Belfast-based Careers Coach Colette Leeson has become one of Northern Ireland’s few employability professionals to be formally recognised on the UK Register of Career Development Professionals.
Colette, who has worked in career development for over three decades, has joined the government-recognised register maintained by the Career Development Institute (CDI). The register includes qualified Practitioners who meet national standards for career guidance, adhere to a professional code of ethics and undertake continuous professional development.
This accreditation places 56-year-old Colette, who has just formally exited a successful 38 year career in the public sector to pursue her entrepreneurial ambitions, among a small but growing cohort of UK professionals with this formal recognition. The entrepreneur, who has been trading as ‘Colette Leeson Interview and Career Coaching’, describes the milestone as “reassurance for clients” that the support provided is grounded in qualification, experience and accountability.
“People often turn to a careers adviser at pivotal moments in their lives,” she said. “They deserve to know the person helping them is professionally trained and ethically bound.”
Colette Leeson
Colette Leeson began her career in the public sector as a Careers Officer and went on to work within senior positions in digtial transformation, before setting up her own independent practice. Today, she works with clients across Northern Ireland, the UK and the Republic of Ireland, offering one-to-one guidance to career changers, senior professionals and women returners.
While her services include practical help with CVs, interviews and career planning, her focus, she says, is on helping clients “get unstuck and move forward prosperously, with clarity and confidence”.
Leeson is also an active mentor and trainer with organisations such as Women in Business NI, and Timely Careers, creating and delivering popular workshops on resilience, self-belief and employability including competency-based interviewing, confident career comeback and using AI in the career jungle gym.
In a rapidly changing job market shaped by AI, automation and post-pandemic career shifts, including remote work, Leeson, who has been known to deliver her services as a digital nomad from places as far away as Cape Town and the Seychelles, believes that the role of qualified guidance professionals has never been more vital.
“There’s so much noise around careers at the moment, from social media influencers to online advice tools, including unscrupulous get rich quick schemers but nothing replaces a safe, reflective space to work through your own situation with someone experienced and qualified to help” she adds.
Leeson, a Chartered Fellow of CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development), who graduated from Ulster University with a Post Graduate in Careers Guidance alongside a Post Graduate Diploma in Human Resource Management, offers one to one appointments and training programmes in person, by phone or via Zoom and Skype. Her official CDI profile can be viewed at www.thecdi.net/professional-register/colette-leeson.
