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 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.
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
📋 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.
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
