- A Schultz Family Foundation/HarrisX study found seven in ten young adults find career and education opportunities on social platforms; four in ten actively seek that content.
- Only 16% of parents encourage social media for career exploration—highlighting a generational guidance gap.
- Cybersecurity creator Nav Karmacharya fields hundreds of daily questions, showing how niche experts fill mentorship vacuums traditional systems leave.
- Macro creators like Sam DeMase address widespread anxiety about pivots, competition, and AI, while urging job seekers to identify their “superpowers.”
- Employers and schools must respond with honest, scalable mentorship and content—or watch creators permanently own the guidance role.
Seven in ten young adults now scout jobs and education paths on social platforms, sidelining campus counselors and job boards.
Nav Karmacharya didn’t set out to replace a guidance office. The 23‑year‑old cybersecurity analyst started posting “day in my life” clips, quick explainers on governance, risk and compliance, and blunt advice about breaking into non‑technical cybersecurity roles.
Four months later, he’d attracted around 14,000 followers, mostly students and early‑career professionals who now flood his DMs and TikTok Lives with hundreds of questions a day.
“I feel like a job coach and mentor most days,” he told Fortune. The most common query?
His answer typically steers people away from credential obsession and toward hands‑on experience, soft skills, and networking—gaps he sees traditional channels failing to fill.
Karmacharya is one face of a much broader shift captured by a new study from the Schultz Family Foundation and research firm HarrisX: seven in ten young adults aged 16–24 say they find educational and career opportunities on social media. Four in ten actively seek career content; another 30% stumble on it passively while scrolling.
By contrast, fewer than one in five parents in the same study encouraged their kids to use social platforms for career exploration. The dissonance is telling. While adults cling to counselors, job boards, and LinkedIn, Gen Z is rebuilding the career center on TikTok.
Why a Cybersecurity Analyst Becomes a Mentor
Karmacharya’s niche—cybersecurity governance and compliance—exposes the heart of #CareerTok’s appeal. It’s not just about generic resume tips; it’s access to insiders in specialized fields that schools rarely demystify.
“A lot of students don’t have strong mentorship from professors or peers, so they turn to creators online who are already doing the kind of work they want to do,” he said. His two‑hour live stream on July 9 drew more than 600 comments—effectively a rolling office hour, open to anyone with Wi‑Fi.
@itsnav.k This is a high level overview of the GRC Cybersecurity road map! If you want my personal guidance and mentorship, set up a free 20 minute slot with me and see if the GRC internship program I offer might be a good fit for you! #cybersecurity #cybersecurityanalyst #cybersecuritygrc #grc
Dritan Nesho, CEO of HarrisX, framed it bluntly: young adults are substituting “day‑in‑the‑life content on social media for job shadowing and hard‑to‑find real-life exposure.” Internships are scarce; shadowing requires connections many don’t have. A creator with a phone can close that gap in ten minutes of vertical video.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, managing director at the Schultz Family Foundation, went further: “Social media has really turned into the new career coach for young adults.” Not because Gen Z is addicted to apps (though they are), he argued, but because “traditional resources” are “misaligned” and “outdated.”
CareerTok’s Emotional Underpinning: Fear, Pivots, and AI Anxiety
Career influencer Sam DeMase—ZipRecruiter’s in‑house career expert with roughly 900,000 combined followers across TikTok and Instagram—says her audience is dominated by questions rooted in stress: how to pivot careers, stand out in a market where postings vanish after 48 hours, set boundaries in a first job, negotiate offers in a shaky economy.
For Gen Z, she adds, there’s a specific layer: “Is my entry-level job going to be replaced by AI?” The anxiety is palpable, but so is the desire for agency. DeMase starts by helping people articulate their “superpowers”—the three things they’re really good at—because without that, she says, it’s “really difficult to build a powerful resume, interview narrative, and value proposition.”
@apowermood OK BOOMER. Between the current nightmare, job market, unpredictability, the rise of AI, and more, the younger generation is facing a lot of challenges when it comes to securing employment. #unemployment#economy#labormarket#genz#millennial#boomer#okboomer
That concept translates back into leadership, too. DeMase advises managers to identify and celebrate their team’s strengths, even using tools like CliftonStrengths and dedicating recurring one‑on‑one time to professional development.
