Skills Assessment and Coaching for a New Role

A French skills assessment (bilan de compétences) helps clarify a career plan, while coaching focuses on preparing for a role you have already chosen. If you are starting a new role, first distinguish between these two needs, then connect your choice to the organisation’s priorities and the context of the role.

My answer in brief

I am Christine Martin, a fractional HR manager and independent HR consultant. My work focuses on outsourced HR for SMEs and the French subsidiaries of international groups, as well as raising awareness of mental health at work. French skills assessments and individual coaching for a new role are not part of my scope of work. To choose between the two approaches discussed here, distinguish between needing to clarify a career plan and needing to prepare for a role you have already chosen.

When should you choose a skills assessment or coaching to prepare for a new role?

A skills assessment is suitable if you need to define your career plan or explore alternatives. To prepare for a management role in the health sector, coaching can help you draw on your resources and potential.

A skills assessment analyses your professional and personal skills to help define a career plan, which may include a training plan, according to the Service-Public.gouv.fr page on skills assessments, the French government’s public-service information website. Its investigation phase can also help you assess whether a plan is right for you or develop one or more alternatives. Choose a skills assessment if your main question is about your career direction.

Have you already identified the role? If you are still weighing up several career paths, a skills assessment is a better fit. If you have made your decision and want to prepare for a specific role, choose coaching. These approaches have different aims: clarifying a career plan, or getting ready to start a new role.

For a management role in the health sector, a professional article presents coaching as a way to draw on the resources and potential of healthcare managers. In this specific case, coaching is the more focused choice if you want to prepare for the role rather than redefine your career plan.

I offer a skills assessment described as a 24-hour programme spread over no more than three months. This gives you a concrete point of comparison when considering the two types of support, without replacing the main question: do you need to choose a direction or prepare for a role you have already chosen?

For context, France has 941,193 active establishments in the “Human health and social work” sector, according to my analysis of the SIRENE database of INSEE, France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, with data as of August 1, 2026. This figure gives an indication of the sector, but does not by itself determine which type of support is right for you.

Sources

• Service-Public.gouv.fr, information page on skills assessments
• EM-Consulte, “Coaching for a new role”
• Human Déclic, overview of the skills assessment programme

What should you review in your career history before deciding on your professional development?

To take stock of your career, review your experience, technical skills, interpersonal skills and achievements, as recommended by this PasseportSanté page. Then decide what you want next.

Start with a simple list. For each role, assignment or project, note what you did, the technical and interpersonal skills you used, and the achievement that stands out to you. Add the tasks that made you want to continue, those you would like to take on again and those you would rather leave behind. Then set out your development criteria: the responsibilities, topics, working relationships or level of autonomy you want.

Review your notes to identify recurring themes. Link each achievement to the technical and interpersonal skills you consider useful for the future, then separate what you already do well from what you want to develop. If two experiences seem very different, compare them based on the skills and working conditions you noted. The skills you want to use more can become a clear criterion for your next step. You do not need to write a perfect career story: a precise list is more useful than a narrative that is hard to review.

Human Déclic’s skills assessment is described as a programme of 24 hours spread over no more than three months, according to the skills assessment overview. A follow-up meeting at six months is also planned to assess progress on the action plan, according to the same page. Prepare your list before the assessment, then keep it handy to clarify your priorities and the action plan you want to follow.

For context, in France, 62% of the 119,779 establishments in the “Human health and social work” sector that report employee numbers have fewer than ten employees, according to my analysis of the SIRENE database of INSEE, with data as of August 1, 2026. If you are considering a move into this sector, add the type of organisation you want to work in to your development criteria.

What should you clarify at the start of a new role?

At the start of a new role, clarify expectations, key contacts, priorities and decision-making authority to establish useful reference points for settling into the job.

Start with the practical details.

The guide for contract staff at INRAE, France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, says that staff in the host unit help new arrivals settle into their roles and identify key people in their unit or centre, as well as understand their professional environment.

For your own start in a new role, note the things that will help you find your way:

• Who to contact about different topics, and which decisions each person is responsible for.
• The priorities expected of you, the deadlines you are given and the criteria used to assess your work.
• The resources available, the constraints to factor in and the areas where you can make decisions.
• Any questions that remain open, so you can raise them with your manager rather than assume you know the answers.

Keep these points in a simple document and add to it as you have conversations. Separate what has been made explicit from what still needs clarification: this gives you a practical basis for preparing future conversations and deciding where to focus your efforts.

In the “Human health and social work” sector, 48% of active establishments have been created since 2021, according to my analysis of the SIRENE database of INSEE, with data as of August 1, 2026.

If your notes reveal a mismatch between the role, your skills and your goals, support can help you work through the issue. On the Human Déclic website, I offer personalised coaching and a skills assessment among the available support options.

Skills assessment and coaching: what should you compare before combining them?

