Goodbye College Career Services & Hello 1-on-1 Coaching with Real Talk to Get a Job

Why don't career services work at colleges? For those in higher ed, the answers are often well known, but for those who don't work in higher ed—particularly students and families—they just assume a college's career services should… help them get a job. Yet these offices aren't all that good at doing so for the most part. My guests, Mike Goldstein and Geordie Brackin, explain why—and add a few reasons to the list that other researchers haven't pointed to before. And then they suggest a way to move forward, which departs from the solutions most people have offered to fixing career services. Their solution revolves around some real talk—being honest about where a student's experience will or won't help them out—and to understand deeply a student's circumstances, struggle to get a job, and desire for progress so that a mentor can help them make progress. Subscribers can check out our conversation to help unlock far more people's potential by listening to the podcast, watching the YouTube video, or reading the transcript.

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Michael Horn:

Welcome to the Future of Education, where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their human potential, and live a life of purpose that's far from what we have today, needless to say. And it's a critical reason why my guest in today's show argue that if we're just not being truthful, frankly, to first-gen students, particularly as they enroll in college, about what it takes to really enter into a productive career. And they are highly critical of the career services offices at a lot of colleges. And they suggest some ways that they would do it differently that don't necessarily match with what a lot of the research has been. And it's a super intriguing set of findings that they have. And they are the founders of a really intriguing organization called 1Up Career Coaching. And we have today with us none other than the director of 1Up Career Coaching, Geordie Brackin, who's a co founder of it as well, and then the other co founder who's now also an advisor to 1Up Career Coaching and a serial entrepreneur in the education space, my friend Mike Goldstein. Mike, Geordie, it is great to see you both.

Geordie Brackin:

Thanks, Michael.

Michael Horn:

So you all have this fascinating new report and we'll get into what 1Up itself is in a moment. But this report that you've put out and the title is called peeling the “College Career Services Office Onion: Why They Are Terrible and What to Do About It.” And then you have this asterisk where you say that they're terrible for any college student with low social capital, particularly first-gen students. So that's the framing that you have come into this. And Geordie, before we dig into this report now, tell us what 1Up Career Coaching is and how you're coming into the conversation. And then, Mike, I'll ask you a similar question.

Mike Goldstein:

Sure.

Geordie Brackin:

So we come to the conversation from the question of social mobility. So 1Up Career Coaching is a small nonprofit that does two things. We do direct coaching for first generation college graduates who are stuck in their job search. They've landed a job, but they're unhappy in that job, and we provide direct coaching to those people to help them find better jobs that pay more and that make them much happier. And then second, we try and publish the lessons that we've learned through that direct coaching.

Michael Horn:

Now, Mike, tell us, of course, how you came to this work. You've obviously, as I mentioned, up top, been a serial entrepreneur in the world of education. You founded match charter schools, for example. You've had a number of interesting roles in a lot of interesting organizations internationally as well. What was the question that puzzled you that caused you to found this organization and then dig into this research we're about to talk about?

Mike Goldstein:

So Michael, as you know, there's sort of these two tribes of people in terms of how they understand colleges and what they really do in real life for different types of people. So I think for many years I worked in space of education, but I was in the naive tribe. And I think when you live in the Naive tribe, you sort of say, hey, you can say to a bunch of people that are from poor families, listen, you're not on track necessarily to get the best K–12 education. But if you can change that part and you can persist through high school and do really well and kind of achieve, then you can get on this path called college. You can be the first in your family to graduate from college and you'll get out of poverty. So I was in that naive tribe when I started Match Charter School, along with a lot of other people in the education reform movement.

And you know, and your listeners know pretty well, a lot of that turns out to be far less true than had been commonly believed. And even today I think the general narrative remains this overwhelming college is good for you even if you're a fairly marginal student, and it's going to help you do better economically. What I was seeing anecdotally from our own charter school was a lot of alumni that did exactly what we asked of them. They persisted in high school, they did well, they go through college, they graduate and we're like yay, and then we check in like a year, two years, three years later, and they're stuck in these dead end jobs. And then when I try to raise this with some other charter founder colleagues in this kind of education reform group, it felt like a very inconvenient story.

