While Career Counseling Connecticut works with clients from all generations, the biggest demographic in need of help is recent college graduates.
I don’t know if it ever was easy. But the college-to-career transition sure seemed easier when I graduated. I do not recall too many of my friends suffering over the possibility of unemployment. Now, I am routinely contacted by parents concerned about their child’s post-college future.
Parents worry when they see companies leaving Connecticut and hear stories about Connecticut’s economic prospects. They worry when they read about twentysomethings drifting through retail jobs. They worry that they just wasted their investment in college. I tell them to stop. Immediately.
Instead, I tell them to focus on what they can control. They cannot control any of the above in relation to their child’s career path. They can control how to help their child make a successful college to career transition.
The missing piece has always been career advisory services. This should be covered in high school. It is not. This should be covered in college. It is not. Moreover, this is not the 19th century when children followed their parents into a line of work. Nor is this the 20th century where jobs in big corporations helped adrift twentysomethings go through training programs that essentially created their careers. The 21st century is uncharted territory. You need to figure out your place in the job/career marketplace. And, yes, that’s how we can help.
How? The human factor in the world of AI cannot be underestimated. Searching for jobs is lonely, anxiety-provoking, and deflating. AI exacerbates these issues through depersonalization, exactly the opposite of what young adults need. While our work is practical and not therapy, the number of young clients who feel our work was helpful for their emotional well-being is astonishing. Career Counseling Connecticut gets as many “thank yous” related to elevating the emotional level of our young clients as it does helping our young clients get jobs.
On the vision front, our skill is fairly unique: we know how to sort out the type of career path that will suit our clients. This alone generates energy for our clients.
On the purely practical front, most young adults are not only not experts but are just not good at job search and interviewing.