career coach
n. A guide or advisor who helps to plan and manage a person's career.
Other Forms
Examples
2001
For someone who needs some help getting started on a job search but doesn't need the administrative support an outplacement firm offers, a career coach may be the answer.

"I think what a good career coach is going to do is go digging for gold," said Beverly Berner, of the Resource Development Group in St. Louis. "Most people who have lost their jobs have forgotten that they are capable, skilled, accomplished human beings. What we try to do is identify and uncover these things."
—“Managing career management,” St. Louis Business Journal, December 28, 2001
1982 (earliest)
Penny Garner of Taking Charge!, who dubs herself a Washington "career coach" ($50 an hour), adds that job-seekers "have a right to expect a counselor to know how organizations work: how Capitol Hill offices work, how associations work, how a Fortune 500 company works, a law firm, a university."
—James T. Yenckel, “Guides in The Job-Hunt Game,” The Washington Post, April 29, 1982
Notes
As the related words for this phrase show, these days there's a coach for every aspect of a person's life. (I couldn't find any evidence, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that there's such a thing as a coaching coach. However, I can tell you that the International Coach Federation exists.)
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