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Mike Goldstein:

Nobody wanted to talk about not just the fact that big charter networks like KIPP and small one-offs like Match and other non charter ed reforms not only have a bunch of kids who start college and don't finish, that was the problem that people were willing to discuss. But there was this other big cohort of people that were finishing college and yet felt stuck in life. And so I asked Geordie if he'd be willing, could we work together on a project to try to figure out what's going on here and how fixable is it at the individual level? Can you help somebody who comes to you and says, I'm 22, I'm a college graduate and I'm stuck and I have a crappy job and I've been applying and nobody ever calls me back.

Michael Horn:

So this obviously gives birth then to 1Up to start and do this highly individual work with people who perhaps did not attend a duet or a hybrid college that gets that coaching support. And obviously duet is something that came out of the Match Charter schools that you founded. But this organization and this set of insights also led to this research, the report that I referenced earlier. And in the report, you have this terrific set of opening lines, essentially, where you basically say, like, hey, look, you're a high school counselor talking to the first gen student, and you're trying to help them understand what to expect when they arrive at college. And you're like, you've got your dorm room, and guess what? That's where you sleep, and you have your dining hall. And guess what? Just like, what it's called? That's where you eat, and you have a library, and there are, like, books there, and it's where you do studying. You have your infirmary, and guess what? You go there for medical services. So basically, these things all mean what they say.

And then you say, and I'll quote from the report, you'll see this building called Career Center, and you'll assume that it will be functional just like all the other buildings. It will help you find a career or at least a job upon graduation. And in that, you are profoundly mistaken. This is the only building on campus that doesn't come close to doing what it says in the front door. And so then it's basically this big broadside that you all introduce on Career Services offices. And I think for a lot of us on the inside of higher education, this isn't all that new. It's not that surprisingly, but your big contention is, hey, if you're a first-gen student, you really do not know this. It's widely accepted by people like me that Career Services doesn't work.

But for you as a student, you have no idea. And so while it's true that a lot of ink has been spilled on this argument that career centers just aren't that good, in your research, you fall back on a few of these reports to really make the case. And so first you fall back on the Strada Report they did called Bridging the Gap. And so I'd love you to lay it out there. Like, what did they find that's wrong with the Career Center? And then we'll turn to, did they get the complete picture or not? In a moment, but let's just sort of lay the foundation for the critique against the Career Center and have you jump in.

Mike Goldstein:

Mike I'm happy. I just remember with the Strada report. So for us in doing this, we're like, look, we don't want to reinvent the wheel. Some really good scholarly teams have kind of looked at this problem of career centers, and we just want to backdraft off of the work they've already done. Strada had a couple phrases that were memorable. One was slow as molasses was one. Another one was college career centers are, quote unquote, somewhere below parking as an administrative priority of the university, meaning this is, like, really on the low list. It's just an afterthought of an institution.

So I think their critique was sort of, what do sophisticated people inside of colleges say about their own career centers if you give them a little bit of truth serum. And I think another key idea in that Strada Report is that people are just sort of left to chance. You're not coherently. You're a liberal arts student, and you're majoring in sociology, but you're not going to be a sociologist. Maybe you're going to go work for an ad agency. Maybe you're going to go work in finance. Maybe you're going to have something that has nothing how would you find a profession? Strada's point is that it's purely left to chance. They're not engaging with people to say, you're very likely to get a job that has nothing to do with your major, which, by the way, is something that Geordie routinely finds is a confused point among many college graduates.

They incorrectly anchor their major with the job they should have, even though somebody with higher social capital might be like, look, it's arbitrary that you chose to major in political science. That was just something to do to pass the time while you went through college. It's not like you should be a political scientist or you have to work in politics, but that's not obvious to a lot of actual college grads who have those majors, as you know.

Michael Horn:

So, Mike, you just nailed the case there, so that's all good. And you basically say, okay, so this is sort of well understood across the space. And then I would add there's also research that shows, like, career services on average spend, like, total of $90,000, which is a small drop in the bucket right. Of a college operating budget. So they're not even putting much effort into outfitting these centers. But you say some of the basic research that Strada did sort of they got the picture a little bit wrong. So if you pulled upon it from the foundations of the research, I'd love you to talk now about your critiques of the research or where maybe they have the story a little bit. Mike, why don't you take this as well?

