Coffee & Career Hour
A genuine & informative podcast on all things career - hosted by two career counselors and friends. From practical strategies to motivational & reflective content, this podcast is here to empower and guide you to find meaningful work, make informed career decisions, and reach your full potential. So, grab a cup of coffee and join in for some career talk.
Coffee & Career Hour
Navigating Career Insights, Generational Shifts, and the Impact of Technology in the Job Market with Judy Lam
Discover the secrets to navigating the post-college landscape with insights from Judy Lam, the Career Center Director at Pierce College. With a wealth of experience guiding students from diverse backgrounds, Judy shares indispensable advice on planning for life after graduation. Amidst shifting career expectations, she offers practical strategies to help students build a solid foundation for their future careers, ensuring they are equipped to face the challenges that lie ahead.
We also tackle the pressing issue of generational differences in workplace professionalism. As Gen Z and Gen Alpha step into the job market, both employers and educators grapple with bridging the gap between traditional professional expectations and the evolving norms influenced by social media. From understanding how these shifts impact career readiness to redefining professionalism itself, our guest shares insights from career advisory boards and the role institutions must play in this dynamic environment.
Technology's impact on careers is another focal point, reshaping how students prepare for the working world. We explore how AI tools redefine networking and communication while emphasizing the importance of maintaining authenticity. The episode highlights the critical role of internships and mentorships in building real-world skills, encouraging students to embrace adaptability and self-exploration. With a focus on mentorship, the conversation provides guidance on balancing aspirations with mental well-being, ensuring students not only survive but thrive in their career journeys.
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I think it is the most important thing for students to think about when thinking about life after graduation. I think a lot of students don't want to think that far ahead and they just you know, I was the type of person who was like C's get degrees, let me just get this and I'll think about work later. That does not work anymore in the current space.
Speaker 2:You are listening to Coffee and Career Hour. We are your hosts. I'm Armina and I'm MJ, two career counselors and friends chatting about all things life and career.
Speaker 3:So grab a cup of coffee and join us.
Speaker 2:Hi, arminie Hi.
Speaker 3:MJ. Hi Judy, hello. What are we doing today? Arminie?
Speaker 2:What are we doing? We're super excited. I have a squeal in my voice if you can't hear it, but welcome back everybody. Thank you for joining us. We are here on Coffee and Career Hour and we have an exciting guest with us.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2:Welcome Judy, Everybody. We have Judy Lam here with us, so Judy is actually my longtime friend from graduate school. It's been like over 10 years, which is insane.
Speaker 1:I can't believe it's been that long.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like we grew up together because we were like babies back then. But Judy is here today as the Career Center Director at Pierce College and we're excited to ask her all sorts of questions about the career needs of students today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. It's funny that you guys are long lost friends of grad school, because Armini talks about grad school in so many different ways. I can now see the both of you kind of going through your own experience. It's so cute. You guys I'm sure had a great time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a time. It was a time I learned a lot about myself and others I love that.
Speaker 2:I love that. So we are here today. We'll kind of go ahead and get started on the first question and we're really excited to hear about what's happening in the career space with current college students and like that general age group of college students and what kind of things they're going through right. So, Judy, could you please introduce yourself a little bit and share a bit about your background and experience working with college students?
Speaker 1:Okay, so, as you said, I am currently the Career Center Director and a College and Career Counsel counselor at Pierce College. Just a little bit background on Pierce College. It is a California community college, one of, I think, 117 across California and we have between 15,000 to 20,000 students that we have here and I at the Career Center serve them all. So I've been working in higher education a little over 10 years, 12 counting internships, but now I work. But most of my experience has been at the community college. I have my master's degree in counseling, with a specialization in college counseling student services, just like Armine, and a certificate in career education and counseling, just like Armanay, and a certificate in career education and counseling, just like Armanay. And I have been the career center director for about a year and a half now and I've also been guided pathways coordinator. I'll go going on three years now and I've been a counselor for I don't know 10 plus years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I've worked at various community colleges. Worked at Pasadena City College and Santa Monica College and landed eventually at Pierce College Amazing.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for sharing a bit about your experience. Clearly, you have a lot of background and a lot of experience working with students in different capacities, and so, with that, we're excited to hear from your expertise, right?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. And, Judy, I'm so curious about all of the community college students because we, Armin and I, tend to serve the students who take the more traditional route where they go to CC for one to four years on average and then transfer into a four-year institution to finish out. But at community college you can have a range of different student groups and populations and their goals and what their ambitions are and what they want to do or what they choose to do goals and what their ambitions are and what they want to do or what they choose to do. And you and I were just talking pre-recording too about how everyone's kind of shifting in what their goals are and what route they're taking or where their lives are really headed. So can you really talk about the significant shifts you've observed in career goals and expectations of your college students in the most recent years?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I think the interestingly enough, I think the struggles have really really stayed the same across the different years and I think the struggles stay the same across different platforms of higher education, whether it's community college or four-year universities. But I do think the viewpoints change and the support that they have around them changes, and the type of time and social capital that they have changes. And so, you know, I recently was talking to my husband actually about what how we view the next generation, and I, you know, have been kind of appalled and I, you know, have been kind of appalled. A part of my job at Pierce College is to be on career advisory boards and so that means our departments will bring in local employers to inform their curriculum and things like that. And so I have sat in on some of them and I've been listening to some of the employers. What are some of the employers? And you know it's usually a safe space when they come and have these boards, because we're trying to get from them how we should teach our students so they can be prepared for the workplace.
