Five years ago, finding a coach followed a predictable path. You searched a directory, shortlisted three names, booked discovery calls, and picked your favourite. The coach with the best sales pitch won. Today that process feels almost quaint. The coaching industry has fractured into a thousand pieces. People are using ChatGPT as their first coach. They're joining group programmes with influencers they've never met.
One of the major secrets to getting any sort of promotion is that you must sow the seeds early on and build up to the point where the promotion feels like the natural next step. First, you have to nail the current job. Make sure you meet your deadlines, hit all your targets and fall firmly into the delivering' category.
LinkedIn is taking steps to prove that job candidates really have they skills they claim. The Verified AI Skills program unveiled in January involves LinkedIn partnering with AI tool providers to automatically validate and display a user's proficiency directly in their certification section. The initial partners include Lovable, Replit, Relay.app, and Descript, which will track AI proficiency of candidates using their tools to create AI apps.
"The key is rethinking what you're doing not as a job, but as a set of skills," he said. Once you understand your skills, Roth said to look at the jobs on the rise list and assess where the demand is, "because the demand is super uneven." "Then, start working backwards," Roth said."What are the skills that are required to be a construction planning coordinator or an independent analyst? What are the skills that I have that will get me there?"
If the job market feels harder than it should right now, you're not imagining it. Recent analysis from LinkedIn shows that while more than half of professionals (56%) plan to job hunt in 2026, but 76% don't feel prepared. Hiring hasn't stopped, but it has slowed, narrowed, and become more selective. When fewer open roles, higher expectations, and longer decision cycles are now the norm, broad job searches are not the answer, but focusing on targeted job searches.