Mike Goldstein:

All right. I think Strada's take had something to do with, oh, students need career related skills. There's this function of college that should be skill building, and it's those skills that they take into the workplace, which to us seemed true. We gave the example of computer science. It's true. The skills that you learn as a computer science major are transferable, but the skills that you learn as a political science major are not particularly know. The fact that you understand Egypt's political system and you can compare it to Argentina, it's like, what's the skill per se that you've learned how to compare two things? So it just seems like silly narrative that's just barely coherent enough that it would allow the colleges to claim this goes, michael, to the book you wrote about Choosing College. Mike, the colleges are trying to say, we do a whole bunch of different jobs.

And one of those jobs is moving you up in your career. And even though a lot of the majors don't in any meaningful way get you ready for a career at all, they don't want to say that out loud and strata to us didn't really go there.

Michael Horn:

Now, I just want to harp on this a little bit, and you can push me if you would say this differently, but I think a lot of times they or others will say, well, in college you learn how to communicate, you learn how to write, you learn like, critical thinking or problem solving or whatever. And I think part of your point, if I'm understanding the argument, is that if you're doing that in computer science, great, it's domain specific, it's obviously going to transfer. But your 15-page paper or whatever that you wrote in political science that probably has actually very little to do with what communication might look like in, say, a marketing role or like in an analyst role in a company or whatever it might be in the world of work. That those skills are not as obviously transferable as people might think they are. And communication, problem solving, et cetera, is actually going to be a lot more domain specific and probably learned on the job, in fact. And maybe what you learned in high school along those lines is actually going to be more relevant in certain cases than what you're learning in college around it. Is that a fair encapsulation of what you're saying there?

Mike Goldstein:

I think that's a great encapsulation, Michael, of what we're seeing. It's like we're just cutting through the crap here where the chance that you're going to use this type of skill that actually played out in a liberal arts class in any type of entry level real life job is vanishingly small. So that's not the right path here. That's not what's going to help these huge numbers of college grads that are staying poor to get unlocked. It's not going to be some kind of increased skill play.

Michael Horn:

So then you go on to your second argument, if you will, which is based on the Ryan Craig critique of career services. And just I'll note we're going to have Ryan on the show first because he has a terrific new book coming out called Apprentice Nation, which I'm excited to talk to him about. But in his critique of career services, historically, he says we should abolish career services, which, Mike, if I'm understanding correctly, you have some sympathy with. So what is his basic argument? And Geordie, why don't you take this?

Mike Goldstein:

The main point he takes on is this software called Handshake. And Geordie, you should just talk about one of your clients just as an example and how they interact with this dominant college career counseling software called Handshake.

Geordie Brackin:

We talk to a lot of people who work in career services. They're all very nice people. But Michael, like you mentioned they're pretty understaffed. And so this new tech player has come in called Handshake, which is an online job board. They partner with universities, and they essentially outsource the job boards for colleges. So a student comes into the Career Services Center, they say, hey, I want to get a job in Dei. And the Career Services counselor says, great, log into your Handshake account and see what jobs there are on Dei and apply through Handshake. So essentially, they're just sort of a referral service to encourage students to go back in through Handshake.

So one of my earliest clients here in, you know, she's valedictorian of her high school class, she gets a full ride to University of Pennsylvania. She goes into Penn's Career Services office and says, hey, I do want to get a job in DEI. They send her to Handshake, and then for a couple of months, she just spins her wheels because there's nothing directly related to what she wants to do in the portal of Handshake. And so what she ends up applying for are a bunch of marketing jobs that are vaguely of interest, but they're mainly commission based. And she applies for the very few DEI jobs that are in there, but they're not truly entry-level jobs. And so when I meet Faith, she says, yeah, I've been job searching for a couple of months. I have 40 applications out there. I literally have had zero interviews.

And so it's this bypassing of responsibility, and we see that office just sort of passing the buck over to this ed tech player.

Michael Horn:

So Ryan's argument, if I remember, is also sort of like, okay, Career Services, it's not going to fill this need. Right. And you all have basically described why that is, but he says maybe it's the case that actually the academic courses and professors themselves should perhaps play a more active role, and we shouldn't even be asking Career Services to do this in the first place. Right? His basic argument, I think, is that we should be integrating more real work projects and courses and things of that nature. And you basically say, theoretically, that makes a lot of sense, but there's some actually very real practical issues with it. So maybe just lay that out. Like, where does the theory make sense and where are the issues? Mike, why don't you take yeah, I.

