About Lindsey Pollak

That experience led to three months of staying under the covers in my childhood bedroom, eating frozen yogurt directly from the carton and wondering if my glory days were behind me. Eventually, out of sheer boredom — or a need to buy more frozen yogurt — I started meeting with people and sending out resumes. One day, I met a career coach who asked me to describe the best job I’d ever had. I immediately started telling her how much I loved being an RA and wished I could do that forever.

“So do that forever,” she said.

“Um, there are no RA jobs in the real world,” I replied.

“So start your own business,” she advised.

As with much good advice, I completely ignored her and eventually landed a great job at a startup website called WorkingWoman.com by cold-calling the HR department. (Yes, in the late ’90s people answered their phones.) It was the height of the dot-com boom and it was thrilling to be part of it for the 18 months the company’s funding lasted. When the bubble burst, I was left with a few weeks’ severance and a laptop.

“Go start your own business,” the company’s chairman told me on my way out.

This time I listened. While working part-time at a women’s business organization, I started freelance writing and giving speeches on the only topic I knew: how to be a young person figuring out what to do with your life.

Just like in my days as an RA, I spent my time advising teens and young adults. Then speech by speech, article by article, blog post by blog post, my business grew. In 2007, HarperCollins published my first book, Getting from College to Career, and in 2009 through a referral from a friend-of-a-friend, I became an official ambassador for LinkedIn, running many of their online training programs for job seekers and university career services professionals.