Why College Doesn't Prepare You for Work, with Pathfinder Career Prep

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Sana: We keep doing the same thing.

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Sana: we… I mean, we tell young people to get into a good university. That is something I was also told, and then, yeah, all of you will definitely connect with that. Get into good universities, work hard, get the degree.

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Sana: And then trust the professional world will open up for them.

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Sana: And then… We act genuinely surprised, sometimes perplexed.

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Sana: When we arrive into that workforce, underprepared, overwhelmed, And then…

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Sana: I'm thinking that what exactly went wrong? What did I do wrong?

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Sana: So tonight, or today's, whenever, wherever you are listening or watching this podcast.

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Sana: My guests have spent years on both sides of that equation.

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Sana: One as a lawyer and making a consultant who hired and managed some of those young people, and one as a licensed psychologist, who spent a decade understanding why smart, capable people still struggle to find their freedom.

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Sana: Together, they built something to actually fix it.

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Sana: And today, for this conversation, they are here to talk about why the strategy most of us were handed

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Sana: Was broken from the slut.

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Sana: So welcome back, everyone, to the Discipline Podcast. I am Sunan. As you all know, this is the space where we talk about building careers, businesses that work in the real world.

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Sana: And today, I have two guests joining me, which means this conversation is, is definitely, especially going to be rich. So, Matthew Thurman is a former lawyer.

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Sana: Anna McKim's a consultant who spent years

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Sana: Recruiting, hiring, and managing interns and new hires who eventually

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Sana: Realized that what he was watching wasn't a talent problem.

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Sana: It was a preparation problem.

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Sana: And Ashley Thurman, she's a licensed psychologist with over 10 years of experience, who brings the human and the behavioral science dimension to everything the company works. And let me also tell about Pathfinder together, which they co-founded, a program built to give young people the professional foundation that

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Sana: No one probably ever gives them.

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Sana: Through a 32-hour in-class program.

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Sana: An 8-hour online program and workshops across schools, universities, and nonprofits. So, Matthew and Ashley, welcome to WizPlan, and I'm really, really glad both of you are here.

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Matthew Thurman: Thank you for having us, excited to be here.

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Ashley Stafford: Yes, thank you.

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Sana: Absolutely, great. Okay, so Matthew and Ashley, before we get into the big picture, let's start with the human story behind Pathfinder, because I think that it makes

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Sana: everything kind of fall in place, you know, of course, gradually, and of course, land differently. So Matthew, you have, spoken about studying professionally for years, because you kind of followed the same strategy. Now you are working to fix, and actually, you…

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Sana: spent a decade…

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Sana: watching people navigate identity, confidence, self-worth in professional settings. What brought each of you to this work personally?

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Matthew Thurman: Yes, I'll take the first crack at that. So, you're right. I heard and followed the same strategy that we tell all young people, just to go to the best school you can, and then trust that because you did that, your career will magically work out.

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Matthew Thurman: The, kind of genesis moment for what we do now happened to me when I was in law school. I had taken on well over $100,000 in debt, and I needed to find a job to pay that back.

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Matthew Thurman: And as I started to look for that job, it became clear that I didn't understand the job-seeking process and the tasks and activities I would have to complete. And there was a kind of defining experience where I went to a info session with a law firm that was recruiting from my school.

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Matthew Thurman: And I realized that another classmate of mine had been networking with the firm ahead of time, ahead of their visit to campus, and had already built relationships. And I realized I didn't even know we could do that, never mind that we were supposed to do that.

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Matthew Thurman: And so I saw this classmate, secure the job before this firm ever even got to campus, and by the time they got to campus, it was kind of a superficial activity, and I realized, wow, I really don't understand how to enter the workforce

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Matthew Thurman: And that experience always stuck with me, and then when I entered the workforce, of course, it was task after task after task, and expectation after expectation, where I was expected to do things, and I.

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Matthew Thurman: never taught how to do them. So, you know, run a project, run a meeting, talk to the CEO, interview, negotiate, etc. And I just kept having to learn the hard way and to struggle a lot, and that kind of got me thinking over the years about how we might help students differently, and whether or not we can prepare people for

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Matthew Thurman: the workforce that they're gonna enter after school. So that's my side of it.

