Why I Career Coach
I didn’t set out to do career coaching. Let’s call it a hesitant acceptance. I like my full-time job. I have too many hobbies.
But around 2021, friends started coming to me for help with resumes and job searches. Then their friends did. Then people I didn’t really know were reaching out.
Over the last few years, I’ve helped people land jobs that made them happier, healthier, and almost always more money. Eventually, the volume got high enough that I couldn’t keep doing this informally without burning myself out.
So, this is me putting the advice somewhere people can actually use it because I want to help folks. This blog series is dedicated to straight-forward job and career advice.
My writing has been described as acidic and darkly humorous with data-based citations, so if that’s not your vibe, I invite you to check out my page of other recommended resources. There are plenty of good books, websites, podcasts, etc. about this subject.
This is just my take.
The Job Hunt Is Truly Dante’s Tenth Circle of Hell
When I was in college, I worked at a greasy restaurant in Louisiana with great food that gave you terrible heartburn. One day, someone robbed my car in the employee parking lot. I had forgotten there was a purse wedged underneath a pile of other things, and they made off with a few of my belongings. They did leave behind my copy of Dante’s Inferno, which felt like a particularly smug middle finger from the universe.
I like the idea of circles of Hell because it feels quaint that we’ve divvied it up like a post-mortem mall. (Most trips to the mall feel like Hell to me.)
If you stepped onto that hellish elevator and imagined a tenth floor, it would be looking for a job.
Well, needing a job to survive is the worst. That’s most of us. Looking for a job is the second worst. Is there any ritual more humiliating? Job hunting feels like waking up everyday feeling like you had that nightmare where you were in your underwear in school. A low-grade simmering shame grips you because when you’re looking for a job, it feels like everyone has a job.
The good news is you are in plentiful company. I believe there is a certain relief in being miserable together.
“I hate this,” a friend tells me on a call. “I never ever want to do this again.”
There is a common refrain in my conversations about jobs. It is not subtle. This fucking sucks. It sucks in ways that are hard to explain cleanly, because the process manages to be both deeply personal and almost entirely impersonal at the same time. You feel singled out by it while knowing, intellectually, that millions of other people are going through the same thing.
They are. Most workers are not engaged at work. Large numbers describe their jobs as stressful at least some of the time, and many say they rarely find their work enjoyable at all. This is not an individual failure or a niche complaint. It is a widely documented condition of modern work.*
Burnout tends to follow quietly. So quietly that many people are surprised when a beast has possessed them, draining them of agency and the ability to generally give a fuck. It looks like disengagement, numbness, procrastination, and a growing sense of ineffectiveness. People often don’t realize what’s happening until the distance between who they are and what their job requires becomes impossible to ignore.
That’s okay. This happens to a lot of people. Many of your managers will give you a speech about how you are ultimately responsible for burnout. Are you? The optimistic capitalist says you can draw boundaries, but the sociologist in me likes to look at the impossible standards the capitalist workplace puts upon us.
That being said, sometimes burnout can be prevented, and sometimes it happens even in good working environments. We’ll talk about that another day.
Right now, I’d like to focus on you, because regardless of why, you are here.
I have a specific skillset: finding jobs and helping people build more fulfilling careers. I am good at this. So good that I have begun to turn many people away because I simply do not have the time.
That’s where this site comes in: I’ll be dropping all my best resources here. I’m a being fueled nearly entirely by spite and nothing makes me madder than seeing people miserable at work, so it’s in the best interest for my blood pressure to have a place to organize these resources.
Pep talk: You don’t have to have this figured out today. You don’t need clarity, confidence, or a five-year plan. You just need enough energy to take the next small step. One application. One edit. One conversation. Momentum builds that way. Quietly, imperfectly.
This process is survivable. It starts to shift when you keep showing up, even badly. I’m in this with you. The only thing I’ll ever ask is that you take one more step.
Go forth. Be feral. Action creates options even when you can’t see it just yet.
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