You thought your boss was vague? Wait until you hear your 22-year-old talk about their job search. Remember translating corporate jargon? “Let’s circle back” = No. “I’ll loop you in” = You’re not invited yet. “That’s an interesting approach” = Absolutely not. Well… here’s your new translation guide: Grad → Parent Edition. Grad says: “Finals are fine.” Translation: I’m barely holding it together and can’t handle your panic on top of mine. Grad says: “The job search is… going

"I'm passionate about data analysis." A student said this to me the other day, about twenty seconds into the one minute intro we were working on. I couldn't help it. I laughed. He stopped and looked at me, so I asked him. "Are you really?" He said yeah. So I said, "You're passionate about the Mets. You're passionate about any hockey team that isn't the Rangers. But data analysis?" Now he laughed, because he knew exactly what I meant. There's a lot of pressure on young adults

"I want to prevent the March meltdown." That’s what a new client told me when I asked what she hoped to get out of our work together. If you have been through the job search as a college student, or watched your kid go through it, you know exactly what she means. It is that stretch of spring when everyone, including the guy who couldn't remember his own name in class, starts posting about how “blessed” they feel to accept an offer. And you are left wondering if you are the o

"I can't find anything to apply to. What can I do now?" I'm getting this question from a lot of seniors lately. They're ready, motivated and they want to move fast. But if you're not interviewing for banking, consulting, or a handful of leadership programs, most full time roles for 2027 grads haven't posted yet. That does not mean you can just chill. There's still real work to do. Here's what I tell my clients: ✅ Build your target company list. Then do a little digging to le

"This is so frustrating. I'm sending out tons of emails to alumni from my school and no one is responding." When Sarah, a highly motivated college senior, said this last week, I asked to see a few of the emails. It was exactly what I suspected. In an effort to be efficient, she had built a template and was swapping in the person's name and company each time. It read exactly like that. Nothing about the person's actual work, and nothing about what she wanted to discuss beyond

Most informational interviews don't fail in the first 29 minutes. They fail in the last sentence. I had a really impressive informational interview recently. Sharp questions. Good energy. I found myself genuinely thinking about how I could help her. Then she closed with: “So if you hear of any opportunities, please reach out to me.” And just like that, the energy shifted. Because now her job search became my responsibility, and the conversation turned transactional. I’m a coa

Job coach Jodi Murnick shares why getting hired has everything to do with strategy. Jodi Murnick’s path to becoming a career coach was 25 years in the making. It began with a chance lunch conversation at her University of Georgia sorority house in 1998. Murnick, a second-semester senior with a psychology degree, admittedly was unsure of what came next. “Strangely, neither my parents nor I were that concerned about it,” she says. Then she met a friend of a friend who was visit