Mike Goldstein:

Mean, look, I think this guy, to me is a remarkable guy. Glad you're going to have him on the show. I mean, such an interesting character. And I think he can sort of appreciate how handshake, as an investment, may know done well, and yet he sees as an absolute black hole where he says, the dark side of handshake's success, like you're saying, michael, is that it's blocking this big change that needs to happen. Because he calls it theater. It's fake helping people get jobs. It's this hand wavy thing that universities can do. Oh, parents are like, do you help the kids get jobs one day? And they're like, yes, our software has a billion different job listings and the kids will find all these opportunities.

And if you log in, you might see a kajillion jobs listed there in real life, the chances of throughput into real jobs for low social capital kids who are just sort of like regular liberal arts majors and not elite econ majors who would have gotten jobs anyway, it's really low. So Ryan Craig correctly says handshake is not only theater, but it blocks the university from just owning this. And then Ryan goes on to say, and this is where we're like, dude, we're with you, but I don't know if this can really work. He wants the professors so that he would say, okay, Michael Horn, professor Peruvian literature like here of the most absurd.

Michael Horn:

Thing you can come up with.

Mike Goldstein:

Like take these five kids, by the way, Michael. Professor Michael, you've never had a real job. You've only ever been in academia. You've also never hired and fired people. So you don't really have a good vibe for the little things that would turn on or off an employer, the ways they might be looking for clues, how they're trying to arbitrage the thousand different resumes and cover letters that they get to figure out who might fit within their organization. So these are people with zero real life grasp of how the world works. And then there just happens to be a lot of these professors at university. So our friendly critique back to Ryan was ryan, we just don't know that that's something that seems even a good idea.

Even if you were able, like morally, you're right, the professor should have to own this job because they're part of this institutional pinky promise at least that says you're going to get a pretty decent job after you come out of here. Unless you really mess things up and they're part of that institution, they should own it. On the other side, I just don't think they're capable of doing the type of counseling that Geordie does. And by the way, I think in our report, I know, Michael, you're about to get into this. This is sort of the number one thing. The difference between the type of work that Geordie does and what these college careers counselors say that they're doing is Geordie is speaking very freely to people. It's like, hey, you say you want help with getting a job and that you're frustrated. Do I have your permission, 22 year old, to speak unfettered, to just tell you exactly what the employer is really thinking about you? And it might not be pretty.

They might think that your degree is a big fat zero, first of all. So you shouldn't walk in there like that's some a big accomplishment. You might think so and that might be meaningful to you and that might be true. But if the employer doesn't think so. You need to know that I'm going to tell you that. And I think that piece of it would likely translate to these professors who in all these different types of surveys, say they already, as a cohort, feel scared to speak their minds in many situations. Right. You have all this literature about do students and faculty on university campuses feel they can speak their mind without fear? Well, if you're that professor of Peruvian literature, you're supposed to help some 22 year old get a job, and you have to tell them, by the way, their college degree might be worth a lot less than they had been believing, or that their amount of effort needs to be increased by a factor of ten.

Like, get off your freaking butt right now if you want to get a job. Remember, I'm only speaking freely because you told me you wanted me to. What I'm telling you right now is, like, you're very unlikely to end up with a job at the level of effort you're putting into the know. You'd have to get really lucky. All these kinds of unpleasant things that Geordie has to tell people, because if nobody tells them that, they just end up not following through in the right way and then not ending up with a good job.

Michael Horn:

Stay with this for a moment. And Geordie, I'd love to hear from you on this because you basically say that there are three other problems with career Services that we generally don't talk. So I'd love you to articulate sort of what's wrong with the approaches that we have and part of the solution that Mike just started to allude to, which is basically, if I understand you correctly, much more straight talk and being honest, but I'd love you to lay that out for us. What are the other problems that aren't being talked about and what is the real solution going to start to look like to help first gen students navigate and get that first job?

Mike Goldstein:

Yeah.

