Hello and welcome to Career Sherpa!
Whether you are beginning your journey into the professional world after school, or trying to land a summer internship or job, I am here to help. I understand that a job search can seem daunting - it requires a lot of work, both in understanding what job you want, and then how to get it. And this may be the first time you will navigate an amorphous, complex process without the structure or guidance provided by your school or parents.
Adding to the challenge, if you’re still in school, you’re trying to keep up with your coursework and extracurricular commitments, and you’re also trying to squeeze some fun in before joining the real world. It’s a lot: you need to get going but there’s no deadline, there’s no one telling you what you need to be doing, and you don’t really know what you want. When faced with an indeterminate path, a natural response is to freeze, or procrastinate, and avoid taking that important first step.
Career Sherpa is here to help!
The Career Sherpa Approach
A sherpa is different from a guide, coach, or counselor. Like the others, a sherpa is an expert - someone who is highly experienced and has typically spent years developing a specialty. However, in addition to being an expert guide, a sherpa is constantly present, and a true partner in the detailed work of a climb, whether carrying supplies or helping climbers along the way. This kind of involved, empathetic, detail-oriented support is the hallmark of Career Sherpa.
I work one-on-one with students and recent graduates to develop a customized plan, provide accountability towards goals, and support the granular work of developing professional materials such as resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn profiles, and the mechanics of actually applying. This personalized approach breaks down the job search process into easily-digestible steps and provides a tailored level of assistance and/or accountability with the detailed mechanics of applying for positions.
A job search can involve many steps. I recognize that each student or recent graduate’s needs will be different; some will be further along on identifying target positions and will only need support in implementing a plan for applying, while others will benefit from self-reflection and exploration before beginning to apply. Some job seekers will want more support to stay motivated, so the plan may include accountability check-ins as well as body doubling to monitor platforms and job banks.
I will meet you where you are, with warmth and appreciation for your strengths, and together we will develop a customized plan.
Meet the Founder
Anne Miller, JD ACC, is the founder of Career Sherpa, as well as a career counselor with a DC-area law school. She practiced law for many years, both in federal service as well as private practice, and is an International Coaching Federation-Certified Coach. As a career counselor and a volunteer career coach with a local nonprofit, Anne has years of experience working with young adults, with a particular emphasis on professional identity formation and collaborating with students on the intricate details of a job search such as resumes, cover letters, and interview preparation.
Anne uses a relationship- and strengths-based approach when working with clients. She enjoys establishing a rapport, helping young adults to identify inherent strengths, and using that knowledge to guide career aspirations and bolster confidence and the ability to market themselves in the recruiting world.
Services Available
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During this 50-minute meeting, we will meet to discuss your goals and gain a sense of the scope of services that will best match your needs. After the initial consultation, I will provide a proposal with an estimate of time required for services to meet your goals.
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These sessions can include:
+ Identifying target positions
+ Developing detailed, granular strategy for exploration and applications
+ Advising on questions about specific applications
+ Collaborating to identify networking opportunities and best practices
+ Providing accountability and motivation
+ Discussing and identifying resources for any areas where you are stuck
+ Counseling on post-offer issues such as salary negotiation or weighing multiple offers
+ Body doubling for any of the other available services
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These services can include:
+ Providing you with samples and templates to draft a resume
+ Broad discussion of overall approach for the first draft
+ Reviewing drafts of resumes and cover letters until final
+ Providing suggestions for customizing cover letters to positions
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These services can include:
+ Ongoing checking of career websites, platforms, and job banks for open applications of target positions
+ Emailing you links for applying to target positions
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This can include:
+ Coaching on best practices for interviewing, including storytelling and the Challenge/Action/Result (CAR) technique
+ Detailed discussions of past work, school, or extracurricular activities to cultivate stories to use as examples in interviews
+ Preparing and practicing your “elevator pitch”
+ Strategizing and practicing responses to behavioral interview questions
+ Collaborating on appropriate questions to ask of the interviewer
+ Identifying practitioners in your chosen field to conduct mock interviews
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These services can include:
+ Advice for writing sample selection and excerpting, when required
+ Counseling related to format or content of portfolios, when required
+ Guidance and review of networking outreach correspondence
+ Guidance and review of LinkedIn and other social media content
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Consistent with client confidentiality, I am happy to meet with parents or anyone else on your team to discuss our work together.
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"At the time I graduated from college, I was having some mental health issues that really affected my ability to stay motivated and look for a job. I had taken pre-med coursework so was looking for a gap position for a few years while I applied to medical school. I met with Anne regularly to strategize my search and create a compelling resume and cover letters. I found the experience of checking different websites for open positions overwhelming, so Anne and I worked together to come up with a system for finding positions that would meet my goals. Anne sent me a posting for a medical scribe with a local ophthalmologist, I applied, and was offered the position shortly after that."
- Medical School Student
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"Anne helped me improve my resume by suggesting ways to quantify my accomplishments and also to choose content that would emphasize the 'overarching narrative' I hoped to convey. I think my message was much clearer after revising my resume and I received many more interviews, ultimately landing my current internship."
- Lockheed Martin Software Engineering Intern
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"I had just graduated from college and as a liberal arts major, was pretty directionless. Over several months, Anne and I worked together to figure out what career paths best matched my interests and abilities. My ultimate career goal required some graduate education, so Anne helped me figure out 'stepping stone' jobs that would give me the right kind of experience for my ultimate goals. I'm now on the path to my dream job of working in a university athletics department.
- Master’s in School Counseling Student