Speaker 1:And the people who are in leadership don't have a great, they don't have a lot of great things to say about the incoming generation, and I think it is going to be up to this upcoming generation to fight for themselves and advocate for themselves, because there's a lot of stigma about what it means to be a young incoming professional.
Speaker 1:But I don't actually think that struggle has changed over the years.
Speaker 1:I think we are all getting older and as we get older and wiser, our viewpoints change, and so when I talk to 20-something-year-olds, they sound like when I was 20-something, and when I spoke to people who are older than me, I asked them to think about what their viewpoints were when they were 20-something-year-old, and it was also the same thing. But these viewpoints are now more prevalent. Social media is more prevalent, and so I think it's really tough for our young generation, because now these conversations are not happening behind doors. It's happening on things like TikTok and Instagram and articles on LinkedIn, and they just hear it everywhere. It's negative and it's a little discouraging for a lot of our students and very stressful. And so I think for us is how do we meet our students where they are and still challenge them right? Like, how do we make sure that we are scaffolding their learning so that they're meeting the expectations of the employers that we have, and also, how do we encourage them to advocate themselves in a way that doesn't seem entitled, which is what a lot of employers think.
Speaker 3:Yeah, armin, the one thing that's coming to my mind is that professionalism conversation.
Speaker 2:Yes, I was just thinking about the same exact thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think professionalism in our work, um, and it's I promise I'm going to, I'm going to tie the knots here they it has been coming up a lot for us in the last couple of years where I was asked to do a professionalism workshop um to really focus on the employer feedback of you know how, across the nation in the U S, this new generation of we're just going to call them Gen Zers right Are coming in Alpha really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, almost Gen Alpha Okay.
Speaker 2:And we're heading into that.
Speaker 1:We're at the tail end of Gen Z and like we're starting to see Gen Alpha, especially the younger kids, coming into, like high school. Those are our Gen Alphas.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's scary, we're going to have our work cut out for us in a couple of years. But this constant feedback about how this generation is so different than the baby boomers and gen X and millennials, and now gen Z and now this gen alpha. Right, there's so many different things and professionalism is a constant topic and I think on TikTok and all the other social medias, on X, on Instagram, what's coming up is how do you respond, how do you act in the workplace? And we've been faced with that just as professionals, as staff, just talking about how do we educate our students on what that looks like, because employers have a certain viewpoint of what they are expecting, but how do you communicate that to a student or someone going into the workforce has never experienced that before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's really hard. And it's so interesting because we do have data from employers. Actually from NACE, the National Association of Colleges and Employers has shared data that employers are sharing that professionalism is the lowest skill set they're observing in the incoming generation in the workforce, and we had a whole discussion at work with other staff members too on what does that actually mean? Like, what does professionalism actually mean? Yeah, and it actually goes back to kind of what you're saying too about our viewpoints shifting, while the generation's viewpoints maybe are similar to how we used to think back then, because maybe we're seeing professionalism differently now and older generation is seeing it differently and the coming generation is completely has a different idea about it. So it's just so interesting to see the different viewpoints, but how do we merge that so that there isn't such a big gap when students are entering the workforce?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you know one of the big things that our current generation lacks is a space to make mistakes. Right, like back in the day, you know you could make a mistake and not go viral on social media. So you know, now there's a lot of pressure on our students to do the right things throughout their whole career and that's not realistic, right? And it's a lot to expect for somebody who's just figuring out what they might not even know what they want to do, right?
Speaker 1:I was recently watching a documentary about the Marvel studio and Stan Lee, who is the writer of a lot of the Marvel comics, and he was telling us about his. He was telling the audience about his trajectory and at 17, he started as a water boy. I guess he just like ran water to people who are writing the comic books and I guess at some point people got laid off and then, I think, like a year into it, the owner walked in and was like well, everybody else got laid off, do you want to try to write comics? And that's how he got started. What 17-year-old today would get that type of opportunity? Right? It's a tough world out there, I think, for our new generation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you're right to expect them to already be prepared going into the workforce. I think actually, now that we think about it, it's unfair, right. And I think about even some of our student interns at the Career Center or in the spaces that we work in. We're in an education setting where we're helping them learn and grow and just kind of even observing their perspective of what it's like to work in an office setting, and what we expect of them is definitely different than what you know they're. They're thinking they're supposed to be doing. So it's it's just really interesting and it's unfair that we don't really give them the space. And we're in higher ed, but think of corporate.
