Our guest for this episode of College & Career Readiness Radio is best-selling author of Careers By the People, Mike Wysocki.

Mike Wysocki discusses how his own career path shaped his focus on career readiness. As a first-generation, low-income student, his early goal was simply to go to college and get a job in business. After graduating, he found the experience underwhelming and unfulfilling. Even when he later moved into well-paid tech sales in Los Angeles, the work felt unchallenging and disconnected from his interests. That realization led him to ask others about their careers, which ultimately inspired his book Careers by the People, featuring candid advice from more than 100 professionals.

Through his research and speaking with students, Wysocki has found that many young people remain confused about career paths, particularly outside elite universities. He believes the connection between education and the workforce is often weak, with students lacking awareness of industries, networking strategies, and professional tools like LinkedIn.

Wysocki pushes back on the idea that students should simply follow passion or talent alone. Instead, he encourages students to identify industries that genuinely interest them and then apply their strengths within those fields. Building a network within an industry makes it easier to move between roles such as sales, operations, or marketing while maintaining connections and credibility.

A key piece of his advice is for students to speak directly with experienced professionals. Conversations with people who have spent years in a field—and especially those who have left it—provide more realistic insight than relying on peers or family members alone. Hearing multiple perspectives helps students better understand the pros and cons of different careers.

Wysocki also emphasizes that many students only know careers within their family networks, which can limit awareness of other opportunities. Expanding exposure to different industries earlier in life can help students discover options that better match their interests.

Reflecting on his own experience, Wysocki says college was valuable because it helped him build writing skills, confidence, and broader knowledge. He believes higher education can be transformative, particularly for students from working-class backgrounds, but students must also use that time to actively explore careers and build professional connections.

His upcoming book examines how current college students prepare for the workforce, using detailed questionnaires with students from state universities across the United States. The goal is to better understand their career thinking, preparation strategies, and the gaps that still exist between college and the workplace.

Wysocki encourages educators to leverage alumni networks and retired professionals when helping students explore careers. Alumni can share practical experience, while retirees often feel freer to speak candidly about the realities of their industries.

This episode of College & Career Readiness Radio features our guest Patrick Jones, an experienced educator, business leader, and expert in career readiness.

Patrick argues that the “internship shortage” is really a systems problem rooted in how higher education and K-12 interface with employers, not a lack of student interest or talent. He explains the friction employers face—especially smaller organizations—when trying to work with colleges, and calls for more employer-friendly structures, incentives, and even intermediaries that can broker relationships at scale.

Patrick emphasizes that today’s students often arrive at college with less work experience and limited exposure to the full range of roles in industries they care about. He shares examples of helping students see beyond the obvious job titles (like “athlete”) to the many supporting careers in areas such as sports marketing, finance, operations, and analytics, and stresses the importance of discovery experiences that broaden their sense of what’s possible.

He also makes a compelling case that any internship is better than no internship, because the biggest barrier is access, not perfection. Even imperfect or loosely structured internships can teach punctuality, communication, hierarchy, feedback, and “managing up,” especially when paired with reflection and guidance from an advisor or faculty member.

Patrick introduces his Discover–Ready–Find framework, the focus of his forthcoming book. Discover helps students understand how the labor market really works and why relying only on degrees and GPAs is risky. Ready reframes college as a platform for building emotional maturity, durable skills, and early work experience, starting as early as the first year. Find helps students develop a career “taste palette,” so they can intentionally seek environments and roles that fit who they are, rather than taking the first offer by default.

Throughout the conversation, Patrick returns to one central theme: students don’t just need more programs—they need caring adults and well-designed systems of support that prepare them for the realities of work. His message to educators is clear: build real relationships, create more on-ramps to authentic work experiences, and help young people connect their education to opportunity with purpose.

This episode of College and Career Readiness Radio features Kim Gameroz, founder of Teaching Inside Out and SELbrate Good Times.

Kim defines SEL as intentionally teaching students how the social world works so they can function successfully in life and work, rather than assuming they already possess these skills. She emphasizes cognitive flexibility (shifting when things do not go a student’s way), emotional intelligence (accurately identifying emotions and using strategies like mood meters and zones of regulation), perspective taking (jumping into the mind of another person, character, or historical figure), and executive functioning (goal setting, planning, and adapting plans) as core elements educators must actively teach.​

For classroom practice, Kim urges educators to embed SEL into daily systems and routines instead of treating it as an add-on program. She describes an intentional feelings check-in that always pairs “How are you feeling?” with “What tool will you use to support yourself right now?” so students build a toolbox of self-regulation strategies and then reflect later on whether those tools actually helped.​

Kim stresses that the real “solution” begins with the adult: SEL is not about fixing kids, but about educators making a mindset shift toward teaching lagging skills rather than punishing behavior. She challenges teachers, counselors, and leaders to be intentional in their responses, avoid explosive reactions, and recognize that they are not meant to do this work alone; instead, they should “find their herd” of like-minded colleagues who believe SEL must be taught, not assumed.​

Drawing from her upcoming book, Becoming the BISON, Kim uses the bison metaphor to describe educators who “run into the storm” together rather than avoiding hard situations like challenging behaviors, difficult parent emails, and classroom chaos. Bison represent being intentional so others notice—choosing actions that create a sense of calm, unity, and growth mindset for students, and modeling cognitive flexibility and emotional regulation during inevitable storms.​

Kim offers concrete modeling moves for elementary classrooms, such as “mental dress rehearsals” of transitions where students act out expectations with their hands before moving their bodies. She frontloads potential problems (e.g., what to do if someone takes your spot) and explicitly teaches flexible responses, then uses calm prompts like “Was that part of your path?” to coach outliers toward expectations rather than relying on punishment.​

For secondary students, Kim adapts the same rehearsal idea to executive functioning and future planning. She suggests guiding students through visualizations of going home, managing after-school schedules, and deciding when and how they will study or complete assignments, helping them mentally sequence steps and adjust plans when life “storms” disrupt the day.​

Kim explicitly connects these SEL competencies—emotional intelligence, planning, organization, cognitive flexibility, and co-regulation—to college and career readiness as durable, transferable skills. She notes that adult life requires constantly shifting plans, regulating emotions under stress (from broken pipes to workplace conflicts), and working productively with people who may be difficult, all of which mirror the SEL work students must practice in school.​

Her closing message to educators is clear: “Teach social and emotional skills, don’t expect them.” When a student’s behavior is frustrating, she encourages adults to ask, “What skill is lagging?” and remember that “kids do well if they can,” shifting from blame to instruction and from expectation to intentional teaching.