Geordie Brackin:

So remember, we came to this quest trying to meet young people who were frustrated in their job. They were first in their family to get a college degree. They had landed a job, but they were frustrated in the job they got, and they were actively doing things to try and change their situation. They were applying to dozens of jobs and either not getting interviews or not getting offers, and they were earning less than $40,000 a year. Those were the young people I talked to. And what I found was that there's just a deep misunderstanding of what the job search is. What is the actual path on a job search? What does it take to actually get a good job? And all these young people had gone through career services. They had gone through those offices.

They had met with Career Services counselors who had reviewed their resume or given them things that maybe they should include in a cover letter, and still they were actively applying, and they were not getting interviews, and they weren't getting good jobs. And so those were the people that was my quest is, how do I meet these young people? How do I help move them in a short amount of time into a better job that pays on average $10,000 more per year, and move them into a job that just makes them happier? Typically, when a client comes to me, they're in a job and they rate their job satisfaction as like a three or four out of ten. How do we move them into a job where they're rating their job an eight or nine out of ten? They're optimistic, they're excited to go to work, and they feel like the degree was worth it, all that work was worth it. And I think a big part of that is no one is being honest with them about what the job search process actually is, what are the different components? How much time does it take? What should they say and shouldn't they say? And I think just in digging in deep and understanding why they were stuck, I'm then able to help them make progress in that area.

Michael Horn:

So I want to stay with this because this is really interesting to me on a couple of fronts. Like, number one, it echoes a lot of the hidden curriculum stuff that we talk about in K-12 education, where there's this whole hidden curriculum that first gen students have no idea about, right? They don't get exposed to at home, and they'll struggle. People from underrepresented backgrounds in particular, they don't realize that it's sort of assumed that you know this stuff and they don't actually know it. And that's sort of what you're saying here, right? Like, there's this actual way you get jobs, which is not through the job boards. It's not just like applying blindly on Indeed.com or monster or wherever you are. And so that's one thing I would love you to unpack a little bit. And then second, the language that you just used is very jobs to be done esque, which is basically, as I'm talking to you as an individual, let me understand where your struggle actually is and unblock that so that you can make progress. And in making progress, I think what I hear you saying is not only will I get you more money, but I'll probably land you in a job that actually matches your excitement level, like matches where you're going to be passionate about something.

It'll help you do something in line with your purpose and things of that nature that you never even thought you were allowed to consider in this job search and that you were allowed to marry up. Like work being in sync with who you are as an individual and where you are right now in your life. So I just threw a bunch of words at you, but I'd love you to unpack that a little bit more, because both the hidden part of it and the progress and satisfaction piece of it seemed really salient and very different from how we typically talk about helping individuals get their first jobs from college to career. So, Geordie, why don't you start? And then, Mike, I'm sure you're going to have stuff to fill in right after.

Geordie Brackin:

Yes, Michael, I'm absolutely nodding my head along, like, jobs to be absolutely you know, the job to be done for career services is not being done very well. It's not serving first generation college students, helping them land jobs where they can earn a living wage, and they feel happy going to work each day. The faster we can be honest about that, the better. Secondly, I think talking about the hidden curriculum of the job search, again, you can be a great worker, but bad at the actual job search, because the job search is a pretty distinct, very different process than actually just being a good worker who shows up on time and is collegial to their colleagues and does good work and works hard. The job search process is this multiple month process that has its own hidden rules, hidden curriculum, hidden language. And so over the last two years of coaching more than 80 young people and moving them from existing job into much better job, that pays on average, more than $10,000 more per year, and that they're way happier with, we've seen sort of patterns emerge again and again. And Mike and I have started calling them the Four Horsemen of the job Search apocalypse. And the Four Horsemen are the repeated blockers that keep young people from landing a good job.

And it's what we believe career service is not really being truthful and honest about about what it takes to land a good job. And so by working with all these clients, we sort of see these repeated patterns happen again and again and again. But often the Four Horsemen are working together. But ultimately, as they work together, it's resulting in the same thing. A young person applying to dozens of jobs, not getting interviews, not getting offers, and stuck, but feeling motivated to change.

Michael Horn:

Now, what are those Four Horsemen that you're talking about? I love you to name them, because that's fascinating.

Mike Goldstein:

Yeah. So let's see. The first one I think we call Search sabotage. And what we see happening is people who literally don't know the right things to type into these different search engines that would reveal different jobs. They don't realize how important it is to actually read the job description. And what clients tell us is, oh, I thought that was like, the boilerplate type of thing, when you get, like, an insurance claim and they give you, like, 27 pages and you know, you're supposed to read to the end, and we're like, no, job descriptions are different. You're supposed to read them. And it helps.

