Career coaching is the easiest discipline to drift out of. The client wants advice, a read on their resume, a verdict on the offer. This course teaches the move that keeps you coaching - and the engagement architecture that holds it.
The framework in ten minutes, and what it looks like inside a real engagement.
Lesson 0.1 · Five Doorways, Four Moves
The diagnostic intake: the five transitions clients arrive with, and the four moves you make in every engagement.
Lesson 2.1.1 · The Surface Story
Inside the work: the four ways a laid-off executive presents, and what each one is really asking for.
The rest of the 75 lessons unlock the moment you enroll.
Most career-coaching CCE is a single talk on job-search tactics. Useful for your clients to know about - but it teaches you to consult, not to coach. This course is built the other way.
Six practical shifts. Each is something you'll do differently with your next transition client.
Name the four drifts that pull career coaching toward consulting - resume review, salary tactics, advice on the offer, network introductions - and recognise the verbal cue that opens each one.
Recognise the five most common transition shapes - the laid-off executive, the pivoter, the stuck mid-careerist, the returner, the late-career encore - and the work each one is really asking for.
Run the verbal pivot that moves a conversation from "tell me what to do" back into coaching, mid-sentence, without losing the client's trust or sounding rigid.
Run the sponsor intake, name the four requests an HR sponsor will make that you decline, and hold the disclosure agreement when the sponsor calls mid-engagement.
Career coaching is action-oriented. Close each session on one concrete move the client owns and can run before you next meet - insight without an experiment leaves them looped.
Build a working playbook for the three transition clients you expect to coach most - recognition, engagement arc, contracting language, tools, referral map, and discipline scripts you can open in a session.
One module installs the stance. Five work the doorways one at a time. Two integrate. Hours and ICF Core Competency split are documented per lesson in your learner workspace.
If you're claiming these hours toward a credential, here's how each of the eight ICF Core Competencies shows up - the ones we go deep on, and the ones we touch in passing.
Deepened means at least one full unit teaches the competency directly - the stance work, the persona engagements, the case formulation, the three-party contracting. Touched means it runs underneath the work: the referral discipline and three-party consent carry the ethics thread, and holding identity grief carries trust and safety. The 3 mandatory ethics renewal hours aren't claimed here - earn those elsewhere. A detailed lesson-by-competency map is in your learner workspace once you enroll.
Two quick lists so you can self-select before you enroll.
Not "led by" - written, recorded, and reviewed by an active Master Certified Coach who coaches executives and professionals through the transitions this course is about.
Alex co-founded Tandem Coaching and coaches senior leaders through layoffs, pivots, and the move past a primary career. Direct, pragmatic, candid about where coaching ends and consulting begins. Career work is where the most experienced coaches quietly drift into advising - this course is the discipline he uses to stay in coaching with clients who arrive wanting answers, plus the three-party contracting that corporate-sponsored transitions demand.
More about Alex75 short video lessons (5 to 9 minutes each). A diagnostic intake routes you to the personas you coach most. Watch on any device, no live sessions to schedule around.
No 30-day, 90-day, or one-year limit. Come back to a persona module when your next transition client walks in. Three bonus modules are included for depth.
Pass the scenario verification quiz and submit your Three-Persona Playbook, reviewed by Alex Kudinov, MCC. You'll get a shareable certificate suitable for LinkedIn and L&D reimbursement.
Persona-recognition cards, the four-drifts reference, the pivot phrasings library, five role-play script packs, the case-formulation template, the sponsor-intake worksheet, and the Three-Persona Playbook. Yours to use in client work long after the course.
One short form, no credit card. Your account is set up immediately - you can be in the first lesson within 60 seconds.
Enroll now and the course is yours, free, for life - even after we turn pricing on for new learners.
We email you the access link. Unsubscribe from course communications any time.
Really free, no catch. The course is at $0 while its ICF CCE accreditation is in review. Pricing turns on once accreditation lands - and if you enrolled before that, the course stays yours, free, for life.
What we ask in return: your email so we can let you know when the CCE designation lands, and the chance to learn from how you use the material.
Once ICF approves the CCE designation for this course, the 20.0 instructional hours - 14 Core Competency, 6 Resource Development - will count toward your renewal CCE requirement. Pre-approval, completion still earns you the certificate and the learning, but the hours aren't yet claimable as ICF CCE.
The course doesn't claim the 3 mandatory ethics renewal hours - earn those elsewhere.
Coach the Transition. Four moves you make in every career engagement: Read the Persona (which of the five doorways did the client come through?), Hold the Stance (resist the pull to consult), Contract the Agreement (including three-party contracts when a sponsor or HR is paying), Land the Experiment (end every session with one concrete move the client owns).
The framework is recursive - every persona module runs the four moves through that persona's specific shape.
No - and that's the whole point of the course. Resume formatting, salary scripts, LinkedIn tactics: that's consulting. Your clients may need it, and the course shows you when to refer them to someone who provides it.
What this course teaches is the coaching underneath the transition: holding a stance while the client does the identity work a layoff, pivot, or return demands, and the move that pivots back to coaching the moment they pull for answers.
You can enroll, but the course assumes coaching foundations. If you haven't trained in the ICF Core Competencies yet, start with our free Coaching Foundations module on the ACC certification page - that gives you the grounding this course builds on.
If you're pre-credential but have been through coaching training elsewhere, you'll be fine.
About 20 hours of structured content. Most coaches complete it across 3 to 6 weeks at 3 to 5 hours per week. There's no deadline - your access doesn't expire.
The diagnostic intake routes you to the persona modules that match your clients, so you can go deep where it counts and come back to the others when a new transition client walks in.
Three things you keep using:
1. Your Three-Persona Playbook - a working playbook for the three transition clients you expect to coach most, built across the back half of the course.
2. 16 resources - persona-recognition cards, role-play script packs, the case-formulation template, the sponsor-intake worksheet, and more.
3. A certificate of completion - shareable on LinkedIn; suitable for L&D reimbursement; carries the ICF CCE-Approved Program badge once accreditation lands.
Tandem's flagship programs are ICF Level 1 (ACC) and Level 2 (PCC) - credential-earning programs that take you from no coaching credential to ACC or PCC. Months long, instructor-led, with practice sessions and mentor coaching.
This course is a specialization for coaches who already have foundations. It's narrower in scope (career and transition work specifically), shorter (20 hours), self-paced, and complements - rather than replaces - credential training.
The course is yours, free, for life - if you enroll before ICF CCE accreditation lands. Setup takes 60 seconds.
The deeper tool-discernment frame this course points to - choosing, sequencing, and holding coaching tools well.
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The operator side of practice - niche, offer, sales, B2B sponsorship, and the contracts behind paid engagements.
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