uncommon career counseling
Intentional career exploration to help you find opportunities and figure out your path
The Uncommon Approach
Helping people figure out what to do—and how to get there
We know what it’s like to have no idea what you’re going to do with your life. Or you’re in the other boat: You know what you want to do, but you’re not sure how to make it a reality. You’ve probably been told your only option is to finish high school, go to a good college, and get a typical 9-5 job.
More often than not, we try to shape ourselves into someone that the world tells us to be, rather than who we know we are or want to be. Our Career Counseling is centered on the idea that there’s no wrong path to take, but through self-reflection and real-world experience you can find the major, job, vocation, or career that feels authentic to you.
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We work with 9-12th grade students, high school graduates, college students and recent graduates, and anyone either launching into, reimagining, or taking a pause in their career. Whether you're trying to identify your interests, choose a major, find a meaningful job experience, or figure out your life direction, we’d love to work with you.
We’re not the kind of career counseling that’s just focused on resume-building and employment placement—the people who work with us are genuinely excited for a process of self-discovery paired with logistical guidance.
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Through 1-on-1 pathway counseling, we’ll guide you through a process of self-reflection, research, and logistical guidance. We’ll dive into career inventories, writing prompts, and brainstorming activities to help you understand your skills, values, and goals—and what kind of work aligns with who you are. From there, we’ll help you find experiences that let you test the waters, communities and professionals to connect with, and bigger opportunities to explore. Throughout the entire process we help you stay organized and on track, navigate the nitty-gritty details from resume writing to application editing, and provide warm, thoughtful, and supportive mentorship.
Our approach is grounded in Life Design, a career counseling framework developed by Stanford professors and inspired by design theory’s creative problem-solving, which requires curiosity, self-awareness, collaboration, imagination, an openness to new perspectives and ideas, and experimentation.
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The people who work with us often feel like they’ve gained valuable clarity and insight about themselves. Not only do they feel more certain about what path to take, they also learn how to make choices on a daily basis that are energizing, balanced, meaningful, and joyful. We’re skilled at bringing people from a place of being overwhelmed to having a plan, providing the structure and organization you need to get to where you want to go.
This might look like realizing you want to study environmental engineering, and we’ll help you find a summer internship working for a startup solar farm. Or perhaps you come to understand that you thrive in hands-on work, after we connect you with a massage therapist for a job shadow—and you start an apprenticeship within your own community. It could also be as simple as walking away knowing that no matter what you do with your life, you want it to have purpose.
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We feel particularly moved by the original idea of the word vocation, or “calling” — not because there’s only one true path for your life to take, but because life is more meaningful when you find work that means something to you and the greater world. Research actually shows that finding meaningful work contributes to greater engagement and happiness.
This also extends beyond a job itself, and to all facets of your life. In Japanese culture, this can refer to the term Ikigai, “a reason to be” or (our favorite definition): “a reason to wake up in the morning.” Life is a dynamic and ongoing process of self-discovery as professionals, community members, global citizens, spiritual beings, inhabitants of our planet, and of what it simply means to be human. All of us need support on that journey.