Clients’ Views

From my own experience it is very advisable at this point to hand over the navigation to an experienced and competent co-pilot. Having made a subjective comparison between other companies with regard to their reputation, working method and the extent of their expected ability, I purposely chose KONITZER & TAFEL for this role.

What was the most important aspect of my cooperation with KONITZER & TAFEL? Not the very professional start to the collaboration and the careful development of the strategy, but the very personal and approachable support throughout the entire reorientation phase. 

When I was given the opportunity to take advantage of outplacement consulting, I was skeptical at first. Until then, I had always used my own network and couldn't really imagine how such a consultancy would work. Meetings with two providers revealed fundamentally different approaches. Since the coaching-oriented approach of KONITZER & TAFEL appealed to me much more than that of active marketing, I decided in favor of KONITZER & TAFEL.

In my professional career transition I decided to work with KONITZER & TAFEL because I felt a great personal trust from the very beginning. In the first meetings I immediately noticed that Mr. Tafel takes a lot of time and deals with me and my personal situation individually.

After 20 years in a global industrial group, where I had most recently held various senior positions in HR and at the time of a general restructuring, which also included my HR department, I came to the realization that I wanted a new challenge. 

With comprehensive experience of both operational and financial management in industry, as well as specific expertise in the area of corporate finance, gained during an earlier career in investment banking, I began looking for a new challenge as a CFO.

For me the underlying and decisive aspect of coaching is the contemplation, the consideration and the determination of further activities after a successful interview. During this phase I found that having a contact person who was available for discussions around the clock was indispensable.

I was well supported during all the problematic issues of the process.  This comprised the reworking of my strengths, realigning my career goals, working out the market, as well as making contacts, right up to discussions and advice sometimes from the point of view of personal life experiences.

I reached out to KONITZER & TAFEL because I felt my job-hunting skills needed some refinement and that I wasn’t up to date to the current job market after many successful years in one company. Tobias helped me first of all to clarify the goal (what I wanted to achieve) and to make it very specific.

KONITZER & TAFEL in Düsseldorf became my choice, because their framework is clearly focused on individual coaching to achieve an individual result. During the next months, KONITZER & TAFEL not only proved their individual focus in general, but provided a true individual and practical coaching and process to support success in finding the “right job”, and not just a job.

As part of my severance package I negotiated an outplacement consultancy and I soon chose KONITZER & TAFEL because I had the feeling I was not just one of many.  The personal aspect I felt between company and client was the decisive factor.

Three months later there were – after much positive resonance and many discussions – also two definite employment contracts on the table. That is good for one’s self-confidence. In a few days I will start working on my new challenge, which is tailor made for me. I am looking forward to it already! Without my KONITZER & TAFEL advisor I would probably never have obtained such a position, which is not to be found in the internet.

At KONITZER & TAFEL I met my advisor and one of the owners for a most open and informative discussion and went home with the conviction that these were experienced service providers who understood their business. From this meeting onwards there developed between me and my advisor a genuine partnership ...

In the first meetings with my advisor we completely restructured my CV and brought it into the appropriate, easy to read format preferred by headhunters. On top of that, we worked out a communications strategy. Suddenly it all took off, from zero to one hundred! All at once I received‚ ‘phone calls, appointments for initial meetings and the attention from headhunters that I had expected in my first attempts, and then the first enquiries concerning jobs.

Another very important thing happened while working with my advisor: I learnt a great deal about myself, am much better able to make a self-assessment and am in a position to give a good description of both my social competence and my professional skills. I am now much better able to tell interviewers about my strengths in a well thought out but still freely spoken way, without appearing to be big headed.

During the very personal interaction with my KONITZER & TAFEL consultant I quickly managed to find a continually targeted process towards my reorientation. I particularly liked the first class preparation of my application papers and the fact that I could always determine the speed and direction of the change process myself.

The methods used in the consultancy process seemed to me to be suitable and useful. I learned a lot about strategies for applying for jobs, but even more about myself. Open discussions, based on confidence, brought me a great deal of knowledge about myself and were a substantial success factor when realistically defining my new career objectives, and in the end in finding them.