Speaker 3:Yeah right, they're brutal out there yeah, I'm thinking about like I don't mean to be the contrary, but I'm thinking about all the people, like in corporate, who are higher and higher generation or just older, and ours is facing this new generation or training them, onboarding, and in my head I'm like well, they have access to so much, and I think that's something that prior generations didn't have was access right Like on Tik TOK, you can go on a career talk and figure out how to use AI to format your resume. You can figure out what interview questions are going to be asked or what are the most genius ones to ask after an interview, or how to search up a recruiter on LinkedIn and what right message to say, or whatever. And the access, I think, is something that is so vital for this generation. Why there's so much pressure and expectation to do good and to do or to know, and that prior generation is like, well, we had to learn the hard way. You have the easy way out to kind of just Google whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I think also with access comes the need to know how to parse through the information.
Speaker 1:So I, as a career counselor, it's up to me to really understand what the most recent trends are, what employers expect, right, and I teach a career planning class at Pierce College and in the class, part of what I ask students to do is write a resume. This year in particular, over half the resumes that I received had headshots in them, had their pictures in them, and so enough, and students coming into the career center also had headshots, and it was enough for me to start questioning whether or not I was keeping up with time. So I actually went and I looked it up. I asked employers about this to ask if there was something that I didn't know about, and what it turned out is that places that create templates, places like Canva, are including headshots in their templates and students who don't know any better are just putting them in. And I had a colleague recently ask me the same question Am I missing something? Why are there so many headshots with my students' resumes? And yeah, so I let her know I'm like it's the templates that are just out there.
Speaker 3:So even though they have access, do they know what to use and what not to use? Absolutely yeah. We say that constantly because out of every career center, I think we can all agree that resume review, resume support, is one of our most sought out resources across any career center. And the headshots thing is funny because we constantly tell students please stop using canvacom, stop using my perfect resume builder, start looking at the documents and resources we have, because we speak to the people who are looking, the human beings who are kind of going through it. So you're right, it's the knowing, like what is actually good information for me to use and to apply to my career, versus the things that are just out there because of popularity or because it looks cute.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I feel like sometimes we almost have to convince the students that we do have accurate information because, you're right, it's hard for them to. Why should we believe you? There's all this information out there. There are all these career coaches on TikTok. You don't know who's legitimate, who's not. Where are they getting their information from? So it's almost like too much information is overwhelming. The same concept when students are selecting majors right, and there's hundreds and hundreds of majors these days, so they're overwhelmed by all the options. It's the same concept here. So sometimes less is more right. But with that said, judy, so we're talking a lot about technology and access to resources. How would you say like the rise of technology, including AI, is impacting the career paths and the skill sets that students need in the modern workforce?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I actually. So I recently went to NCDA, which is National Career Development Association its conference. It happened in the area this last time, I think it was in San Diego somewhere and in the one of the workshops that I went to, there was this really sweet old man and he had no background in career counseling but he was an economist pulled all this data to talk about what the trends were and what jobs looked like before and what jobs are going to look like moving forward, and he was very monotonous, but it was the most interesting workshop that I had gone to, because it is so relevant to this question too. Because it is so relevant to this question too. So he talked about the history and how we've had several different industrial revolutions, and so we had the industrial revolution, where there was machinery and, potentially, a bunch of people lost their jobs. And then we had another revolution, when computers came into play. A bunch of people lost their job. That was the tech revolution. And now we're having yet another revolution and this is going to be our AI revolution, right? And what does this look like for our students and for the incoming workforce?
Speaker 1:And he talked about how that now it's not necessarily that we're going to lose jobs, but the majority of jobs, job descriptions are going to change and job duties are going to change, and so, even though a computer programmer, that's never going to go away what you do as a computer programmer 10 years ago versus what you do in 10 years are going to be completely different.
Speaker 1:He said something like 70% change in most jobs, and we actually see this now, even on our careers. Right, I went into career counseling thinking I was going to sit and talk to students and counsel students, which is a big part of what I do, but another big part of what I do is keep up with my website and do social media marketing to get out to my students, and this technology experience and knowing how to do HTML, coding and all of those things is so vital to making sure that we reach our students where we are and get that information out there. And so that also means that our students going into whatever they're going into whether it's art, stem, engineering, whatever it is that they're going into they will have to understand how to use AI, how to use technology and how that's going to affect whatever their job duties are. They can't rely on what the job duties look like right now, because it is changing very quickly.
