How to judge outplacement services as an executive

The brochures all say the same thing

Every provider offers coaching, a rewritten profile, interview preparation and a platform. Reading three websites will not tell you which is better, because the difference does not live in the feature list. It lives in who you are assigned to, how much of the programme is one-to-one, and what happens when the early momentum fades.

Six questions that separate them

• Who is my coach, what have they done, and may I speak to them before I commit? A provider that will not name the person is selling you a rota.
• How many hours are one-to-one, and do they expire? A large number of group hours is a workshop programme — a different product at a different price.
• What happens in month five? Senior searches routinely outlast the enthusiasm.
• Do you work from my target companies, or from your job board? The first is a search; the second is an application queue.
• What do you measure yourselves on? If the answer is satisfaction scores, you now know what the service optimises for.
• What will you not do? A provider who cannot answer has not thought about their own limits, which makes every other answer softer than it sounds.

A provider who names your coach, answers the month-five question and admits one thing they do not do has told you more than any brochure.

What a good answer sounds like

Good providers are specific and slightly unflattering. They will tell you that coaching cannot manufacture a network you do not have, that the platform is a convenience rather than a channel, and that most of the work happens between sessions rather than during them. That kind of answer is rarer than it should be, and it correlates well with the sessions themselves being useful.

What to do with the answer

Choose on the coach and the one-to-one hours, then run your own search alongside the programme from week one. The two are not in competition: the programme sharpens how you present, and your own list decides where that presentation lands.