You finished college. You did what you were supposed to do. And now you’re staring at a job market that feels completely disconnected from everything you were told to expect — competitive in ways you weren’t prepared for, and full of roles that either require experience you don’t have yet or that don’t sound like anything you actually want.
Not knowing what you want at 22 or 23 is one of the more common experiences in early adulthood, and it’s also one of the most uncomfortable ones to sit with. Our career coaches work with recent graduates who are trying to build some clarity and direction in a moment that doesn’t offer many easy answers.
That uncertainty doesn’t start on graduation day. A lot of the students we work with are still in school: trying to choose a major, second-guessing the one they picked, or trying to position themselves for an internship that will actually open doors. Career coaching meets you wherever you are in that arc, whether you’re a sophomore weighing majors, a junior chasing the right internship, or a year out and still looking for your footing.
Who Career Coaching for Recent College Graduates Is For
You might be a good fit if you’re:
A recent graduate with no clear direction — you finished school, maybe tried a few things, and still don’t have a sense of what you’re building toward. Every option feels equally possible and equally uncertain.
Someone whose job search has stalled — you’ve been applying, but inconsistently, and without much conviction. The applications feel random because the direction isn’t clear yet.
A grad who took time after college — to travel, to figure things out, or because life didn’t go according to plan — and is now feeling behind peers who seem to have gotten a head start.
Someone struggling with perfectionism or decision paralysis — every option feels high-stakes, every choice feels permanent, and the pressure to get it right is making it harder to move at all.
A soon-to-be graduate who wants to start building a plan before the pressure of post-graduation sets in.
A current student trying to choose a major — the decision feels enormous, everyone keeps asking what you’re going to “do with it,” and there’s no obvious way to tell which path actually fits you.
Someone considering changing majors — what you chose isn’t landing the way you expected, but switching feels risky, expensive, or like admitting you got it wrong. You want to make the call deliberately rather than out of panic or sunk cost.
A student trying to land an internship — you know internships matter, but you’re not sure how to find the right ones, position yourself for them, or turn one into real momentum toward a career.
How We Work
We start by getting to know you. In early sessions, we work together to understand where you are, what you’ve tried, what has and hasn’t felt right, and what you actually want from a career — not what seems practical or what other people think you should do.
For most recent graduates, that means starting with exploration before getting tactical. We help you identify what you value, what kinds of work tend to give you energy, and what realistic directions might fit both. That work focuses on developing clarity: not a perfect answer, but enough direction to start moving deliberately rather than randomly.
From there, the work shifts toward the practical: building a job search strategy that makes sense for where you’re going, developing application materials that reflect your actual strengths, and working through the anxiety and self-doubt that tend to show up when every rejection feels like confirmation of your worst fears about yourself.
The clinical lens matters here. Perfectionism, decision paralysis, and the pressure to have everything figured out are psychological patterns that coaching can address directly — not just work around. A coach who understands that tends to be more useful than one who treats the job search as a purely logistical problem.
Still in School: Majors and Internships
Some of the most consequential career decisions happen well before graduation. If you’re still in school, coaching can help you make these calls deliberately, instead of letting the choice get made for you or defaulting to the path of least resistance.
Choosing a major. Most students pick a major with very little real information about how it connects to work and life afterward. For some, the hard part is too much input: pressure from family, peers, and a vague sense of what’s “practical,” all pulling in different directions. For others, it’s the opposite: nothing stands out, no field feels like an obvious fit, and that absence of any clear pull makes the decision feel impossible. We help with both, separating genuine interest from outside pressure, or building a sense of direction from scratch by exploring what tends to engage you and how different majors open or narrow options. The goal isn’t to lock in a 40-year plan at 19; it’s to move forward with intention and room to adjust.
Changing majors. Plenty of students stay in a major they know isn’t right for them anymore because switching feels like admitting a mistake or wasting what they’ve already put in. Together we’ll work through the real trade-offs and help you gain clarity about what the best decision is for you. Sometimes the answer is to change; sometimes it’s to keep the major and reshape the path around it. Either way, you decide on purpose rather than out of fear.
Landing an internship. Internships are often the single biggest lever a student has for turning a degree into a career, and many of our clients share that they received far less support than they expected in taking this critical step successfully. We help you identify which internships actually move you toward where you want to go, position your experience so it reads well, prepare for applications and interviews, and make the most of an internship once you have one.
Career Coaching sessions are available in person at our Westport, CT office and virtually throughout Connecticut, New York, the DC Metro area, and nationwide.
Client Stories
📋 Mia — Graduated Without a Plan
Mia graduated in May with a psychology degree and good grades. She thought the plan would come together after graduation — she’d apply to a few things, something would click, and she’d figure it out from there. Seven months later, she’s working part-time at a clothing store and spending the rest of her time either scrolling job boards or avoiding them.
The job board problem is that everything either requires experience she doesn’t have, or is for a direction she doesn’t actually want but can’t articulate why. She’s submitted a handful of applications and gotten one interview that went nowhere. The harder thing she hasn’t said out loud: she’s not sure she knows what she’s good at. College was a series of requirements she completed. She never found the thing she was supposed to love.
Coaching gave Mia a structure for the exploration she’d been trying to do alone — and a way to lower the stakes enough to actually start moving.
🌱 Ryan — Behind Before He Started
Ryan graduated with a business degree and spent the following year traveling — Southeast Asia, then South America, a few months working odd jobs to extend the trip. He doesn’t regret it. But he came home to a job market that felt like it had moved on without him, and a résumé that had a year-long gap where an internship was supposed to be.
He had a rough sense of what he wanted — something in operations or project management, maybe at a startup or a growing company. The problem was that every role he looked at seemed to want two years of experience he didn’t have, and he couldn’t figure out how to make his background sound relevant. His friends from college were already getting promotions. Every LinkedIn notification made the gap feel wider.
He came to coaching not because he lacked ambition, but because the self-doubt was louder than the ambition. The work was partly practical — how to position the gap, how to identify roles where his experience actually translated — and partly about getting out of his own way.
🧭 Sofia — Stuck Between Majors
Sofia was a sophomore who declared a biology major because she’d always been good at science and a pre-med track felt like the safe, respectable answer. Two semesters in, she dreaded most of her classes and found herself far more drawn to the writing and policy electives she’d taken to fill requirements. But switching felt impossible: her parents were proud of the pre-med plan, she’d already burned through credits, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that changing course meant she’d failed at the first real thing she’d committed to.
What she actually needed wasn’t someone to tell her which major to pick; it was a way to think clearly about a decision that had become tangled up with guilt, expectations, and sunk cost. Coaching helped her separate what she genuinely wanted from what she felt she owed everyone else, map out what a switch would and wouldn’t cost, and find language for the conversation with her parents. She also used the time to line up a summer internship that would test the new direction before fully committing to it.
What the Research Says
Show the research
- 📉 More than 42% of recent college graduates are underemployed — working in jobs that don’t require a college degree — and underemployment upon graduation tends to be persistent, with 45% still underemployed 10 years later. Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York / Burning Glass Institute & Strada Institute, Talent Disrupted, 2024
- 📊 The unemployment rate for recent college graduates (ages 22–27) reached 5.7% in Q4 2025 — the highest level since 2020, and well above the pre-pandemic rate of 3.25%. Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York Labor Market for Recent College Graduates, 2025
- 🤔 College graduates who start out in jobs that require a college degree are far more likely to stay on that track: 79% of those who began in a college-level job were still in one 10 years later. Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2025
- 🎯 Getting into the right job early matters. Underemployed graduates earn on average only 25% more than high school graduates — compared to 88% more for graduates in college-level roles. Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2025