Speaker 2:OMG, that's like a mic drop moment, but I definitely agree and see it, because I went to M-PACE that's the Mountain Pacific Association of Colleges and at that conference it was so AI focused. I actually was a little bit surprised, because it's a career counseling conference. Right, I didn't expect so much technology to be embedded into all of the workshops, but quite a few of them actually talked about how our role as career counselors is now changing by including, like chat, gpt and other forms of AI into the work that we do. And I literally had texted my colleagues and I was like okay, I'm jumping on the AI trend now because I feel like you have to. That is the future, no matter how we feel about it. If we don't, we are going to fall behind, and I think that message is the same for our students and our new generation of employees your skill sets need to be evolving as AI is evolving.
Speaker 3:I got chills when you said that, because it's so crazy that we're going to have to teach students how to use this so they can perform it in job interviews, so they can keep up with how to do basic tasks in their everyday life and how to use it to make their work more efficient. If not, they're going to fall behind, and it's insane because I don't think I've ever had that conversation yet with a student. But I know as a team, as a university, we're focusing on how are we using this to make our work more efficient? How are we using it to do programming emails? How are we teaching students how to use this in the right way, right, how to use technology for the better, while still keeping that human creativity to it too. But that just gave me chills.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's not just important for our students, but so important for our educators to understand this. You know, I think back to when my elementary school teachers told me that you had to learn the math because you'll never have a calculator in your pocket is what they said, right?
Speaker 1:But we do we have calculators in our pockets, so we even have to be careful about what we talk. Like we might say, well, you have to learn this. Like, chat TPT isn't going to be able to help you do it. Well, maybe it will. Right, and the idea is to have them understand why it's important to know the concepts and learn the concepts and then also know how to use chat TPpt at the same time. I think that's going to be a really tough conversation.
Speaker 2:It really is. I think we have our work cut out for ourselves because we have to teach the students while we're learning and ai is changing by the day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah I don't know what's gonna happen. It's just staying nimble and staying agile and adaptable is really all it is, yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm thinking honestly a lot about staff who are like resistant to this change and who are like I don't want to learn it, I don't want to use it, and I'm thinking about how it's going to affect their students and their teams and administration and all of these different things, because someone just refuses to kind of jump on board, like Armin here who was totally in denial maybe a year ago in episodes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we, yeah. It became a joke because I was like no AI, I don't want the robots to take over. You know, obviously jokingly.
Speaker 1:It's taken over.
Speaker 2:Seriously it's taken. But yeah, all jokes aside, I was a little bit more hesitant around AI, just because you know we were thinking about like using your own critical thinking skills, developing the skills and why it's important. But now and I think this conference really opened my eyes that, like you said, it's understanding the concepts, learning the skills, but then leveraging AI to actually enhance your skills and the knowledge that you have. So, hey, listeners, do you also indulge on your favorite cup of coffee? During our show? We want to share something to delight any coffee lover Unique coffee themed merchandise.
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Speaker 3:Now let's get back to our show. Yeah, I don't remember where I was reading this particular, but I was. It was about AI and underrepresented college student groups and populations and how now everyone can have the same equal access to different language, to different capital, to different resources. And I was like, well, it's like a plus. And if you would ask me years ago how to network or how to write a linkedin message, I wouldn't know, but now I could put it in chat, gpt, google, gemini and every other platform that's out there and it could just write me a beautiful message yeah, right, right.
Speaker 2:And then how do you personalize that? And that's where the career counseling comes into play, right? So with for anybody who's a student or like an emerging professional, listening, right? You want to take it beyond that, like having chat, gpt, write that message, but then making sure that it's still in your tone, it's still true to your voice, because when you do go out there for interviews and interact with professionals, if the resumes and the cover letters that you're presenting are not matching how you're presenting yourself, it's not going to you're not going to end up getting those jobs, job offers, right? So it's important to make sure that you still know the material and that you're still able to present yourself authentically while you're using these tools, right?
Speaker 2:So that's what we're going to share with in our in every single meeting that we have as career counselors. That's kind of going to be the messaging that we give.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely don't overuse chat TPT and AI or even Grammarly. You've got to be careful with Grammarly because they will rewrite sentences for you and we just did transfer season so I read a bunch of personal statements and it is incredibly obvious when a student has used ChatTPT to rewrite their sentences Things like personal statements, things like cover letters, like what you really want to do is sound authentic and sound like you you do not need the big words that ChatTPT uses, because they'll spit out a bunch of fluff. So basic English is a lot stronger and a lot easier for people to employers to read than some of the chat tpt like language there is a definite like tone to these ais, like you can hear their.