You understand? Would you actually want to do this job if it were offered to you? Because it kind of tells you what you'll be doing all day. And so just knowing that that is an important part of the process is one part of the first horseman. The other is then Geordie reads with them and he is decoding with them. They're like, it says you're supposed to do X, Y and Z. What does that even mean in normal person language? And Geordie will be like, my interpretation is this is what you would do all day. And then the person's like, either that sounds pretty good or no, no, let's not do that one. And so Geordie's clients consistently say this is the first time in their job search ever that they've really had anything more than literally the title of the job to understand what they might be doing. Therefore, it's no surprise they might end up in jobs that they find unfulfilling.

And of course, on the employer side of it, they're also frustrated, right, because they're hiring people that are not a fit. So I think that was one within that. There's another thing we call something like, what is it? One click hell or something. We're trying to tell people. And again, Michael Horn it's sort of crazy. We're like when you click on handshake, or indeed to apply, but you're basically an undistinguished college senior or recent grad, your application is going straight to the waste basket. Those 40 applications are literally like zero value. There's no way you are going to get in that way because there's other people that have your credentials that are applying in a very different way through the side door and you're just like, you have no chance.

But again, nobody has decoded this for the recent grad because there are other online things like dating apps that actually work. You can click on 40 people and three of them say, hey, would you like to have a date? Or whatever they're up to. I think we're all aged out of whatever is happening. But they're like, this kind of works. There's a lot of apps that do kind of work when you do a one click. This is an area where the one click is basically a towering lie. Unless you have achieved a fairly elite status in your career, which obviously is entry level people, none of them have. So I think that's know one of those.

Geordie, what is Mike another I think incoherent individuality is another one we've said where the story just doesn't add up. You're an employer. You say, tell me about yourself. What you want to hear is like, what you studied and what you interned in, your general areas of interest. They somehow come together and a lot of times his clients are in their first rough draft of, let's say, interview prep. It's just not a coherent story of like, why would you want this job? And they don't understand how important it is to just pick a few things from your true story, but that come together. It's like cooking, right? Like the things have to comp, the flavors have to complement each other. Again, nobody has decoded this transparently for people.

And so part of that goes into the fake handshake story. If it were true that you could just tell everybody through one click everything they needed to know, you shouldn't need to create a custom cover letter and then have a different story for your interview on Monday that's different from your different job interview on Thursday. So some of the meta here understandably confuses all of these people.

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Michael Horn:

That makes a ton of sense and I guess I'm super interested on this on another level. As I mentioned, I'm writing my next book on how to help people get their next job, how to hire their next job and the role that they'll have. So this plays on multiple levels what you're finding, and it mirrors a lot of what we've seen as we've coached individuals to help them switch jobs as well. Now, the people we're working with are already in the workforce, but the last piece of this, I guess, is I'm curious what you all have learned about having these straight up conversations with individuals. Are they receptive? Are they able to hear it? Do they want the truth? And what does that look like on the ground?

Geordie Brackin:

Yeah, I think overwhelmingly, the reaction has been, oh, my gosh, thank you so much for telling me this. Thank you for being honest about what was holding me back, because I'm meeting 23, 24 year olds who have gone through high school, they've gone through college, first in their family to get a college degree, and yet they haven't landed in a good job. So they're starting to have this self doubt and this pessimism creep in. And so when I'm able to do a practice interview OK, Michael, you have a big interview tomorrow. Let's spend a couple hours doing a practice interview. I'm going to lob you questions. I'm going to give you hard hitting feedback that's just honest and truthful and specific so that you can correct it and then we'll try it again. Overwhelming.

The reaction is, thank you so much. Why did no one ever tell me this? Why did no one ever tell me this is how you prepare for a big job interview? Or Why did no one ever tell me that when I ramble for ten minutes answering the question, tell me about yourself, that people start to roll their eyes and sort of mentally check me off the list as not being a viable candidate. And so I think when we ask permission and they grant permission, it's then this huge unlocking moment and it's just sort of gratitude that someone is making visible for them these small little things that were keeping them from making progress.