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Ashley Stafford: My story is a little bit different. I arrived at the same problem via a different route. Most psychologists where I live are in private practice, so essentially we're, like, small business owners.

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Ashley Stafford: And I came in sort of wrongly believing that successful psychologists in private practice were just really, really good at psychology. So if you just study your content area, that's really all you need to build a business. And I learned the hard way in starting my practice that

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Ashley Stafford: while I had thought myself exempt from skills like networking, or resume writing, or problem solving, I wasn't. I needed a lot of things that, they did not teach me in my 10 years of college and graduate school.

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Ashley Stafford: So, when Matt first came to me with the idea, I immediately, personally saw the need and how much that would have helped me when I was first starting out. But then with some of my younger, early career clients, it was easy to see that we weren't the only ones who had that struggle.

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Sana: Absolutely, and I kind of was thinking the same thing, that, you know, I was not alone, because this is exactly… I mean, not exactly the same set of events, but, you know, I kind of got nostalgic, you know, the placements, the…

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Sana: the…

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Sana: always this confusion that, you know, what exactly is going to work? Okay, let me try hundreds of options, nothing is working. And then you'll get into all that, you know, that entire, that rabbit hole that… whether I… the problem is with you only. I mean, you're not, deserving enough, you don't have that… those skills.

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Sana: It can be a very tough place, to be in, and then you learn while doing it, you learn through your mistakes.

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Sana: some of the biggest lessons that I also learned in my career is through those mistakes, and you know, I mean, yeah, when I look back.

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Sana: Fine, I did learn, but then at that time, it really felt like…

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Sana: a huge cost, you know, that I had to pay, just because I didn't know what exactly to do. So I think this conversation and the work that both of you are doing, the purpose, it's really, really important, you know, especially in today's,

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Sana: Today's day and age, where the younger generations, the young people who are there entering, or they've already been in the job

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Sana: sector, job area, you know, the EI thread.

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Sana: the layoffs still going on. The uncertainty… the level of uncertainty is actually higher. So I think it's very, very essential to have

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Sana: more and more conversations, and obviously help our young professionals out there. So, I'll start with Matthew. I'll go to Ashley, but Matthew,

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Sana: A lot of our listeners, either they have, you know, just like I shared, we both shared, so you both shared, so they have lifted themselves, or maybe they're watching someone they care about, you know, live it right now.

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Sana: It has always been the template. Get a good university, get in a good college, work hard, earn the credential, trust that things will work out.

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Sana: What do you think is actually missing from that strategy most people, like, never stop to question?

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Matthew Thurman: Yeah, that's a great question, and our perspective on that is that, simply the work you do in university

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Matthew Thurman: is usually focused, or a mix of a kind of general education and then a specific focus on a topic or two. And a lot of people hope that that'll be the topic they spend their time on professionally, so engineers studying engineering, as an example.

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Matthew Thurman: The reason this model is broken, and the reason our story and your story is a universal story, is because the way we spend our time in the classroom does not connect to the expectations of the workplace

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Matthew Thurman: In almost every way, and we take two particular lenses on that. The first is getting a job.

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Matthew Thurman: So… To get a job in any profession, in any industry, in any country in the world.

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Matthew Thurman: You need three things. A professional resume, you need to network like a professional, and you need to interview like a professional.

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Matthew Thurman: Those are extremely specific things, and if you, research into them and study them, they're actually very well understood, they're just not commonly understood.

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Matthew Thurman: And they're not taught at university. So, entering the workforce, the very mechanics of that process are already broken.

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Matthew Thurman: And people expect that, well, because I got a 4.0, someone's just gonna hand me a job.

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Matthew Thurman: And that does not happen very commonly, and even in cases where you have a really superior pedigree, you still have to interview and network and so on.

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Matthew Thurman: So right out the gate, entering the workforce is fundamentally broken. When you get into the workforce, you're gonna do four kinds of things from our perspective. You're gonna solve problems in a structured way that leads to recommendations that drive action.

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Matthew Thurman: You're gonna communicate in four very specific scenarios, so presentations, meetings, email, and feedback.

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Matthew Thurman: And, because you're gonna work with clients and bosses and coworkers, you're gonna have to build and leverage your emotional intelligence.

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Matthew Thurman: The vast majority of the time we spend at work falls into those categories right there.