Before combining them, compare your main need, the proposed arrangements and the outcome you expect. A skills assessment and coaching can complement each other, but combining them should not be automatic.

Start with your need. Do you want to take stock of your career and skills, or work on a specific situation connected to starting a new role? Put the goal of each approach into one sentence, then specify what you expect: career direction, a work plan or decisions to make. Different goals can be a useful reason to consider two types of support. If you describe the same goal for both, first clarify what you want to work on.

At INRAE, France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, the career guidance service is open to anyone working at the institute and offers several types of individual support according to each person’s situation and needs. These include a professional assessment, a skills assessment, coaching and work on a career plan, as described in INRAE’s overview of its career guidance service. This is an example of different options being offered to meet different needs, not a reason to stack up support formats.

Empirical research on workplace coaching remains limited, according to the article in Frontiers in Psychology on research findings in workplace coaching. It is therefore better to compare the goals, arrangements and expected outcomes without assuming that combining them is scientifically established.

Human Déclic’s services include skills assessments and personalised coaching. To compare proposals in practical terms, look at what each approach involves: its goal, content and how you will review the work underway. Human Déclic’s skills assessment is described as a programme of 24 hours spread over no more than three months. This gives you a concrete point of comparison for the coaching you are considering.

The simplest approach is to start with the option that meets your main need. Combine the two if you can define a specific goal for each and explain what you expect from it, without treating the combination as automatically more effective.

How can you connect individual support to your professional development plan?

To connect individual support to a development plan, define your destination, break it into steps, then choose a coaching goal and reference points for tracking actions and learning.

Keep the direction clear. First describe the progress you want to make as you start your new role, then break it into practical steps. For example, separate what you want to clarify, the actions you want to take and the points you want to review. This gives you a clear thread to follow without confusing your career plan with the work you do in coaching.

At the end of a skills assessment, service-public.gouv.fr says that the main steps in a career plan can be set out, with the option of a follow-up meeting with the provider. Turn these steps into an action plan that is clear enough to guide what comes next, without trying to plan everything from the outset.

Coaching can then focus on a goal connected to your new role. To keep it aligned with your plan, choose a goal and an approach that take the professional context into account. The RNCP professional coaching framework, listed by France compétences, France’s national authority for vocational qualifications, provides for a shared assessment of the coachee’s context, from which coach and coachee jointly validate the goal and approach. This is the point at which to make the jointly agreed goal and approach explicit.

Then link the steps to actions and experiences you want to review. The framework provides for tracking progress and learning with specific indicators related to these areas, as described by France compétences. To keep the plan usable, choose simple reference points directly connected to your goal, rather than a list of intentions that is hard to track.

Human Déclic’s skills assessment overview says that a follow-up meeting at six months is planned to assess progress on the action plan. The most coherent choice is to connect both types of support to the same development plan, while giving each a distinct goal.

How can you factor HR priorities, pay policy and local culture into your choice of support?

To factor HR priorities, pay policy and local culture into your choice, start with the decisions the support needs to inform, then choose the format that serves that goal. A skills assessment or coaching does not replace this decision-making.

For an international subsidiary, the CIPD lists tax and legal rules, employee representative bodies, cultural factors and mobility-related payments among the factors to consider in reward. The CIPD also presents strategic reward as a long-term approach to consider in light of the priorities of the organisation and its employees. For an organisation operating in other countries, it recommends considering whether to set policy centrally or develop it by region or subsidiary, as explained in its guide to reward policies.

Turn these points into scoping questions: which organisational priority should guide the new role? Is the reward framework set centrally, or is a region-specific or subsidiary-specific approach being considered? Which cultural factors need to be taken into account?

Keep this distinction in mind. Separate what relates to organisational priorities, what concerns pay policy and what the person wants to work on in their new role. Then describe the need for support without expecting it to decide pay policy. The decisive criterion is the link between the individual goal and the organisation’s priorities, with a clear place for local adaptation.

Before making a choice, spell out the professional challenge and the HR priority involved. If the request also touches on pay or local culture, include those topics in the organisational brief rather than expecting individual support to address them alone. Distinguish the shared framework from questions specific to the local context.

I offer different types of support: personalised coaching, targeted training, skills assessments and HR services. For a concrete example of the skills assessment format, Human Déclic’s programme lasts 24 hours, spread over no more than three months.

Frequently asked questions

Is a skills assessment really useful?

Yes, if you need to clarify your career direction. A skills assessment helps you analyse your skills and define a career plan, or assess whether a particular option is right for you. If you have already chosen your direction and are preparing to start a new role, coaching is a better fit.

My takeaway

Put your need into one sentence now: do you want to clarify your career plan or prepare for a role you have already chosen? If your question is about organising the HR function in an SME or a French subsidiary of an international group, contact Christine Martin. For individual support through a skills assessment or coaching, be clear that it is outside her scope of work.