Career Coaching Secrets

From Corporate Recruiter to Coaching Pro: Dhara Majmundar's Journey

• Davis Nguyen

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Rexhen Doda interviews Dhara Majmundar, a top corporate recruiter and LinkedIn Top Voice, now a career coach specializing in tech hiring. Inspired by a job seeker's emotional feedback, Dhara transitioned from free services to paid coaching for North American fresh graduates to mid-career professionals.

Her primary lead source is her 47,000+ LinkedIn followers and referrals. Dhara's key advice: "just start" and gradually price services. Her main challenges include time management and screening clients. She plans to pursue certification and structured programs.

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Dhara Majmundar:

Definitely. I really want to make this whole coaching more structured. So first of all, I want to pursue a career coaching certification because I get some remarks and I personally feel as well that if I'm doing coaching, I should get certified or I should get the proper training as well. Right now, whatever I'm doing is literally based on my conflict resolution education or HR management education or my work experience. But I really want to get a certified career coach. Apart from that, I want to Welcome

Davis Nguyen:

to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Nguyen, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to seven and eight figures without burning out. Before Purple Circle, I started and scaled several seven and eight figure career coaching businesses myself and consulted with two career coaching businesses that are now doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or just building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Rexhen Doda:

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. Today my guest is Dara Mashmandar, one of Canada's top corporate recruiters for 2021, 2022 and again in 2024, a LinkedIn top voice, mentor, coach, college professor and powerhouse in tech hiring. She's helped thousands of professionals land roles in IT, cybersecurity, engineering and artificial intelligence. And as a recruiter, team leader and coach, she brings a unique perspective on what hiring managers really look for. She's also an MBA candidate, certified HR professional, and a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, and the definition of a lifelong learner, with 450 books under her belt in the last 10 years. Dara, welcome to the show. Excited to learn from you today.

Dhara Majmundar:

Thank you so much for having me here. I'm equally excited.

Rexhen Doda:

It's my pleasure. Dara, tell me a little bit more about what inspired you to become a career coach.

Dhara Majmundar:

Let me tell you a story. Maybe a couple of years ago, after one interview with a girl who was starting out her career, she started crying. And I thought, oh my gosh, I made somebody cry during the interview. And she told me that I'm so happy that I'm crying. I'm like, what made you cry? She said that nobody gives me feedback after the interview. And it's been six months. I'm looking for a job and I'm really struggling to understand how I can improve my interview presence or what am I doing wrong? You are the first person who actually told me something that I can use and I can improve in the next round. That moved me. Her reaction moved me. And I realized that there are so many job seekers who want that feedback. But being a professional, sometimes I have my own limitations as to how much feedback I can provide to them and how much I can help them. So that made me become a career coach.

Rexhen Doda:

And how does a journey look like after you started your coaching business to where you are at today?

Dhara Majmundar:

Well, it was a roller coaster. Initially, I was not charging anything because I wanted to be helpful and I wanted to have a service very accessible. But then I had a lot of bad experiences. I think people don't value something if it's free and they they may not even show up for the session, whereas I'm really putting in a lot of efforts and managing times. So I started slowly and gradually, I started charging a little bit, but then I realized that I'm really underestimating myself and the services I'm providing. And I cannot just stop after 10 minutes, or I cannot let them stop after 10 or 20 minutes. So my service was really like, A lot of time consuming, a lot of energy and efforts I was putting in. And I was seeing that people are getting benefited out of it. And then I was also approached by a lot of other career coaches that, how come you are not charging anything? Or how come you're charging so low? You are breaking the market. So there were a lot of dynamics around it. So in terms of my journey, I started with pre-career coaching to adding a little bit of amount to it. And then slowly and gradually, I actually added more amount to what I was charging with limited time period and giving more value and being very selected as to who I'm going to coach and have a communication with.

Rexhen Doda:

And who do you typically coach? Who do you typically work with? What is the ideal client?

Dhara Majmundar:

Well, it's a variety of spectrum. So I get a lot of freshers, newcomers, recent graduates, people who want to change their career. Many are already in the middle middle management or middle of their career and they're stuck and they're not able to progress further so literally newcomer or fresh graduates to the senior employees i get all of them and and and not just the newcomers or or people who have recently come from southeast asia for example but even born and brought up in canada per se you know and still struggling so i usually work with not north american candidates so that i don't have to struggle with the time timelines and that's why I kind of avoid outside candidates, but I do get a lot of requests from all across. I just stick to North American ESG time zone.

Rexhen Doda:

And what marketing channel do you think is working best for you right now? What is the primary way of you connecting with potential clients?

Dhara Majmundar:

So LinkedIn is my only primary way of connecting with people. And to tell you the truth, I'm not even putting in any additional effort. I get tons of messages and everybody who is looking for a job and they ask me if I have any suitable opportunity. So if I don't have anything for them and I realize that their LinkedIn profile is going somewhere else, they're looking for the job which is not So I ask them that, you know, I don't have any job relevant job, but if you are looking for some more guidance, you can always use my services. So that's the way, you know, I kind of keep on getting candidates or clients.

Rexhen Doda:

nice and um do you also get the clients from referrals as well

Dhara Majmundar:

i do and it's very surprising whenever i have one coaching session immediately they refer to their friends their colleague their relative or family member or roommate and and and you know that and that that really helps me to uh keep going

Rexhen Doda:

You have built quite a big profile with almost 47,000 followers. How did you go about it? Do you think that that is maybe one big driver for you getting leads to your career coaching?