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Sana: Right.

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Matthew Thurman: Just to take meetings as an example, that's 11.3 hours of your week for an average office worker.

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Matthew Thurman: Now, the fourth thing you do at work are the job-specific tasks, and this is where university focuses, and where a lot of us focus our time, energy, and attention, even though it ends up being a small amount of the work we actually do in a given week.

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Matthew Thurman: And taking engineering as an example, the amount of time you spend doing actual, real engineering is not 40 hours a week, and then when you get promoted to engineering manager, you might not do any.

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Matthew Thurman: So, there's just a massive disconnect between how we prepare students in the classroom, and the expectations for what it takes to get a job across all professions, and the way we spend our time in those jobs, again, across all professions.

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Matthew Thurman: So, that's kind of the fundamental problem that we're trying to address.

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Sana: Hmm… I'll come to Ashley, but Matthew…

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Sana: You know, often, often, I mean, yeah, generally people would say, yes, there is a loophole in the system, or…

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Sana: almost everyone will have that similar kind of experiences. But, you know, many times, you know, very few will say, oh, I had to figure it out myself, and that's what you have to also do. You know, it's a ruthless world out there. You have to figure it out yourself, you have to learn it by yourself. Yeah.

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Sana: Exactly, exactly. Where do you stand? I mean, you know, I myself, yeah, I mean, to some extent.

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Sana: we can talk about ownership, we can talk about, yeah, we have to, you know, own our own career trajectories, we have to figure it out, but still, I mean, it's kind of… sometimes it feels like the entire onus is upon us only to figure everything out.

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Matthew Thurman: Yeah, I think you're exactly right, and that's problematic for several reasons, and I think just fundamentally incorrect. So first.

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Matthew Thurman: You're not going to be able to figure it out ahead of time, or without making mistakes.

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Matthew Thurman: So, you're guaranteeing that people are gonna struggle, at least initially, early on.

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Matthew Thurman: Second, you're counting on certain kinds of workplaces, and that people get mentorship and help they need, and that doesn't always happen, because the truth is, most professionals, 30, 40, 50-year-olds, still don't know what they're doing.

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Matthew Thurman: It's harsh to say, but it's true.

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Matthew Thurman: And it's actually the case that those tasks I outlined there, so resume, networking, interviewing, problem solving, communication, and emotional intelligence, what our line about that is.

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Matthew Thurman: Those are not vague concepts floating out in space. They're extremely precise, explicit expectations.

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Matthew Thurman: There is an extremely precise expectation inside an interview for how you prepare and execute a behavioral interview question.

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Matthew Thurman: And it is very, very well understood how to master that process.

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Matthew Thurman: But, very, very few people have ever been taught or shown how to do that.

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Matthew Thurman: So, on the one hand, from a kind of society-level perspective, it's extremely discouraging that we're not preparing generations of students to enter and thrive in the workforce, but the opportunity for everyone who cares to listen to it is

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Matthew Thurman: If you build those skills, which you can learn before you enter the workplace, you are going to have a massive and durable advantage over everyone else.

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Matthew Thurman: When you learn the job-getting skills.

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Matthew Thurman: you get jobs more consistently. And when you learn the job working skills, you show up at work and distinguish yourself early on, and you have that powerful first impression, and you're more advanced than your cohort, guess who gets promoted first? Guess who gets the better projects? Guess who gets the better mentors?

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Matthew Thurman: So, completely agree. I think it's…

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Matthew Thurman: It's a profound error for us at a society level to tell students, this is your problem, figure it out later like we did, and good luck to you. That costs all of us, because these are things we can teach you ahead of time, and not learning them ahead of time is a huge missed opportunity.

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Sana: Absolutely.

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Sana: Ashley, I'll, I mean… from a psychological standpoint, I…

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Sana: I… I mean, I cannot quantify how much, heavy, how much…

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Sana: discouraging it can be, you know, when a young person arrives in the professional world, things don't magically work out the way they were…

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Sana: shown to, or told to, what tends to happen to them internally? You know, what does that gap

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Sana: Due to a person's sense of self-worth identity.

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Ashley Stafford: That's a great question, and I would say… so, I would liken the skills we're talking to… talking about, to learning the piano, for example.