Mike Goldstein:

Michael here, it's a good point for me because I think Geordie does all the work in this, right? Like, we think about stuff together, but he's the guy who actually does all the work. I'm sure you can identify with the different roles here at different points in your career of who was doing what. Geordie does all the work. And so I can say as an observer to Geordie's work, we started this, and our first effort, Michael, was, let's find 30 people and then see if within three months, Geordie can just change their job status. No upskilling, no news. Can he grab them from where they are? I'm frustrated. I can't find a job all the way to they've received and accepted and negotiated a new contract with a new job. Jordan went 30 for 30 in that work.

Like, got every single one. And you know me, your listeners don't, but you do. I'm like an understated. I'm like, Where's the randomized control trial that proves this? I'm a pessimist. I'm a curmudgeon. So while I will say, hey, who not? And we're not making grand claims about the scalability of this, I'm just saying this particular guy who's on your podcast named Geordie is really friggin good at this, and he's able to unlock people pretty quickly. And of course they friggin'love it because they're self identified as I'm frustrated. What do I not understand about job? That's their overwhelming sense.

So three months later, they have this enormous sense of happiness, giddiness, even, and relief. And Michael, I'll say the most moving part of this for me as an observer, is overwhelmingly, if they were the first in their family to go to college and then they get a shit job after college, they feel like a massive disappointment. It goes from May graduation the whole family is celebrating, to, like, October, where mom is like, what are you are you not trying? Why can't you get a job? And this overwhelming sense of discomfort, anxiety, fail. Like, I'm letting everybody down. It's not just that they're mike. I'm not personally happy with the job. It's more like they feel like they've gone from the highest point of family pride to, like, they're letting down the whole family. And so when you can get them back on their feet and confident again and they're doing something where they're like, yay, it's time to go to work, I'm psyched.

That's very powerful. And Geordie’s been consistent about unlocking that. So he did the first 30, and then we decided, all right, that was a weird job market when you did those 30. That was the moment of the labor market was really favorable to job seekers. I wondered, what will he do over the last year where the job market kind of bounced back a little bit, became a little bit more balanced. Not easy for every recent college grad to just wave their hand and get a job. And he just finished going 50 for 50. So he just wrapped up his second cohort of people.

So, again, that stuff depends. Michael I guess the other thing that I just don't want to gloss over, we're not after fake easy solutions. There's a lot of elegance and nuance to Geordie’s work, and he's part psychologist. He's got to pick up people's confidence that feel like failures at that moment in their lives. He's got to be really bold and insightful in his critique of them, and he's got to coach them up really quick and pull off all of those. And so I'll just give you a small example where I don't think the average career counselor is doing this. There was one young woman who her dream thing was to get a job in a museum because she'd studied stuff that would make sense for museum art and things like that, art history. And she got a lead.

She got an opportunity to interview at one of the smaller museums in Philly. So she had applied, but she didn't know the museum. Right. It wasn't like the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And so Geordie’s like, whoa, checks the clock. Like, when's your interview? The interview is like 24 hours away or whatever it is. It's like, coming up really quick. Geordie’s like, listen, I'm going to Venmo you $30.

What you got to do right now, drop what you're doing, get over to that museum, tour it so that when you're in the interview, you need to be able to comfortably say, hey, you don't have to say, I was just here yesterday. You just have to show that you have an understanding of what they do. It's going to make a big difference because you have to understand, right after they usher you out the door, they're going to have somebody just like you who may have a competitive advantage over you. We need to equalize that. And that's the kind of like, what you would do. Michael as a dad with your own kid. That's the kind of stuff I think Geordie is often doing. He's not saying Mike a very cautious, like, hey, maybe this is something he's just like, whoa, stop the presses.

Get off your butt right now. Let's get you in an Uber. You got to get there by closing time so you can tour the museum, so you're going to be good in the interview. That's the kind of energy that I think people need to make up for what they have not gotten out of their college experience if they're going to succeed in the job market.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense, and it's a great way to wrap this all up for us. Mike, Geordie, thank you so much for being here again. The nonprofit you all have founded and Geordie is running again, is one up Career Coaching. And the report is the College Career Services Office onion why they are terrible and what to do about it. Mike, Geordie, thank you so, so much for joining me. And we'll be back next time on The Future of Education.

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