Speaker 3:I don't want to say it, but they're the way they sound and the way they put they produce work, depending on what it is. You can read and you can tell. I don't remember if you remember a couple months ago and we were like looking at two resumes and we're like, or cover letters was covered like this one was definitely written by ai, and then we were in that dilemma like, well, what was it or is this person not really good or right.
Speaker 3:It was crazy how you do it, and employers now have applicant tracking systems that can tell them if what was produced by what yeah, and sometimes the sentences don't make sense.
Speaker 2:When we were doing that comparison, we were like, wait, the one written by AI. It actually didn't make sense. Yeah, and then this reminds me for any Friends fans out there who are listening that episode where Joey rewrites the vows. He uses a thesaurus. Chandler shows him how to use a thesaurus, which was like back then the laptops and the computers were just coming out and he was like mesmerized by the third so he changed every single word and it completely did not make any sense. So you don't want to be joey in this case? Please use it's better to use basic language, but get your message across and sound like yourself.
Speaker 3:That's gonna take you further yeah, I want to go back to Judy. You were talking about the skills that students are learning now and the different roles that they're playing and how that's going to look like in the future. So many students and we're talking about the job market just being competitive in general, right, um, how? What role do internships, apprenticeships, job shadowing, experiential learning opportunities play in bridging a gap between what the students are learning in the classroom and what their work is going to look like?
Speaker 1:I think it is the most important thing for students to think about when thinking about life after graduation. I think a lot of students don't want to think that far ahead and they just you know, I was the type of person who was like C's get degrees, let me just get this and I'll think about work later. That does not work anymore in the current space world of work that we are in. You must gain experience. You must start, you know, building your resume while you are still in school. If you go to school and that is all you do, you just go to classes and go home, you will have a very difficult time, no matter what industry that you are in getting a job afterwards. It doesn't matter if you're in nursing, computer science, any of those. If you don't have hands-on experience and a resume that's already built by the time you graduate, employers will hesitate hiring you. And so internships, apprenticeships, experiential learning, like joining clubs, taking on leadership positions, even things like job shadowing I do industry tours, sometimes informational interviews, so talking to professionals in the field all of these things are so important for students to do, because if you don't learn the information while you're still in school, or even learn what you like and don't like it.
Speaker 1:It's going to be really difficult to narrow it down later, right, and so I have talked to many students, and I work at a community college, so you know it's open access, any students can come, and I get many, many bachelor's degree students coming back, sometimes even master's degree students coming back who have gone straight through school and really didn't think about gaining experience outside of classes and they were having a difficult time getting a job.
Speaker 1:And so you know I'm racking my brain trying to help them figure out what can they do, what classes can they take to upskill themselves, what I tell them to join clubs, I tell them to do internships, and so I connect them at internships while they're still in school, back at the community college. And I was one of those students too. You know I went to UCLA, which is a great school, but I left with not a ton of experience and not a single recommendation letter from any of my professors, and so when I went to apply back to grad school, I actually had to go back to community college so that I can get a recommendation letter from a professor. And so you know it's it's, it's a tough thing if you leave school without any real experience.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I w. I was one of those kids too. I did well. I was a commuter. I was like you just get the best grades you could. And then you know, my mom told me to get the degree and you're going to have a job and you're going to be fine, and that's not really the way the world works.
Speaker 1:So not in the U.
Speaker 3:S at least no, yeah, not in the U? S. I'm curious to hear what role do you think these institutions play in really helping our students get these opportunities and gain access to them?
Speaker 1:At the California, at the community colleges or any higher ed institution. Let's do community college first. Um, so, at the community colleges, I think it depends on how large the career center is and how many resources they have. I try it. The career center is me At Pierce College and then I have interns and then some of our counselors do career counseling as well, but mainly all the programming and everything that happens for students who are undecided. That really is just me, and so I'm figuring out how to grow it and how to train our faculty, how to have these conversations with our students.
Speaker 1:Some of the department chairs have connections because a lot of them have worked in industry, and so I ask them to leverage their connections. Or, if they are having a hard time leveraging, I will reach out to them and help them make connections to these areas. I've been doing industry tours for different areas of interest for our students. So we just went to hospital and we went to go see Northrop Grumman, and so we do these industry tours just to give students this exposure and this experience. We do panels, and so I think it is up to us to inform our students of what it takes to get a job afterwards and to help them really understand that just school is not enough. And I say it up and down all day long, like to anybody I talk to, like please, please, gain experience while you're still here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I ask about community college is because on our side, armin and I help our transfer students at UCLA where, let's say, they've they've maybe have not done, compared to other students, what we've seen, or there's a, there's a diversity of experience there and sometimes in community college, you know, your mindset is I'm going to go and do my two years and I'm going to transfer out, but those two years, the time you spent there, are really substantial right To where you go and how you move forward. So I was curious to hear, because we don't really see a lot of transfer students who have internship experience beforehand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the other part of it is that a lot of our transfer students have a lot of life stuff happening, and so they may have other responsibilities in their lives, so they might not have the opportunity to go and get an unpaid internship or join a club because they might not have time. And so, for those students, what I typically help them figure out is, while they're making money, how can they leverage the opportunities that they already have towards whatever they're looking for? So I had a student who is working a retail job and is interested in going into marketing, and so I was talking to her and she was, like, I need this job, this retail job, to make ends meet. I cannot. And she was working full time, going to school full time. She has no free time, right, there's no additional time for her to do anything else.
