you. Only you can be the judge of this.

Your career coach will offer you time and a safe space to talk about your situation, helping you to explore or understand what it is you want or need, and empower you to identify your own solutions and steps to move forward.

If you’ve already got some career ideas or goals, then your Coach can talk through these with you and help you to explore how your ideas would fit in with your values, skills, lifestyle, health, etc.

If you haven’t got any ideas or goals yet, take a look at the useful resources further down before your session. 

Useful resources

  • The RCN’s Nursing career pathways resource has information on different career pathways
  • RCN Forums are great sources of information and inspiration. Each forum has its own private Facebook group and you may wish to speak to your peers for inspiration, recommendations and tips on different roles and careers within nursing.
  • See our various clinical topics pages: https://www.rcn.org.uk/clinical-topics
  • Our Coaching page has lots of helpful links to get to started with researching roles, and also explains what kind of things coaching can help with, and what it can’t.

If you are only looking for information about a particular role, or for information on what courses you should take to get there, then Career Coaching will not benefit you.

To find out information about particular roles, you can search online. Here are some websites to help get you started:

Useful tip

To find out what kind of experience, skills or qualifications are required for a particular role, examine job adverts for that particular role and look at the Selection Criteria or Person Specification. 

Criteria may vary from employer to employer so try and compare as many as you can to get a good, all round picture of what you would be expected to meet.


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