Dhara Majmundar:

I think so. I think the followership has definitely helped me. And the funny thing is I get it all organically. I'm not actually putting in any extra effort. I only post something when I have to say something. Not that I have to post something today, no matter what. I only post when I want to say something or something happens that I want to highlight. And most of the times I'm reposting the jobs so that we all get benefited by the network that we have created. But 100%, I think the followership has helped me get all the leads. that I'm getting.

Rexhen Doda:

Do you have a goal you're currently working on for the next one to three years?

Dhara Majmundar:

Definitely. I really want to make this whole coaching more structured. So first of all, I want to pursue a career coaching certification because I get some remarks and I personally feel as well that if I'm doing coaching, I should get certified or I should get the proper training as well. Right now, whatever I'm doing is literally based on my conflict resolution education or HR management education and all my work experience, but I really want to get a certified career coach. Apart from that, I want to offer more like workshops or I want to offer more structured programs where I not only talk about one aspect of job search, but maybe I invite four or five members and then I help all of them together and maybe I invite other job coaches. So the There is a room for growth and I can do a lot with this. And I'm working towards it. I think my first step is to just hone my own skills before I actually involve more people into this venture.

Rexhen Doda:

Nice. And in terms of investment, what resources or support has been most valuable for you growing or even at the beginning starting your career coaching business?

Dhara Majmundar:

My investment is my LinkedIn premium fees. And initially I didn't pay for Zoom subscription and that used to give me the limitation of only 40 minutes and my session usually go more than one hour. So I pay for Zoom subscription as well so that I can have a longer time meetings, but pretty much that's that. My own timing of reaching out people and then just do subscription and my internet connection and my laptop and I think that's about it.

Rexhen Doda:

And is there something you wish you had known when you first started scaling your coaching business? Is there like an unexpected lesson learned?

Dhara Majmundar:

Yes, I think. I think I wish I would have been more structured. I think I would have some more, I would have created some documents. People do ask a lot of things, a lot of times about the format of the resume and so many other things. I wish I would have created documents and some written support after the session so that they have some material. So I think that's something I always feel is missing. And I'm still struggling to put things together.

Rexhen Doda:

And in terms of challenges, what are some of the biggest challenges you've faced in scaling your coaching business so far or that you're still facing today?

Dhara Majmundar:

Well, I think time and energy. To tell you the truth, I'm not able to reach out and I'm not able to conduct the sessions in a very timely manner as much as I would like it to be. I really, if you send me a message today, I really like to have your appointment in next day or next two days. But It takes time because I have a lot on my plate. So I think that is my biggest challenge. I really feel ashamed of myself sometimes when I'm not able to give them the responses in a timely manner. And I really want to improve on that.

Rexhen Doda:

And since you mentioned time and energy, so far, how do you handle that balance between delivering great client results and managing business growth on the other side? So basically working in your business versus working on your business.

Dhara Majmundar:

So that's a good question. I think that's still my area of improvement. So far, I've only been able to work in the business and I'm still not getting enough time to work on the business, but I really want to do that. I really want to expand in terms of documentation, maybe more cohort, you know, more workshops, maybe LinkedIn live sessions, maybe inviting other speakers of our coaches and coordinating with them. So I definitely want to work more on this business because it has a lot of potential and I know I have audience, but it's still not there.

Rexhen Doda:

Is there any aspect so far of running your coaching business that would figuratively keep you up at night?

Dhara Majmundar:

So sometimes I do get clients, do not come to actually learn anything sometimes they are just here to inquire sometimes they just want to know how am i managing it am i doing anything illegal or do i really know my stuff or how great they are so that they can tell me and in a way they find a way to just talk to me so those elements it used to bother me a lot initially and it has reduced drastically now but I'm still struggling to work around. I'm still struggling to make sure that I don't get into something like that. So that's an ugly part of it. And sometimes it makes me annoyed.

Rexhen Doda:

So basically picking the right clients to work with is what you meant. Nice. Yeah, I think that's always going to be probably a challenge. And Once you structure your program as well in the future where you figure out the funnel in a way where these are filtered out from the beginning, that's going to make it easier, I think, eventually. But you're still going to run into some clients that you might not want to work with, which is kind of difficult. You have to say no. Yep. Is there any advice you'd like to give to other career coaches who are looking to scale their impact?

Dhara Majmundar:

Certainly. So I have been approached by a few career coaches and they have told me that what to do and how to scale the thing. My advice to them is that Start slowly and start with low cost. I've seen that just because they have 20, 25 years experience doesn't mean that you start with 500, you know, or 600 like that, that you also need to see who your clients are and what are their capacity. And first of all, you need to establish yourself. Just because I decided one fine morning that I want to be a career coach and just because I know that I can do it well, not everybody is going to buy it right away. So you have to start slowly and gradually. Maybe provide some free services initially. Maybe keep a short-term communication, right? Maybe learn about their portfolio first and then figure out if you can really help them. And then once you create your audience, then slowly and gradually maybe you put in some more price. And again, it has to be something that is affordable and And you can justify what value you are delivering and what value they are receiving too. So I think... A lot of career coaches have lots of aspirations, but they're not able to go much far because they don't understand, I think, the business aspect of it. And I think that's where they're lagging behind. And that's what has worked for me. I never started by asking $500 in the first go. I really started providing free service. And then I was charging $10 and then $20 and then $40 and stuff like that. make sure that I provide them the value and knowledge and experience that they require before I actually increase my price for them.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you so much, Dara. Well, it's been lovely having you on the podcast. For anyone who wants to find you or connect with you they can find you at Dara Mashundar on LinkedIn and they can also if they wanted to chat with you they can book an appointment coffee chat or anything like that so it's been a pleasure having you on the podcast thank you so much for coming Dara

Dhara Majmundar:

thank you so much

Davis Nguyen:

Thank you. Thank you.