When Lauren McGoodwin graduated in 2009, she entered a job market that was slammed by the recession.
For the millions of highly qualified, ambitious, and hungry graduates, the opportunities available to them were dismal at best, and McGoodwin found herself treading in those murky waters. She felt lost and without guidance on where and how to start the next step of her life.
So when she received her first job offer as an admissions counselor at USC Ostrow School of Dentistry, McGoodwin jumped at the chance.
She quickly learned that she’d made a mistake. “I was the career center’s poster child. I had done a ton of research in college about jobs, went to every career center event, but I still graduated without a job, and then the job I got, I hated,” she says.
Feeling unsatisfied with her job, Los Angeles-based McGoodwin did some soul searching to find out what she really wanted to do.
Her own difficulties to finding the right job eventually led her to create Career Contessa, the one-stop shop for life and career advice for women by women. At any step in their careers, women can turn to the site to find inspirational success stories, learn more about the jobs that are out there, and ask questions of their own.
McGoodwin, realizing the disparity in career resources for millennial women, is on a mission to “help working women balance it all.” By providing a central base to allow women to hold “honest conversations with real women about work and life,” Career Contessa provides resources to women struggling to find career direction, something McGoodwin knows all too well about.
While it may seem that the idea for a career resource for women sort of landed in her lap, McGoodwin, unbeknownst even to her, had been setting herself up for a life of helping others all along.
In high school, McGoodwin quit her retail position at Old Navy to join her school’s swim team. Throughout college, she had studied to become a teacher, and although she is not a teacher now in the traditional sense, she offers valuable life lessons to her readers on Career Contessa.
“I really love helping people reach their goals. That’s something very personal,” she says. “I think a part of why Career Contessa has found success is because we hit this emotional chord with people when we are talking about and giving advice on careers.”
And while these experiences have all shaped McGoodwin, she recalls the job that turned her views around and really gave her a new stance on work life. Realizing that recruitment was one of her strong suits, McGoodwin did some hardcore research, ultimately landing her a coveted position at Hulu in talent acquisition.
The drive was undoubtedly there, with McGoodwin going on close to 30 informational interviews to learn about the job. After comprehending the company’s expectations and what she could offer as a recruiter, McGoodwin began working at Hulu, and she loved it.
“I really experienced firsthand the difference that loving your job can have on the rest of your life. My job was making life’s course run a little better,” she says.
She used to believe that work and life were two separate entities, but McGoodwin found that it was a delicate balance. And with Career Contessa, McGoodwin strives to help other women discover their passions so that they too can find their perfect balance.
In creating Career Contessa, McGoodwin employed her steadfast ambition to compile an inventory of interviews for the launch of her site, all while maintaining her full-time job at Hulu.
“I worked on it for about close to 18 months collecting interviews. Luckily there were a bunch of women who were taking a chance on me when I told them about this future concept called ‘Career Contessa’ and were willing to give me an hour of their time to help,” she says.
And while it was surely no easy task juggling her job with her passion project, McGoodwin gracefully states she was able to do it by managing her time well. “It wasn’t a fast process, and if you want to do something like this, it’s the little steps that add up,” she says.
Her hard work has paid off. With a readership of close to 100,000 and counting, Career Contessa speaks to many women. Despite her success, McGoodwin does not plan on slowing down. To this day, she wakes up bright and early to start her day: “I’m still so jazzed and energized to work on Career Contessa. I’m also so grateful to have the opportunity to work on this, and I recognize that every day. I know a lot of entrepreneurs talk about how hard it is to be successful, and of course it is, but we have the best job in the entire world. We get to build something that we love and that we believe in.”
These days, McGoodwin spends her free time planning her wedding, taking a ride out on her beach cruiser, and walking—what she enjoys most is simply disconnecting.
“I notice how much more energized I am to come back to Career Contessa if I take a break on the weekend,” says McGoodwin. We’ll be taking that piece of advice, too.
Photo credit: Career Contessa