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Ashley Stafford: Absolutely, there are… there's a small percentage of people that come to learn the piano that are true prodigies, that will pick it up lightning fast and play it at a level most of us never will.

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Ashley Stafford: And then on the opposite end, there are people that will spend hours and hours on the piano and never realistically become proficient. But the vast majority of people fall into that middle category, where it's a product of

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Ashley Stafford: What kind of work, time, and effort are you willing to give it?

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Ashley Stafford: So I would say that a lot of the students we work with, in fact, we call our program Life's Hidden Curriculum. I would say one of their mistakes they make is they don't realize the curriculum even exists, so there is this set of skills.

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Ashley Stafford: That, that we all learn and that benefit everybody. And then I would say maybe the second mistake is assuming that,

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Ashley Stafford: well, I have to be a prodigy at it. Like, it's something people are just kind of naturally good at, or they're naturally terrible at, and it can't be learned.

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Ashley Stafford: But I would push back and say, like the piano, the majority of people who play really, really well, did so with practice and mentorship.

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Ashley Stafford: And there was a curriculum that they took in order to gain that proficiency. So I would say once they make that adjustment, they're in a much better headspace, but to answer your question more specifically, when people haven't made that adjustment, they're risking their sense of self-esteem and confidence getting battered by, first of all, the interview process. And then if they get a job, feeling like their best is just mediocre compared

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Ashley Stafford: to everybody else. And I think it's… it becomes kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It keeps them from fully engaging in their work.

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Ashley Stafford: And it keeps them focused on themselves as they pro- the problem, and those problems as unfixable.

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Sana: Hmm, hmm. And actually, your, PR example, it kind of,

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Sana: brought this, kind of parallel, you know, to what we say about leadership, that people are…

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Sana: you know, porn leaders, it's a gift. Not everyone can be a good leader. Yes, not everyone can be a leader or a good leader.

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Sana: But then… The leadership, it can be learned… it can be taught, it can be mentored, and…

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Sana: you know, we see this kind of… I shouldn't say anomaly, but this, there's no relation between that. If a person is a high achiever, they are the best individual contributors, they're equally well at people management or leadership, roles as well. I mean.

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Sana: It can be a very different kind of scenario.

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Sana: So that… that is something that I was, you know, kind of thinking when you were sharing about it, Ashley.

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Ashley Stafford: I think that's really well said, and two, when people say, oh, well, I'm not a natural leader, what it kind of gives away is they have a really def… a really narrow definition of what leadership is.

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Ashley Stafford: There are many ways to be an effective leader, and there's usually a way to find one that is a better fit for your personality, instead of you trying to approximate what you think that means.

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Ashley Stafford: So yeah, I agree with you completely.

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Matthew Thurman: I'll just give one quick example, too, if I can. So, I worked with… or I work with a lot of students, again, trying to build some of these job-getting skills and enter the workforce.

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Matthew Thurman: And one that's always stood out to me from a few years ago, was a young lady in graduate school, who was so intimidated by the interview process and had so little experience and skill that in our small program, she actually refused to speak out loud.

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Matthew Thurman: like, would not answer questions, and kind of came to me after our first class and said, hey, I didn't mean to be rude, I'm so sorry, but I simply cannot do this, it's completely overwhelmed me, I'm so nervous, blah blah blah.

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Matthew Thurman: I don't know if I can even stick this out. And we kind of talked through it a bit, and I said, hey, just hang out, see if maybe we can learn and make some small steps, and progress can be success here. And I'm not exaggerating. She stuck it out, kept working, and 8 weeks later was the first person from her program ever.

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Matthew Thurman: Ever to get offers from McKinsey, Bain, and BCG in the same cycle.

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Sana: Oh, wow.

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Matthew Thurman: So, I always think of that young lady as wherever you think you're starting… now, of course, that's not a typical result, but wherever you're starting, if you lock yourself into that place, you'll never know what you could have done.

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Matthew Thurman: And you're never gonna grow and get the skills you need, whatever the outcomes are that you're looking for. So, anyways, I always think of her as an example of where you're starting is nowhere near as important as the work you put on and the progress you make.