Speaker 1:And so I told her like, have you talked to your supervisor? Is there social media for your job? Is there something for you to leverage? Like, can you help create more efficiencies somewhere? And this is stuff that you can add to your resume that you helped this. So it might not be directly related, but it could be indirectly related. And so how do you build those soft skills? How do you leverage what you already are doing to match what you where you want to go? Yeah, Amazing.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love the conversation around skill-based hiring because actually at the conference that I attended, there were sessions where they talked about the trends and employers really doing skill-based hiring these days.
Speaker 2:Right, and we tell our students all the time, too, your skills are more important than the major that you have actually right, and in reality, and especially the students who are in general like North Campus at UCLA, right North Campus majors, so the social sciences, the humanities, that are very broad and sometimes students are left feeling like what skills do I actually have for the job market?
Speaker 2:And that's where we talk a lot about the importance of internships and experiential learning. But I'm actually curious, judy, your thoughts on like the opposite end of that, because we also have a huge student population who is trying to do everything right. They have like an internship every year. They have three student organizations and they're president for one and secretary for the other right, and so everything. And then they overwhelm themselves, and then secretary for the other right, and so everything, and then they overwhelm themselves, and then there comes a point where there are other struggles that are happening because they don't have a good balance right. So what are your thoughts on how can we, as counselors, support our students and teach them the importance of experiential learning, while also balancing out with their mental health and well-being.
Speaker 1:Yeah, quality over quantity, right, and so I think sometimes, especially our students who are trying to get into really competitive schools or get into competitive fields, they go crazy and they're, like you know, highly motivated and they think the more I do, the better. But what ends up happening is that, you know and I've seen this before is that students will have tons of things on their resume, but when I ask them a meaningful question about why they've chosen this path, they struggle and so they haven't really thought, have had any meaningful thought about why they're doing what they're doing. They're just doing and just checking off the box box. And so, you know, one of the questions I ask when I'm in a classroom or doing a presentation is I ask how many of you feel like you are falling behind? And 100% of the time, the majority of the class will raise their hand Right, and so I tell them to look around, because if every single person in the classroom feels like they're falling behind, who are you falling behind, right? Mm-hmm? So there's this idea that you have to be in a rush and hurry to nowhere, and when you're in a hurry to nowhere and not really thinking about making those intentional decisions, to me that's when the quarter-life crisis comes, or the mid-life crisis, because you've kind of just floated until you realize at some point in your life what have I been doing with my life? I haven't been thoughtful about what I've been doing, and so ask those hard questions about whether or not you're happy and whether or not this sacrifice is worth. Where you're going, do you know what it actually looks like? Or are you thinking I just want to become an engineer because somebody told me to. I want to become a nurse because it's the safe decision. Right? That in itself is not the only opportunity.
Speaker 1:Now, that is not to say that money is not important. That's not what I'm saying, because I think a lot of students are like well, you know, money is important. I understand that we live in California. We live in LA Like money is incredibly important, but it cannot be the only reason why you're going into what you're going into. Right, and so mental health wise is how do you make decisions intentional? How do you slow down and make sure that you're having meaningful interactions with the people who are around you? Because those are going to be the connections that are going to lift you when you for lack of a better word stuff hits the fan, right, you know. And so you don't just need a personal support network, you also need a professional support network.
Speaker 3:And if you're just checking off boxes, you're not going to get that professional support network, because nobody will have talked to you long enough to get to know you who you really are yeah, I, I, there's so much there and I was just like sitting here in awe of listening to you, because the part where we have to talk to students about and people in general, like are you happy, is this really what you want to do, like, okay, let's talk, let's explore that path a little bit more and what that looks like for you and realistic wise to Rick's, that that's the counseling part of what we do and I know, arminia, for you that's your favorite part, for me too. I just light up when we have those conversations. But it also brought me to the idea of mentorship and how others around you are so important. But in our work we focus a lot on professional mentorship, or how do you grow in the workforce and what does that look like?
