FOR COLLEGE PARENTS
Right now, your student's plan is the apply button.
It is most students' plan. Find the posting, upload the resume, hit submit, wait. Then do it again, and again, and nothing comes back. Nobody taught them anything else, and nobody on campus is going to show them another way in.
The trouble is that the good roles are usually filled before they ever reach the job board. Companies choose next summer's interns in the fall. Offers to this year's graduating class are going out now. So by the time a posting is public, someone in the building usually knows who they want.
You're probably not worried. But you've wondered. So when you ask how it's going, you hear that it's fine.
There is still time to be early. But early only matters if someone shows them how.
WHAT FINE ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
Your student is working hard. Their job search isn't.
Right now school comes first, which is exactly what you would want. Classes are hard, the year is underway, and the job search feels like something that can wait until spring.
Your student's job search probably looks something like this. A few applications submitted. An info session on campus. A career fair, a resume workshop. Conversations with friends who are all doing the same things.
Then there is the networking, which is usually a handful of LinkedIn messages sent to strangers asking for a referral. Those messages are not rude or lazy. They are just the hundredth version of a message that person received this month, so it gets ignored without a reply.
Most students measure progress by application count, because it's visible, it's measurable, and it's what everyone around them is doing.
None of it is wasted exactly. But it is the same bet, placed over and over. If your student wins the applicant pool lottery, something comes back. Most months, nothing does.
Fine isn't a plan.
THE OTHER WAY IN
The best roles are filled by referral, not by application.
A referral doesn't move your student to the top of the pile. It skips the pile entirely. Their resume gets forwarded by email, or their name comes up in a breakroom conversation, often before the job is posted and sometimes before they've applied anywhere at all.
That works because a referral is already a screen. Someone the hiring manager trusts has put their own name next to your student's, and that is worth more than anything on a resume.
I ran campus recruiting for two decades, and roughly three quarters of the interns we hired came out of the fall season. Not because spring candidates were weaker, but because by spring the strongest ones were already spoken for.
The question most parents ask is how the applications are going. The better question is, "who have you been talking to?"
Nobody gets hired by a company.
They get hired by a person.
You've probably heard the word networking and thought of something slightly transactional. Your student thinks so too. It's why their messages to strangers felt like the only option.
There is a rule underneath this, and it isn't a soft one. A real referral comes from someone putting their own name on the line for your student. Nobody does that for a stranger, because if the person turns out to be a bad fit, it's their judgment that looks wrong. So the ask has to come after the relationship, never before it.
The goal is to become the person someone will vouch for.
It starts with a conversation. Your student finds someone doing work they're actually curious about and asks how they got there. No favor, no resume, no ask of any kind.
The referral comes later, if it comes, from someone who by then actually knows them.
HOW YOUR STUDENT CHANGES
Confidence shows up before the offers do.
Ask a sophomore about their professional network and you'll usually get a blank stare. Nobody has ever asked them the question. They've heard the word networking, and it reminds them of name tags, mixers, and handshakes. But nobody invited them to that room.
So they apply instead. It's safe, it feels like progress every time they hit submit, and the discouragement lands weeks later. Meanwhile classmates are getting things, sometimes classmates with worse grades, and the only explanation that fits is that they knew somebody.
They're not wrong. It is about who you know. What they don't see is the year those classmates spent building those relationships.
Your student still has time to do the same.
A network comes from more places than most people realize. Part of it your family already has. Part of it lives with professionals and alumni doing work your student is curious about. And part of it is sitting right next to them, in their own peer group. The hard part is finding the right ones, and knowing how to engage them.
All of it takes courage. The first informational interview is terrifying. The third one isn't. By the tenth, something has changed in how your student carries themselves.
The biggest transformation here is not the résumé. It is confidence, the kind that comes from doing a hard thing over and over until it becomes second nature.
In September, you asked how it was going and heard that it was fine. Somewhere around November, the answer becomes, "I'm feeling really good about it."
WHO IS GUIDING YOUR STUDENT
Erik Miller
Founder, Intern Sherpa
For more than twenty years, I have sat on the other side of the hiring table.
I know what makes a recruiter stop scrolling. I know what hiring managers actually talk about after an interview ends. That knowledge isn't in any book or video.
It comes from being in the room.
Over those years, the students I've hired, coached, and mentored have grown into careers of their own. Many are now the recruiters, engineers, and hiring managers on the other side of the table, and they remember what it meant to have someone in their corner.
I'm careful with those relationships. I don't tap into them lightly, and I make no promises about where any introduction leads. But when the moment is right and your student has earned it, they won't be starting from zero like everyone else. They'll have someone who can open a door, and a reason for the person on the other side to say yes.
They will be welcomed into something I have spent my whole career building.
HOW I WORK AND WHY IT MATTERS
Your student is my client.
What they share with me in our sessions stays between us. Professors grade them. Employers will evaluate them. And even you, lovingly, carry expectations they can feel. I carry none of those roles.
I am not a reporting service, and I am not a way to manage your student from a distance. I am the one adult in their life whose only job is their career success.
HOW TO BEGIN
Choose where to start.
Pathfinder by Intern Sherpa is a year-long guided program for students serious about turning their education into a career, and for families who want to know the path is being walked thoughtfully, not left to chance.
Each student works with me directly, one on one, every two weeks across the full academic year. Together we build their direction, their relationships, their confidence, and their plan.
Sessions every two weeks
A clear path between each one
A progress summary, shared on their terms
And every couple of weeks, your student writes up where things stand, and shares it with you. Not because they have to, but because for the first time, the answer to "how is it going?" isn't "fine." It's real, and it's theirs.
Most families begin with the full year. It is the version of this work that changes your student the most.
Erik takes ten students a year.
Any more and the work stops being personal.
Full Academic Year
$12,000
Nine months · biweekly 1:1 sessions
The complete journey. Direction, relationships, confidence, and a plan, built over a full year of working together. This is where the real transformation happens.
THE FLAGSHIP
THE FLAGSHIP
Semester
$7,500
One Semester
A focused start for students who want to test the water before committing to the year.
Role Support
$3,500
When a role is landed
Continued guidance through the first months of a new role. Offered when the moment comes.
Starting in the fall gives your student the most room. If you begin later, the work doesn't change but the calendar does, so we meet more often, usually three times a month instead of two. It's doable and it's harder. If your student is already well into their final year, ask me directly and I'll tell you honestly whether there's enough runway to be worth it.
When the ten openings are filled, they are filled.
It's still early.
That's the best reason to start.
You're not behind. You're early, and that's exactly the point. Let's talk about your student, where they are, where they want to go, and how we get them there. No pressure.
Just a conversation.
Or email Erik directly: erik@theinternsherpa.com