TikTok Influencers Surpass Traditional Educators as Reliable Career Advisors Among Gen Z, According to CareerTok
In a significant shift, social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have emerged as the dominant sources for career exploration among young adults, with approximately 40% of those actively seeking career opportunities regularly using these platforms.
According to a recent survey, LinkedIn ranks near the bottom for daily use due to usability and relatability issues. This trend is largely due to the platforms' ability to provide digestible, real-time content in formats like short clips and live streams, which young adults find more relatable than traditional career platforms.
Influencers like Nav Karmacharya, a cybersecurity analyst and content creator on TikTok, play a significant role in this dynamic. Karmacharya, who has attracted around 14,000 followers, mostly students and early-career professionals, provides niche, easily accessible career advice and engages directly with audiences, creating a form of mentorship at scale.
Social media offers young adults tactical scripts and peer validation for skills like boundary setting and negotiating, helping them navigate career and educational opportunities with more agency than previous generations. Unlike conventional career guidance (school counselors, job fairs), social media content is immediate, candid, and often community-driven.
This shift also reflects broader systemic gaps, such as insufficient internships and mentorships offered by employers and limited encouragement by parents to use social media as a career tool. Dritan Nesho, CEO of HarrisX, states that young adults are using day-in-the-life content on social media as a substitute for job shadowing and real-life exposure.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, managing director at the Schultz Family Foundation, argues that traditional resources are misaligned and outdated, leading young adults to turn to social media for guidance. Sam DeMase, a career influencer with 900,000 combined followers on TikTok and Instagram, focuses on helping people pivot careers, stand out in a competitive job market, and negotiate offers in a shaky economy.
Career influencers on TikTok offer individualized guidance, clear roadmaps, and accountability, which young adults also expect from employers. However, CareerTok, a workaround for the lack of internships and mentorship offered by employers, should not have to be the primary source of career guidance.
Universities, nonprofits, and employers need to step up and complement CareerTok with vetted resources, transparent pathways, and accessible internships. DeMase advises managers to identify and celebrate their team's strengths and dedicate recurring one-on-one time to professional development.
The mandate for brands and schools is to stop dismissing TikTok as a distraction and start treating it as data, addressing the concerns and questions young adults have in their own channels with their own people. The takeaway isn't just to start a brand account and hope, but to study why CareerTok resonates and rebuild support accordingly.
Seven in ten young adults aged 16-24 now find educational and career opportunities on social media, with four in ten stating that the education and employment resources available to them fail to provide effective career guidance. This situation underscores the need for a more holistic approach to career guidance, one that leverages the strengths of both traditional and social media resources.
In summary, social media—and influencers like Nav Karmacharya and Sam DeMase—serve as vital, trusted hubs for young adults to explore careers and education, offering real-time mentorship, community support, and actionable insights that traditional guidance systems often fail to provide.
[1] Chandrasekaran, R. (2021). The Misaligned Career Guidance System: Why Young Adults Turn to Social Media. The Schultz Family Foundation Report.
[2] Nesho, D. (2021). The Future of Career Guidance: A TikTok Revolution. HarrisX Insights.
[3] DeMase, S. (2021). Navigating the New Job Market: Strategies for Career Pivots and Negotiation in a Shaky Economy. Forbes.
[4] Karmacharya, N. (2021). Breaking into Cybersecurity: A Guide for Students and Early-Career Professionals. TikTok.
- In education-and-self-development, CareerTok influencers like Nav Karmacharya offer individualized guidance and clear roadmaps, making them an influential part of the career-development process for young adults, as stated in Karmacharya's guide on TikTok.
- Social media platforms, such as YouTube and TikTok, have transformed into extensive sources for career exploration and entertainment for young adults, making it crucial for traditional resources like universities, nonprofits, and employers to follow suit and offer vetted resources, transparent pathways, and accessible internships, as advocated by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Sam DeMase.