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Sana: Absolutely, that's a brilliant success story, Matthew, honestly, and thankful that you shared it, because it's not about the,

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Sana: the quality of opportunities she got, I think it's more about…

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Sana: her courage, that she did move forward, and it's not that overnight she, you know, got the opportunity. She was great at, you know, being in interviews. It's about she still…

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Sana: move forward, and you know, that's… I think that's… That's…

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Sana: a very… you know, that's a step of bravery. You need a lot of courage, because

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Sana: especially, if I can recollect, you know, from my own experiences, you know, some of the most horrible experiences and interviews.

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Sana: you know, kind of the same feeling I had, you know. I couldn't even look myself in the mirror.

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Sana: always thought, you know, about myself that, you know, I do not deserve this job, or I do not even deserve to be, you know, working. Maybe, you know, I'm not good with people, I'm not good in the office. You know, you become very conscious about yourself. So.

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Sana: I think that's a… that's a very, very, once again, challenging place to be in. And kind of, you know, this question is to both… both of you, Matthew and Ashley.

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Sana: So, talking about Pathfinder, it focuses on career prep, professional skills, and then emotional intelligence also, alongside practical job hunt mechanics. And

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Sana: this combination is interesting because, you know, mostly we see the heavy tactical side of this. There's, you know, people talk about resume, LinkedIn, interview. We see of, you know, consultants who will tell you that, you know, I can help you with

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Sana: the areas part, now we have the AI, so how, you know, you can use AI to write a good resume and all that.

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Sana: But you are pointing at something foundational. So,

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Sana: Coming to Matthew first, what are the skills that genuinely determine whether a young professional thrives? And why does the university system largely fail in there?

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Matthew Thurman: Yeah, I think, that's a great question. So, from the…

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Matthew Thurman: There's a… there's, of course a constellation of things that lead to our success professionally, and it ranges from the skills and tactics we deploy, to our background and education, and then to the statistical noise and luck, and whether or not we get the right mentor or project or whatever, and all this kind of stuff.

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Matthew Thurman: Just to kind of focus on a piece of that question that you teed up with EI,

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Matthew Thurman: You're right, you can learn tactics and skills, kind of robotically, and we just knew, before we even formed this company, memorizing steps and painting by numbers, or punching things into chat GPT, is not how you drive real outcomes.

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Matthew Thurman: honestly, it can't even build you a good resume, despite what people think, but it definitely… reading its guidance on networking, as an example, or how to run a meeting, or how to give feedback to your boss, doesn't make you good at those things. And so we knew there needed to be an educational and practice-based

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Matthew Thurman: Kind of guidance around emotional intelligence.

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Matthew Thurman: And, I may have said this earlier, but it really, like, the way we see it, it is the lens through which everything you do flows.

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Matthew Thurman: So, if you're gonna write an email, you're using your emotional intelligence to decide how to write that email, how to connect with that person, how to empathize with where they'll be when they're reading it, so on and so forth, and every single other thing we do in the workplace. So, I knew, like, hey, I can…

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Matthew Thurman: I can… we did over a thousand hours of research to build all the…

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Matthew Thurman: workbooks and things we teach, but I thought, I can learn a lot of this workplace stuff and synthesize it and put it into programs, but if I don't have someone who's

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Matthew Thurman: expert at teaching the emotional intelligence side, it's never going to be brought to life and maximize its value the way we need it to. And so that's why the kind of professional and emotional intelligence pieces were both incredibly necessary to what we're trying to do, and why I begged Dr. Stafford to come help out.

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Sana: because you.

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Matthew Thurman: just ask my wife. I'm not qualified to teach emotional intelligence, you know, so…

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Sana: Yeah.

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Matthew Thurman: Yeah, that was just very, important to us, and I think also something that differentiates us a little bit from how others think about these things.

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Sana: Absolutely, and Ashley, I had to come to you, because emotional intelligence

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Sana: is your focus area, one of your focus areas, and I think now it's becoming super, super critical in today's drainage as well. So…

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Sana: In a business context, I think that phrase can get watered down quickly, you know, just like terms around authenticity or vulnerability. What does emotional intelligence actually mean for a, let's say, 22-year-old just starting out?

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Sana: Hmm.

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Matthew Thurman: Oh, no, we lost her. I'm sorry about the technical difficulties, so… so you're stuck with me. I'll give you the B-minus version of the answer for how we teach it. So, Dr. Stafford developed what we call an IMU framework, an Identify, Manage, Use framework.