In other words, the behavior Gen Z seeks from creators—individualized guidance, clear roadmaps, accountability—they also expect from employers.
Instagram and TikTok, Not LinkedIn
The study behind these insights found Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are the dominant daily platforms for career exploration among the 40% who actively seek it. LinkedIn, despite its professional veneer, ranks near the bottom for daily use in this subgroup. That isn’t a contradiction; it’s a comment on usability and relatability. LinkedIn feels like a polished lobby. TikTok feels like the back office where the real talk happens.
For creators like Karmacharya, TikTok’s format is the point. Short clips make niche concepts digestible; live streams let him triage dozens of questions in real time. The parasocial dynamic—intimacy without proximity—creates a mentorship loop at scale. One cyber analyst can guide hundreds of aspiring peers, and those peers can validate and amplify each other in the comments.
The Mentorship Void—and the Warning Sign
Four in ten young adults in the Schultz/HarrisX survey said the education and employment resources available to them “fail to provide effective career guidance.” Chandrasekaran reads that as both ingenuity and alarm: young people are “harness[ing] social media for good,” but it’s also “a warning sign that traditional institutions that should be helping…are failing.”
Nesho echoes that employers leave “big gaps” by not offering enough internships and mentorship. CareerTok is a workaround—but it shouldn’t have to be.
That disconnect shows up at home, too. Only 16% of parents surveyed encouraged social media as a career tool. Parents still imagine guidance counselors and job fairs as the path. Their kids are getting tactical scripts for boundary setting, negotiating, and pivoting—in real time—from creators they choose.
The Creator Career Ladder: Not Just Generalists
It’s tempting to lump all career creators together, but their roles bifurcate. There are macro voices like DeMase or AdviceWithErin (2.2 million Instagram followers, reels that have hit 50 million plays) doling out universal job‑search advice.
Then there are specialists like Karmacharya serving narrow verticals with high barriers to entry. Both matter. The generalists soothe panic and provide templates; the specialists translate industry jargon and map real pathways (what internship actually helps in GRC? What’s valued more than certs?).
That two‑tier system is why CareerTok works: breadth for context, depth for action.
What Employers and Schools Should Do—Beyond “Get on TikTok”
The takeaway isn’t “start a brand account and hope.” It’s to study why #CareerTok resonates and rebuild support accordingly.
- Open your doors digitally. If job shadowing is scarce, consider structured “day in the life” content from your own employees—unedited, honest, and accessible.
- Invest in mentorship at scale. If a 23‑year‑old can manage hundreds of DMs, a Fortune 500 can fund digital mentorship hubs, AMAs, and cohort-based guidance programs.
- Speak human, not HR. CareerTok’s tone is direct, empathetic, and practical. Scrap jargon-heavy career pages in favor of content that answers real questions (How do I pivot from retail to data analytics?) in plain language.
- Empower managers to coach. DeMase’s prescription—dedicated agenda time for growth, explicit strength-spotting—is a checklist every people leader can adopt tomorrow.
- Acknowledge the fear. Whether it’s AI displacement or application black holes, Gen Z isn’t paranoid; they’re observing. Address those concerns head‑on in your employer branding and communications.
Of course, a decentralized career center has flaws. Not every influencer is qualified. Advice can be contradictory. Algorithms can prioritize engagement over accuracy. That’s precisely why universities, nonprofits, and employers need to step up—not to replace CareerTok, but to complement it with vetted resources, transparent pathways, and accessible internships.
CareerTok Isn’t a Fad—It’s a Fix
Karmacharya’s inbox won’t slow anytime soon. As long as institutions remain slow, scarce, or tone‑deaf, Gen Z will keep outsourcing career navigation to peers and creators.
“Adults who are supposed to be guiding and supporting young people…are misaligned,” Chandrasekaran said. The young adults didn’t wait. They built their own system—imperfect, messy, but alive.
For brands and schools, the mandate is clear: stop dismissing TikTok as a distraction and start treating it as data. The questions flooding creators’ DMs are a diagnostic on everything you’re not answering. The sooner you respond—in your own channels, with your own people—the less those students will need to seek out a 23‑year‑old analyst to plan their future.
Until then, CareerTok is the new career center. And it’s open 24/7.