Speaker 3:And having a board of directors, right People at different levels and at different stages and in different places. But what you're talking about is a more internal right, a more personal opportunity and relationships. And I'm thinking still about mentors, and I always tell students it's important to have mentors for different parts of your life, right, people who you can go to, not only for the professional questions, or how do I say this nicely in an email? Or how do I respectfully tell my boss no, but Armanay, how do I like? What am I doing with my life and can you help me? Or I'm really struggling or I'm burnt out, or I know you and I have had this conversation a million times, but all of these different things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, and I was cracking up over here when you were talking about the race to nowhere. That was me.
Speaker 3:I was rushing.
Speaker 2:I had no idea where I was rushing to or why, and I always joke and say I fell into this career path because that is what happened.
Speaker 2:But of course I love what I do and I magically ended up in a space that is actually aligned with my values and interests, but a lot of students rush to nowhere and then pick the first job that is actually aligned with my values and interests.
Speaker 2:But a lot of students rush to nowhere and then pick the first job that is available to them because they have to now make ends meet and then they're miserable and they're not.
Speaker 2:They don't have those meaningful experiences and that's what we're trying to prevent as career counselors, and I know we've all kind of learned through our own experiences and through our own graduate programs the importance of reflecting and having these meaningful experiences. But even though we may not have done that ourselves because we were also 20 somethings and didn't know what we were doing, but we're here now and we understand the importance of it and that's really the purpose of what we're all trying to do here is have people avoid that race to nowhere and whether it takes a little bit longer, but it is actually meaningful, that's okay, right, like I always tell my students too I'm one of the pre-law counselors at UCLA law school will always be there. You don't have to go the year you graduate, take the time you need right, explore, explore and so forth. So I don't know. I'm like at the edge of my seat having. Like I'm super excited you guys could see it in my face.
Speaker 1:I think that's really funny that you say that you're like in a race to nowhere. Because you know, arminie was one among the youngest in our cohort and I remember thinking, dang, this girl has it together. I was not at her age, I was not there, so it's crazy that you now look back on it and think like, oh, I was in a hurry, I didn't know what I was doing, because I saw you as somebody who really knew where you were going, and so you know, you don't know how people see you sometimes too. So you're, we're the worst critics of ourselves.
Speaker 2:Oh, my gosh. I mean the number of times we've cried about these topics too. Like, thinking back, I literally remember graduate school duty. It was in the beginning, right when we were first like oh snap, what did we get into? This program is super intense, and like we were all crying.
Speaker 2:And I remember you came, you're like you guys, I cried in my car car last night. And then that's when we had that conversation, when I was like I feel like I'm behind. And then you're like what? I feel like I'm behind, you feel like you have it together. And I still remember that conversation to this day because that was one of the like eye-opening ones for me, where I was like, okay, and I tell my students all the time to the same thing you were just saying right now of like who are you falling behind? I had the same conversation with the student today. She's like everybody around me has internships and knows what they're doing. I'm like, really, because, as a career counselor, every single student I talk to doesn't have it figured out. So who are these magical students?
Speaker 1:that have it all figured out. Nobody knows what they're doing.
Speaker 2:Nobody, basically yeah.
Speaker 3:That's insane. I I am thinking about you were talking about 20 something year olds and knowing what they're doing and not knowing what they're doing, and I just I'm like I don't know what the hell I'm doing now. Like what, what is my life's purpose? And I'm I think I rushed too far, but I it was also perfect. And nobody does know what they're doing.
Speaker 3:And that's a huge fear for people because we focus so much on the future and where we want to end up. We don't really see the in between. And I talk a lot to students about look, I get that you want to be the nurse, that engineer, the doctor, the counselor, whatever, the teacher, but you're thinking about yourself in the moment. Have you thought about what it's going to take to get there and how are you going to support yourself as a human being to manage all those steps? Because they focus so much on the future, and when we think about like mental health and overwhelm, that's when I see the most overwhelming our students because they're like oh, I figured it out Like I want to do this and I'm like all right, buddy, let's talk about you know law school.
Speaker 3:Let's talk about you know law school. Let's talk about engineering master's degrees. Let's talk about you want to be a mathematician, you want to go to phd. Do you know what that's like? Have you? Who have you talked to? And then the overwhelm kind of starts to begin and they're like now freaking out about everything else to come to and they really have no idea why they're doing it in the first place yeah, that.
Speaker 1:why is so important when you're trying to stick through a grad program?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, truly, truly, and even for undergrad sometimes. But then graduate school it becomes a lot more intense, it becomes a lot more specialized, right, and so, yeah, sometimes you know, when students go to graduate school because they don't know what else to do and we always have that conversation don't do that, because then they don't have the why and then you don't want to drop out of graduate school. It's going to be so much more costly, um, so I don't know you know what I'm thinking about.