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Matthew Thurman: And we take 3 angles on emotional intelligence. So there's the physiological, your body, the cognitive in your mind, and the emotional.

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Matthew Thurman: And the idea with the identify, manage, use is that we can train people to… She's back, back to rescue me.

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Sana: Oh, goodness.

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Matthew Thurman: Good.

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Ashley Stafford: So, emotional intelligence, the definition that I use, because there are several out there, is one from the original researchers of the concept, who were named Meyer and Solovi, and emotional intelligence is the ability to reason validly with emotional material, and use that to enhance thought.

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Ashley Stafford: So, to a younger student who's starting out.

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Ashley Stafford: The techniques that we teach really are good, basic emotional awareness of the self.

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Sana: And…

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Ashley Stafford: others. So, it's maintaining awareness of what's going on inside you, how your emotions may be hijacked or interfering with you trying to solve a problem.

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Ashley Stafford: and the ability to be aware of what someone else is feeling, and respond in a way that attunes to that feeling. So we strongly suggest that our students start out really getting better at identifying, am I nervous right now? Am I anxious? Do I have imposter syndrome? Do I feel inferior? Then we move to the next part, which is helping them identify what other people are feeling.

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Ashley Stafford: Is this person upset with me? Do they seem nervous as well? Do they seem neutral, and I'm seeing it as criticism?

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Ashley Stafford: The other techniques we use involve looking at our thoughts, making sure we're not making assumptions, like trying to read people's minds, or trying to predict the future.

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Ashley Stafford: We don't like to think that we think in irrational ways, but we really invite people to sort of capture and closely examine the way that they're thinking and feeling so that they can respond in ways that are appropriate to the situation and are effective in solving problems.

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Matthew Thurman: Well done, Ashley. And can I ask you to add, I was just about to start into the IMU framework with the kind of physiological… can you maybe say a couple words about that?

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Ashley Stafford: Absolutely. So, for Pathfinder purposes, we developed something called the IMU framework, which stands for Identify, Manage, Use. And so, we start with that identify piece. So, like I said before, you know, what am I feeling, what am I thinking, and we even add the physiological element of what is going on in my body, because that's actually your brain's first cue to what's going on and how you're interpreting the situation.

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Ashley Stafford: Then we pop over to Manage, where we teach techniques where you will learn to calm your physiology, or activate your physiology as you need, and then manage your emotions and your thoughts by making sure, like I said before, you're not mind-reading or assuming things.

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Ashley Stafford: And then we move on to the use step, where we take that information and formulate the response we want to employ moving forward. So…

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Ashley Stafford: what do we want to say during a feedback session? How do we want to follow up with people if a conversation didn't go how we expected? It's really based heavily in my experience as a clinical psychologist, where, I was noticing that with some of my C-suite clients, or even with some of my middle management clients.

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Ashley Stafford: how many problems, how much inefficiency was caused by, or just how many people quit jobs over fundamentally emotional issues. And that kind of reinforced the importance of really addressing it thoroughly in our program.

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Sana: Hmm. Hmm.

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Sana: I think it's not just about, you know, Being a more prepared professional.

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Sana: I think this also means, you know, becoming a more grounded person. I mean,

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Sana: it's not just about, you know, that, and coming to what, Matthew, you shared, it's also not about that you just learn to write

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Sana: a good or a better resume, you refine your LinkedIn profile, you learn some tips and tricks for interview, and that's it, you are done, you're ready to go out there, guns blazing. It's more like, you know, as Ashley, Dr. Ashke, you mentioned, the ability to read a room.

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Sana: first read ourselves, then, you know, when you are in conversations,

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Sana: You know, there's this particular,

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Sana: incident, or a story from my own journey, you know, in workplace. It was a very small team, a startup, where

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Sana: we were a team of just 5 people, and I was the only one person out of the two teams… sales team, you can say. Yeah, it was B2B, corporate… corporate sales. And,

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Sana: I was just, you know, kind of in the zone of doing my work, just doing… do your work.

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Sana: perform, you'll get the recognition. And the person whom I was reporting to, so…

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Sana: there were some very serious issues, serious concerns about the way of working, some related to ethics as well, and the way of approaching a specific, you know, problem, and something that didn't go well with the current manager, so a new manager came.

