Your life coach resume is like a map of your professional journey, one that shows how you can plan a path for career success. And a compelling resume gets you to where you want to be faster, which is helping others realize their goals and ambitions to live their best life.
An uninspired resume isn’t going to motivate anyone to take on your services. If you can’t hype your own career, how will anyone be inspired to hire you to boost theirs?
But you can take the steps you need to realize your best resume, through visualization, intent, and action!
Your resume should answer the question “How can you help your client?” It should demonstrate that you have the experience to help them reach their personal and professional goals.
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This resume guide and corresponding life coach resume example will cover the following:
When you decide to make positive positive changes in your life, your first step is knowing what to include and what to leave out. To that end, your resume should contain the following elements:
A good resume will help you “sell yourself,” professionally speaking, and make it clear what value you bring to the table. You wouldn’t have the same plan for a person going through a life crisis as you would for someone simply switching careers, so each resume you submit should be targeted based on what they’re looking for.
Identify the client’s needs and use your resume to demonstrate why you’re the person who can help them accomplish their goals. That’s your USP, aka your unique selling proposition, which is the heart of your resume as well who you are as a life coach.
Optimize for the ATS
As you might already be aware, ATS stands for “Applicant Tracking Systems,” which is a computerized way of screening out unqualified applicants. ATS algorithms scan resumes for keywords – usually taken from the job description—and rank them by keyword inclusion. Only the highest-ranking resumes pass through to be reviewed by human hiring staff.
For example, let's say that a life coach job posting lists the following requirements:
Your resume profile summary, when integrating the keywords, could read:
“Thoughtful, motivated life coach with bachelor’s degree in adolescent psychology and 3 years of practical coaching experience, assisting students with life skills, and utilizing creative tools to help them achieve confidence and purpose. Proven experience in student learning outcomes and critical thinking skills.”
To learn more about conquering the ATS, check out our article Resume ATS optimization.
Your resume needs to be professional, easy to understand, and persuasive, which are some of the qualities a good life coach should possess.
The best resume format for most life coach positions is reverse chronological. This format puts the spotlight on your employment history section, listed in reverse chronological order to tell the story of your career from its beginning to the current day. Below is an example of this format.
Those looking to start a career as a life coach (such as a career changer or new graduate) may have better results with other formats, such as the functional format, which focuses more on the transferable skills you’ve developed and less on your past employment.
There are a multitude of resume templates in our resume builder, so you’re sure to find the best one to fit your current career situation. And if you’re unsure, we have a variety of versions of the three formats available as resume examples so you can choose the right one for you.
You could be the best life coach in the world, but if your potential client can’t get in touch with you, you’ll spend a lot of time “waiting by the phone” and watching career success pass you by. Fortunately, a resume has a special place for this information: the header.
An effective header meets two qualifications: it is easily located, and professionally-presented.
Don’t include:
Jean Baker
Life Coach
Denver, CO
jean.baker@email.com
(303) 555-6789
Jean Baker
Fairy Godmother
123 Main Street, Apt. G
magicwand1234@email.com
(303) 555-6789
A good life coach doesn’t make pie-n-the-sky promises; they work with you to create a clear, actionable plan to reach your goals. When you sit down with a new client, you let them know why you’re the person who should work with them on their personal or professional journey.
For a potential client, your resume summary performs the same basic function. In no more than 2-3 sentences, you’re putting yourself forward as the best life coach to address their obstacles effectively. Shine a spotlight on your training, specific skills, and personal qualities that make you unique.
A good summary should be inspiring. Use action verbs—guide, coach, empower, facilitate, inspire, and motivate—and include quantifiable results where it makes sense to do so.
A resume summary isn’t just a recap of information on your resume. Good summaries offer converging, long-encompassing talents and skills that make you a credit to your profession. For example, “Adept at fostering a supportive environment that encourages self-reflection and positive change.”
Need inspiration for your summary? Check out our related resumes:
You can find adaptable life coach resume examples summary below:
Diligent, motivated life coach with experience in teaching and consulting positions. Highly educated and well trained with expertise in dealing with educational, professional, and personal issues. Resourceful and focused professional with strong leadership, communication, and organizational skills.
Compassionate and experienced life coach with a proven track record of helping clients achieve personal and professional growth. Skilled in active listening, goal setting, and creating customized action plans. Adept at fostering a supportive environment that encourages self-reflection and positive change. Committed to empowering individuals to overcome obstacles and reach their full potential.
Ambitious, driven, and award-winning professional with a doctorate in educational psychology and extensive experience identifying client needs and requirements, developing personal performance improvement strategies, and implementing solutions and procedures to support personal success. Proven ability to create, develop, and implement effective and personalized coaching programs. Unparalleled collaboration, communication and leadership skills.