Speaker 3:You're talking about them taking the first job. It's because they think I have to do that first job for the rest of my life, yeah, and then you know I'm going to feel some type of satisfaction somewhere. But then life gets in the way and you all know what happens after that. So I think it's a lot of like pre-fearness of what's out there because it's so unknown and it's so scary and it's not determined for them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we're talking a lot already about challenges that students are facing. We're talking about their whys and the purpose and the mission. But, judy, what do you, in addition to all of this, what do you think are the biggest challenges that students are facing now in career exploration and job search? Armin and I talk about the job search piece all the time because we're like just get a job, like there's no magic puzzle piece to it, there's no magic key or password. But the career exploration also has to do with that too, to have that sense of navigation or that compass, to feel some type of direction. So what challenges do you think students are facing currently?
Speaker 1:I see so much anxiety come through my office all the time, and I think it's the pressure to know. Somebody once told me that it's crazy that we ask our students who, at you know, when they were a senior in high school, had to ask to go to the bathroom and then they all of a sudden get to college and we're asking them to choose what they're going to do for the rest of their lives. Right, that's wild. I've never thought about that. Whoa, it is a crazy jump right. And so it is a lot of pressure to know where they're going, and I see a lot of paralysis because it's so overwhelming to choose among all the opportunities and the options of what they can get. And so you know, I think those are probably the largest things that I see.
Speaker 1:Keeping students from moving forward is, you know, I think, being overwhelmed with all the information out there they get. Yeah, you should do this. Maybe you shouldn't do that. Oh, you like your interest, do it for money. No, you have to be stable. No, maybe not. You should do what your passion is, and don't forget, forget about the money.
Speaker 1:And there are all these conflicting, you know, messages about what they should and shouldn't do. And so how do they parse through that? How do they figure out what's going to be right for them? It's probably the biggest hurdle for our students is to calm down, take their time, do some self-exploration, which takes time, right, and you know. Relax and just enjoy what the journey looks like, and without thinking about the end goal right away, right, and that's not to say don't have goals, right.
Speaker 1:But there has to be a balance and people students have to give themselves a break and know that they're not going to know right away at 18 what they're going to do for the rest of their lives. Now, if you are the type of person at 18, you know exactly where you're going to go Awesome, wonderful. Keep going down that path, but stay open to changes, because your life changes, your values will change, your interests will change. Just make sure that you're not so focused on your path that you can't see any other opportunities that come your way If it's not what you wanted to see.
Speaker 3:Yeah, growth, mindset and happenstance are the only three things that came to my mind Growth, mindset and happenstance.
Speaker 2:Yep, you know, when you were saying enjoy the journey, I remembered trust the process.
Speaker 1:Oh goodness gracious, don't want our director to hear that.
Speaker 2:But I think she was right. She was right. She was right. She was right when we were students and our professor would tell us trust the process. We did not want to hear it. Right, there was. There was some kind of feeling we had around that because we're like no, we need to know what is this going to look like? Where is this taking us? What is the purpose of this? But she was wiser and older and she would tell us just the process. And now we're telling the students the same thing. Right, um, yes, have goals, but allow yourself to experience college and experience this journey, because it's in those experiences, in those unexpected spaces, that you're going to have a light bulb moment or meet somebody that is going to become a mentor or in your network that's going to connect you to somebody else, that's going to turn, change your career journey in ways you can't even really imagine right now absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 3:I I can't tell you how many students I come across who live their college experience like halves at a time and they'll go like half their time like thinking they're going one path, one down or they know exactly what steps or how to get into law school.
Speaker 3:I've seen that a ton, yeah. And then they'll like meet someone, go to a student org, have a random presenter one day, and then all of a sudden they're like I don't want to do this. I remember a specific student now alumni, a couple years ago was so set on law school, so set had like three legal pre-law internships at different law offices in different fields. All of a sudden comes like spring quarter and they get this offer to be an unpaid intern for like a production assistant. To be a production assistant immediately wanted to go into the entertainment industry was like I actually don't like law school and I was doing it because I was safe. It was a safe thing to do and I remember thinking like, oh God, we're about to have a meltdown, like we're going to have to figure this out, and he was so calm and so open to everything that this new field had to offer and was okay, starting that cycle, the career development cycle all over again with this field.
Speaker 3:That's amazing yeah.
Speaker 1:When you find the one, sometimes it you know it just kind of works. Yeah, like you know that this is it, no matter all the obstacles that you're going through, like when you find what you are meant for, things just kind of fall into place and it's not easy, but the hard stuff it's worth it, you know.
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Speaker 3:Follow Career Confident Latina for your weekly dose of career advice and my journey as a first-gen Latina counselor. You can also send me a message on mjcareerconfidencecom if you want to book a career counseling session. I want to help grow your confidence as you reach your career dreams.