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Sana: And…

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Sana: okay, I thought maybe I could emotionally, you know, connect with that manager, and I kind of shared that, you know, kind of, you know, in the unfiltered way, without anything kind of restricted, not understanding

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Sana: you know, what it can cause as a repercussion. So, it kind of completely went against me only.

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Sana: So, that was the day, honestly, Matthew and Ashley, I learned that you have to be very careful

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Sana: When you are specially, you know, discussing about your team.

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Sana: The way everything works, especially, you know, someone is coming at a new leadership position, or it's not about leadership position, but as a team member, when you are, you know, having a new person there, the way it has to be taken up, it is… you have to be very mindful, very, very careful.

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Matthew Thurman: 100%. That's so true.

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Matthew Thurman: Yeah, maybe we'd… I don't know if we'd like it more to be in a different kind of universe, but the…

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Matthew Thurman: the technical skills, the domain knowledge, our work activity is just a small pe… well, piece, and sometimes a small piece of our workplace impact. And this other stuff is so, so important. And you mentioned AI earlier, so I'll just…

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Matthew Thurman: pile on to say, regardless of the impact AI ultimately has, one thing it's going to do for sure is raise the floor on productivity, and the ability to create structure, and ideate, and project management, and process creation, and so on.

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Matthew Thurman: So to the extent it does raise that floor for everyone, guess what else becomes more important?

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Matthew Thurman: How you work with people.

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Matthew Thurman: So… And again, with that lens of EI through the job-getting and job-working tasks.

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Matthew Thurman: even if AI wipes out 1% of the job workforce, or 50%, the remaining jobs are going to go to the people that are building and leveraging their EI across these skills.

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Matthew Thurman: So it just…

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Matthew Thurman: Of course, we hope it goes well for everybody that AI doesn't, does more good than harm, but regardless, you still have to get these things right, or else none of the other stuff's gonna matter.

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Sana: Absolutely, absolutely. Ashley, I'll, I'll,

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Sana: you know, come to you before we wrap up. I know we are way beyond the minute mark, but still, Pathfinder has 32-hour in-class program.

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Sana: There is an 8-hour online format, workshops for schools, nonprofits, universities. It's a real structured intervention. So, with your psychological background shaping how the program is designed, what does it actually do to a young person across those hours? Like, what are you intentionally trying to shift at a deeper level, not just

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Sana: For the skill building.

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Ashley Stafford: We have, what we've tried to create is a multi-pronged approach, where the first step is always some type of self-assessment. So we're trying to challenge our students to ask themselves first, where am I across these domains? Where am I… where's my current skill set at?

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Ashley Stafford: In our program, we build in a lot of didactics, so essentially, like, just us telling you, here's how you do this thing. The third thing we include in our program is in-class practice, so getting into groups, getting with a partner, and trying it out.

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Ashley Stafford: And then I would say the fourth piece, and potentially the most essential, is the homework. Like, the stuff you take home and do.

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Sana: to practice.

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Ashley Stafford: With the people who love you, the people you live with. So, what we're trying to do with that approach is, you know, everyone… it's pretty easy to convince our students that they need this material, but we're trying to teach not by entertainment, necessarily, but by engagement.

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Ashley Stafford: So, giving as many different ways as we can think of to deliver the same material so that it can fit their particular brain.

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Sana: Hmm… Matthews.

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Matthew Thurman: I'd just add on one thing that might be interesting to your listeners, at least our perspective on it is.

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Matthew Thurman: These are big topics, but they're manageable topics. So it… we take 3 or 4 hours to teach resumes, and then our students typically need to spend 5 to at most 10 more hours crafting their resume.

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Matthew Thurman: We teach networking in 4 or 5 hours, and then in our experience, it's 30, 40, 50 hours of practice, and coffee chats, and Zoom chats, and reaching out to people and all of that before you're a pretty decent networker.

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Matthew Thurman: Same, similar kind of number for interview prep. So, the point of that is we open the doors to these topics, and give you the frameworks, and the scripts and the tools, and we start practicing in a safe environment, and then we're really explicit about

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Matthew Thurman: this is what you need to do next. You're not walking out of here a Jedi. You have a few dozen more hours where you need to really build this skill. But here's the good news. Once you build it, your 80,000-hour career

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Matthew Thurman: completely changes, because these are such profound gatekeeping skills. So if you can put in… learn with us, or whoever, and then spend a few dozen hours on your interview skills.

