Career Coaching for Recent College Graduates in Westport, CT
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.
Who Career Coaching 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.
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.
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
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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.
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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.
Gofman Therapy & Consulting · Westport, CT
You don’t have to figure this out alone.
Whether you’re still looking for direction, struggling to get traction in your search, or just trying to figure out what comes next — we can help. Schedule a free 15-minute consultation to get started.
Book Your Free Consultation →In-person in Westport, CT · Virtual across Virtual across Connecticut, New York, & Nationwide
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📉 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
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
I don’t know what I want to do yet. Is career coaching still useful?
Yes — that’s actually the most common starting point for recent grads. You don’t need to arrive with a direction in mind; figuring out that direction is part of the work. Coaching helps you understand what you value, what kinds of work tend to suit you, and what realistic options might look like — before you start applying to things that don’t fit.
I graduated a year or two ago and still haven’t landed something. Is it too late?
It’s not, and it’s more common than it looks from the outside. Many graduates take longer than they expected to find their footing — especially in a competitive market. A gap between graduation and your first real role doesn’t define your trajectory. What matters is having a clear direction and a deliberate approach, which is exactly what coaching helps with.
I took time off after graduation to travel. How do I address that gap?
Strategically and honestly. A post-graduation gap for travel or personal exploration isn’t the red flag it might feel like — but how you frame it matters. Coaching can help you develop language for the gap that positions it accurately, and identify roles where your broader experience actually works in your favor rather than against you.
I feel like everyone else has it figured out and I’m behind. Is that normal?
Very. The feeling of being behind your peers is one of the most universal experiences in early adulthood — and one of the most misleading. Most people are more uncertain than they appear. That feeling is worth taking seriously not because it means something is wrong, but because the anxiety it creates can actually make it harder to move forward. Coaching addresses both the practical and the psychological dimensions of that.
Do you help with the actual job search — resume, applications, interviews?
Yes. For clients who are ready to search, coaching includes practical job search support: positioning your background, developing application materials, preparing for interviews, and building a strategy that makes sense for the direction you’re heading. Most grads benefit from doing some direction-setting work first, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive — we move between them as needed.