The most important thing parents can do for their children is pay attention to who their children are not what you want them to be. Your role is to support what they want to be while instilling kindness, gratitude and empathy.

Career-launch Coach Jane Horowitz is the expert resource to guide your child from college to first professional position.

“You want to make sure your child gets off to a good start and has every available opportunity for success after college. Like most parents you may wonder if you can do more to help with the job search,” Jane says. “Many parents find it’s hard not to get involved when their daughter doesn’t get interviews or offers. They don’t know why their son doesn’t do what they think he should, and why he won’t listen.”

Direct parental involvement at this time of transition often is not the most productive strategy. Here’s why:

  • Employers are different now. Your personal job-search knowledge and experience may not be relevant. The rules and norms of searching for a job have changed… and continue to move quickly.
  • This transition can be emotional, for both of you. Your college student may be less likely to follow your advice than in the past. Your son or daughter is an adult and ready to do it alone. Hard to hear, but you’re too close.

Managing the college-career transition

Parents turn to More Than A Resumé because there are few specialized resources to help young adults move from college to career. Most students rely on the college career center. In reality, most of these centers are ill-equipped to work with rapidly evolving work roles, are often underfunded and understaffed, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, and can’t provide the one-on-one coaching many students need.

While your young adult learned very specialized knowledge in a chosen major, for most people a major is not a career. A new professional needs to understand how college education and experience have combined to help grow and develop personal skills and abilities, and how these talents point toward a best-fit career.

Jane helps current college students, new and recent graduates transition from the college major mindset to the new professional mode.

There is a way you can help: You and your child can benefit from a coach. You and your child don’t have to go it alone.

What Parents Say

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