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Matthew Thurman: everything flips to easy mode, and that 80,000 hours you spend in the workplace is of a completely different nature. So, again, it's hard work, but it's manageable work for people that are interested.

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Sana: I think,

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Sana: It's, compassionate and really honest. Yes, there is work, but then it is doable, it is manageable.

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Sana: Of course, with help and support and guidance. And, before we wrap up, Matthew and Ashley, you both, left established professional careers to build Pathfinder. Matthew, you walked away from McKinsey. Ashley, you stepped

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Sana: outside a decade of clinical practice. I mean.

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Sana: what do you want Pathfinder to look like, you know, 10 years, not even 10 years, let's talk about 5 years from now.

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Matthew Thurman: I think, yeah, I appreciate that question. A couple.

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Sana: Hmm.

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Matthew Thurman: different goals or aspirations. It probably sounds a little corny, but fundamentally, we love this material, and we love helping people.

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Matthew Thurman: So, that… that really drive… drove a lot of the decision to move.

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Matthew Thurman: From a business perspective, we would be thrilled to be able to continue to do this professionally for the foreseeable future.

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Matthew Thurman: From a aspirational, you know, amazing outcome, we love to inspire others to do this kind of work, too, so that a small industry starts to form. In the United States, we have a $12 billion test prep industry.

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Matthew Thurman: Where thousands of professionals teach millions of students how to take their entrance exams and things like that, and we have nothing like this. There is no industry preparing people to build

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Matthew Thurman: And master the job-getting and job-working skills that we all need, and we need that industry.

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Matthew Thurman: So, yeah, that's kind of my take. Ashley, anything to add to that?

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Ashley Stafford: I couldn't agree more. Yeah, we… I think we would love to see this kind of stuff standardized, like, for it to become widespread that there… there is a right way to do some of this stuff.

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Sana: Absolutely, absolutely. And genuinely, I, I wholeheartedly, you know, I…

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Sana: believe, I wish this becomes, you know.

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Sana: a part of the industry, and not only industry, but, you know, in every, college or universities, this is, taken seriously. It's not just the typical placement prep or the job, prep, but actually

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Sana: you know, not just about the technical skills, but the life skills as well. And making it democratized for everyone. So…

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Sana: Thank you to both of you, Matthew and Ashley, for being here for such…

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Sana: an enriching and honest conversation. For me, it was kind of a cathartic one. I'm really happy you guys are doing this, so yes, if our listeners, maybe, you know, they may not be,

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Sana: you know, young or… for someone, they may know who is actually… who need this. If they would like to explore more about Pathfinder, and they would reach out to both of you guys, what are the best ways?

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Matthew Thurman: Yeah, appreciate that. So, we work with students and young professionals from their teen years to their mid-20s. You can find us on the web at www.pathfindercareerprep.com, and you can reach either of us directly by email at our firstname.urlastname at pathfindercare.

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:: 51:42

Matthew Thurman: careerprep.com, so matthew.thurman and ashley.stafford. We do free consultations, we work with people one-on-one, including remotely. We're, yeah, we're passionate about this stuff and happy to help, so reach out if you want to learn more.

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Sana: Absolutely, and yes, business and, every, everyone. I'll have all the links mentioned in the show notes, so go to check out Pathfinder, and Matthew and Dr. Ashley, thank you so much for being here. This was really, really much needed.

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Ashley Stafford: Thank you.

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Ashley Stafford: it.

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Matthew Thurman: Appreciate it.

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Sana: And, yes, thank you to all of, all of the listeners for being here, for showing up, and one thing, I think this was the kind of conversation, I think.

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Sana: We all needed to hear today, or tonight, especially the ones who have been

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Sana: blaming themselves for a gap that was never their fault to begin with. So, yeah, whether you are a student, a recent grad, a manager, or a parent.

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Sana: The path forward is real, it just needs to be built properly. And that's exactly what Pathfinder is here to do. Until next time, this is Bizplend. I am Sana. I'll catch you in the next episode. Thank you so much.