For most life coach resumes, you’ll list your current (or most recent) job at the top of this section and work your way back to your first job. Don’t go back any farther than the last 10-15 years to keep your experience section relevant and avoid the possibility of age discrimination.
Include experience that is relevant to the position you’re seeking; other, older positions can be listed separately under a subheader titled, “Other experience.”
Don’t just list what you did with each client, show concrete, quantifiable results. Ineffective descriptions might include:
These statements are ambiguous and could be applied to anyone purporting to be a life coach. They don’t communicate what makes you unique and the value you bring to a company and/or client.
Instead of these vagaries, use results-based points. Emphasize outcomes that you facilitated: addressing stress and anxiety, achieving career goals or productivity, improvements to physical health or relationships.
Check out these reworked versions of the phrases above:
Take a look at the life coach employment history resume sample below:
Life Coach at Empowered Living Coaching, Denver, CO
August 2018 - Present
Career Coach at University of Colorado Denver Career Center, Denver, CO
June 2016 - July 2018
It takes a particular type of person with a set of finely-honed skills to be an effective life coach who gets results. In your list of skills, incorporate hard and soft skills that highlight your hard-earned talent and expertise. Soft skills like active listening, empathy, communication skills, and time management are vital for success as a life coach.
But don’t discount the importance of hard skills on a life coach resume, like coaching software, business administration skills, research, public speaking, conflict management, and presentation software, which can give you a competitive edge.
The resume builder offers several pre-written key skills to choose from with proficiency ranges you can set. You can also write in your skills.
Here’s what the skills box looks like in our life coach resume template.
Don’t limit yourself to the skills section; your skills should be incorporated into every section of your resume by showing how you used these skills on the job, including outcomes and achievements.
For example, in your work experience section and professional summary, highlight your
If you’re not sure of the best skills to include, reference the job description, which will let you know specifically what skills that employer is looking for.
Life coaches get real results
Life coaching isn’t just being a cheerleader; they inspire real change in people’s lives.
The education section is important for life coaches, since potential employers want to make sure that you know what you’re talking about! List your academic achievements in reverse chronological order. If you have college degrees, don’t include your high school information, as it's unnecessary.
If you have education beyond a college setting, you can include them in this section to show your commitment to professional growth.
Remember, if your education or training is more relevant than your work experience (if you're a career changer, for example), consider placing this section before your employment history. This is known as a functional resume that emphasizes your qualifications and transferable skills.
Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, CO
Bachelor's Degree in Psychology, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO
As a life coach, you’ve no doubt done a personal inventory of your best skills, talents, and personal attributes, and you want to make sure that they shine in every professional encounter you have.
This care and attention should be paid to your resume as well. You want your resume to grab the client’s attention and show them what makes you special.
While life coaching is a very creative, personable career, when it comes to choosing a design, a life coach resume should have a clean, modern layout that is easy for a potential client or employer to read and understand.
We recommend simple lines for separating sections, a modern font and no or limited color. Your resume should value substance over flash. The life coach resume sample here, for example, makes use of our Milan template: a sleek and clean layout with some color.
Crafting a great life coach resume doesn’t have to take over your life. Resume templates take care of the most tedious formatting and structure tasks, allowing you to focus on the content.
Profile
Compassionate and experienced life coach with a proven track record of helping clients achieve personal and professional growth. Skilled in active listening, goal setting, and creating customized action plans. Adept at fostering a supportive environment that encourages self-reflection and positive change. Committed to empowering individuals to overcome obstacles and reach their full potential.
Employment history
Life Coach at Empowered Living Coaching, Denver, CO
August 2018 - Present
Career Coach at University of Colorado Denver Career Center, Denver, CO
June 2016 - July 2018
Skills
Education
Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, CO
Bachelor's Degree in Psychology, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO
Life coaches are more in-demand than ever, and are utilized in business, education, and individuals. As opposed to therapists, life coaches don’t diagnose or treat mental health issues; they are more forward-focused, helping clients overcome obstacles and develop a strategic, actionable plan to their individualized goals.
The salary for a life coach can be hard to determine, due to a wide range of salaries listed by a variety of sources. The International Coaching Federation, deemed by many to be the top resource, determines that the average annual salary for a life coach is approximately $67,800.
Salaries for similar roles
A career in life coaching can be fulfilling for those who have empathy, good communication skills, and can motivate others to make positive life changes. They must also be effective at goal setting, active listening skills, and be able to find individual approaches that provide results for each client.
Start your job search with a resume builder, but why stop there? With Resume.io’s 18 powerful tools, you can search for jobs, track your journey, prepare for interviews, and negotiate salaries—all with our all-inclusive career toolkit at your fingertips.