Gary Mailer

Coaching by Gary Mailer

In the last 6 weeks, I have been working with Gary as my coach and I must say that it has been a life changing and positive experience. What began as preparation for an interview with one of the big institutions in the UK turned into several coaching sessions as time progressed.
Initially, when it came to interviews, I was very demotivated and less confident. During the Covid-19 crises, there was an unemployment surge in the UK with demand for labour reducing significantly as compared to supply. This climate made it difficult to get a job especially in project management. I was looking for a new challenge in project management as I had drifted into event management for over a year. I somehow found the cheat code to get through to interview stages of applications, but always came short at that stage and received negative feedback from Hiring Managers. I had as many as 8 unsuccessful interviews between April and May 2020. After trying so hard, I decided to approach Gary for guidance and support on an upcoming interview the following week. I expected Gary to take me through several mock interview sessions in preparation for that interview, but Gary used a different approach. He listened and understood my situation and gave me general guidance on how to nail interviews. In a nutshell, I expected Gary to give me a fish. Instead, He taught me how to fish.
I now have a much clearer view as to what is important with regards to interviews and this has had a positive bearing on how I approach every interview. I am happy to mention that I got the desired role after speaking with Gary a week before the interview. Since then, we have had sessions on how to be highly productive and value my skills and experience. We also had a role play session to help me solve a personal issue at home. His support has been amazing. If you find yourself in a similar situation and need guidance especially with job search or career change, I would recommend that you reach out to Gary. I can guarantee that his guidance will be of great assistance.

Gary Mailer - Coaching & Mentoring Review

Gary has been coaching me for 3 months and has provided excellent guidance and support to me as I developed my overall approach to building up my professional profile and finding suitable employment.

At the beginning of our work together, I was feeling very uncertain, demotivated, and quite anxious about what to do next in my career, having recently left a position and with the unfolding Coronavirus pandemic hitting the economy hard. I had adopted an approach of sending out my CV in a scattergun fashion in the belief that this would result in me finding a job. Discussions with Gary brought knowledge, insight, and perspective that all served to provide me with a far more confident and calmer outlook on what I truly valued in a job. They also enabled me to understand my strengths more clearly and how best to communicate these to prospective employers. As a result, I now feel far clearer and more confident in identifying what I want from a role and have been able to implement a new approach to applying for positions, one of quality over quantity.

In particular, Gary has helped me focus on using new resources and tools for refining the content and format of my CV; he has coached me on the role that Applicant Tracking Systems now play in the recruitment journey, allowing me to understand why my CV needs to closely align with the requirements of the job descriptions and gets me noticed by recruiters. More importantly, Gary has also helped me understand why it’s in my interest to define and clarify what aspects of a job are fundamentally important to me and, in so doing, ensured that I use this understanding to tailor the positions I apply for.

In addition, Gary has provided me with great insight and advice on how to improve my professional profile; specifically, through better usage of online job boards and through utilising the full functionality of LinkedIn to optimise my profile as this is now the go-to platform of choice when it comes to recruiting for quality full time roles. Furthermore, Gary has put considerable time and effort into helping me prepare for interview situations; specifically, he has practiced mock interview questions with me and has mentored me on asking the right questions of prospective employers to ensure that I get what I need from interview situations.

Throughout our work together, Gary has shown great understanding, commitment, and relevance in helping me to improve my approach to finding a suitable position. Our sessions together have been well planned, detailed, good humoured and always productive. There has been the right balance between listening and understanding my needs and providing clear instruction and challenging my thinking where relevant to do so.

For all the above reasons, I am greatly appreciative to Gary for his time, commitment, and guidance. I would therefore highly recommend Gary as a coach and mentor to anyone looking to improve their approach to understanding what’s needed to enhance their professional profile and finding the right position. I would stress that Gary’s ability to help me fully understand what is important to me in a job role is the foundation on which I was able to successfully improve my professional outlook.

Coaching with Gary

I took voluntary redundancy in autumn 2019 and found myself in ‘limbo’ career wise. Having worked with colleagues who were contractors previously I thought that I’d like to ‘give it a go’ and aim to take on a contract opportunity. It was something I had considered doing for many years but never done anything about it previously.


Days would roll into weeks and weeks into months with countless applications sent merely filling recruiters inboxes rather than fostering meaningful discussions about new roles. This lead to me becoming frustrated and disheartened and at that point he reached out to Gary to seek some advice on how to proceed successfully to becoming a contract Project Manager. I’ve worked alongside Gary for a number of years and view him as an extremely knowledgeable and capable contract PM so felt comfortable reaching out to him initially.



One of the first steps undertaken was to have me look at myself and answer the question of “what’s important to you”, having never done this before this was a challenge and something I initially found slightly uncomfortable. Gary was patient and calm in the approach he took to support me come up with the answers. Reaching my own conclusions was a very rewarding process and one that worked better for me that merely being given advice.

For example, I was able to identify that to me it was more important to have control over a project and for the role to be interesting to me over the daily rate of pay.



Gary and I must have had between 8 or 9 coaching sessions over a period of a few months, and he was very accommodating using a mixture of technology and face to face meetings to facilitate the coaching.

Aside from the coaching given covering seeking a new role, Gary was very helpful in providing me with multiple, really useful tips on job searching. It was after one such session covering my CV that I was contacted by an agency to discuss the role I am currently in.

Even though I am currently in a fixed term contract I am still of the view that I’d like to continue working with Gary on my journey.


Overall the coaching that Gary provided has helped me understand the importance of looking after myself and focus on future positions, rather than purely focusing on the day job.

A great and supportive piece

Reviewing: Change Management Excellence: Putting NLP to Work

When selecting a book to review I was keen to try to find one that straddled the two areas of life in which I have a vested interest, NLP, and Change Management. This book hit the nail on the head! As a change management practitioner, it's imperative that I am able to tackle the hardest aspect of any change - people.

The author clearly know's their field and their blended approach of initially touching upon NLP prior to its potential application within the workplace is just perfect. It's not an academic, nor a business tome, but rather a book that has just the right amount of each topic.

If like me, you are someone who prefers to be able to take examples provided and think about how they could relate to your situation (as opposed to taking the author's viewpoint as defacto - this is the book for you).

Being a change practitioner is hard, of that, there is no doubt, NLP is a great set of techniques and which if used appropriately can make the hard journey easier.

This book as a companion really does help. I would go so far as to advocate that this ought to be core reading material for anyone seeking to undertake Change Management - after all, if you can really get to the heart of what change is sought and why then you are halfway to achieving the goal of implementing change.

Definitely a recommended read.