#185 From “Little Jobs” to Big Wins: Internship Strategies That Work with Ramon Santillan Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 01:04
is your young person struggling to feel confident about landing their first job or internship. The Secret might not be what’s on their resume, but how they’re presenting themselves in the process, whether your student is in high school looking for their very first job or in college competing for internships and Co Ops, the job search can feel very overwhelming, but what if I told you that with the right strategy and coaching, any student, including those who are neurodivergent, can land positions at top companies today, I’m joined by Ramon Santillan , founder of persuasive interview, and he’s an expert who’s helped countless students master the art of interviewing, while Ramon specializes in coaching neurodivergent students, his strategies work for all students, helping them leverage their unique strengths to compete successfully for opportunities. In our conversation, we’ll explore why any work experience matters in landing the next opportunity, even if it’s not related to your team’s major or future goals. Ramon will share how students can reframe their little jobs from retail to food service, as valuable skill building experiences that employers actually want to see. We’ll discuss the practical strategies for effective job searching, why quality trumps quantity when applying for these positions, and how all students can present themselves confidently. We’ll also uncover why traditional career service advice often falls short, and what you can do to better support your student during this crucial phase of career development, whether they’re seeking their first job or preparing for post graduation opportunities. I’m Lisa Marco Robins, and I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity a flourish coaching production. Let’s dive right in to a great conversation. You you.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 03:05
Ramon, thank you. Welcome to the show. Hi, Lisa,

Ramon Santillan 03:10
thanks for having

Lisa Marker-Robbins 03:12
me. It is I am excited to talk about this topic because it’s so closely related to what we do in our course about getting real world experience. And so just real quick for our listeners, describe what you do in the space of real world experiences and who you do it with.

Ramon Santillan 03:32
I’m an interview coach, and I work with college students looking for that first Co Op, first internship, or even their first job out of college, and I work with them one on one to help them turn those interviews into job offers.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 03:44
That’s fantastic, and that is rooted in the belief that you have, I know, because we were talking offline beforehand, that you believe for college students. And I’m even gonna I, you know, I work with high school and college students, and students who are Gap Year. Are still just figuring it out. I think we could apply this belief that you have to all of these groups, but you are rooted in a belief that holding a job, getting work experience is valuable for everyone. Can you talk a little bit more about that and and do you feel like that’s unique? Do you feel like you have to sell people on that idea, because I kind of read that and I go like, Duh, of course, but you and I work in the same space. Do you find that it’s like a light bulb moment for some

Ramon Santillan 04:30
I think yes, having work experience is valuable for everyone. And I think people sometimes struggle with that idea, especially college students and sometimes even their parents, because when I ask them, you know, what kind of work have you done? The first thing they tell me is, well, I haven’t done anything related to my major. It’s just been little jobs. And use that word, little jobs. And I asked, well, what is a little job? And I said, Well, I was a lifeguard in the summer. I was a tutor. I worked in a fast food restaurant. I worked in, you know, an amusement. Park. And I said, Okay, well, there’s experiences there that are valuable to the job search and to the frankly, the job, one thing people have to remember too, is that, especially for a co op and internship or even a first job out of college, they’re not asking you to be managing the departments running, you know, being director of whatever it is that you’re doing, what they really want you to do is teach you their method, how they do the work that they do, the company does. And what they want is they want to make sure you know what a job means. So what does a job mean? A job means that, you know, there’s a schedule, a certain time you have to show up. There’s a certain kind of dress code, whatever that dress code may be, there’s a way to talk to people. There’s a way to work in teams. There’s a way to bring up problems to your bosses. And if you have a job, whether it’s in concession stand, whether it’s like a tutor, even for your parents, running a yard business from home, that means you deal with customers. You know how to build you know responsibility. Employers don’t want to teach you that on their dime. They rather you know that beforehand, and that’s why I think it’s very important for students, especially at the beginning of their career, and even before their college career, is to have that work experience, whatever that job may be.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 06:13
Yeah, we had a previous episode. It was about leadership. I’ll have to look up. Well, while we’re talking I’ll be able to look it up. But it was about how leadership can look in many different ways, right? So when students go to apply for jobs, internships, a position within an organization that they have and they’re asked to list their accomplishments or leadership, a lot of kids will do the same thing that those kids just did, like, I’ve just had little jobs, and instead, it’s really like, Well, no, you’ve had jobs, and let’s talk about what you’ve learned from those. Leadership comes in many different ways as well. You know, those are ways that we have to think about, we have to think about what we’ve done differently. And I love that you’re challenging them on that. So when somebody comes to you and they’re like, are they really coming right away for interview prep, or is it more like, how do I even land the job or the internship?

Ramon Santillan 07:10
Most of the time, they come to me from the very beginning where they say, you know, I’ve been applying on my own for the last semester. I’ve applied 150 times, 250 times, 300 times, 500 times. I think my record of people who told me before we took them on as a client was 545 times in a semester. And, you know, keep in mind, these are college students, so they’re between 2021 22 and I say, okay, so you’re 21 maybe 22 for easy math. I’m 44 right now I haven’t applied to I’m twice your age. I haven’t applied to 100 jobs in my life. So you telling me you’ve applied to 545 jobs in one semester for one job, and you haven’t landed one. That means something’s wrong. Something’s not working. It’s either jobs you’re applying to, you your resume, your enemy, skills, something’s wrong. So what I do is I work with them from the beginning, and we craft the brand new resume from scratch, and we do it together. So I’d never do anything for them. I’m a coach, and ever since the word, and here’s a very Texas example, you know, a coach, a football coach, for example, shows you how to do things and guides you through the process. You have to do the work. You have to throw the ball and catch the ball and run and avoid getting tackled. So that’s what I do as a coach. A lot of people, what they’re looking for is a cheerleader. A cheerleader, they cheer you on and tell you don’t give up, like, but you tell a cheerleader, hey, but those guys keep on tackling me like, and there’s like, the real big and they’re real strong, real fast. What do I do? A cheerleader says, Well, I don’t know, but don’t give up. And that’s definitely not what I do. You know, people motivate themselves when they see the progress that they’re making by the guidance that, you know, I give them. So that’s what I do with my college students. So

Lisa Marker-Robbins 08:51
I have a question based on kind of just how things have changed. You know, we’ve been on this it feels like a roller coaster, right, ups and downs since COVID. Have you seen that it takes in 2025, 2024, putting in more applications just naturally, because things have changed, or where, where we are with work, society has changed, or so? Is there a natural yes, you’re going to have to put in more applications right now. Well, how do people kind of gage that expectation of how many they’re gonna have to apply

Ramon Santillan 09:26
to see, I’ve been doing this for like, 13, almost 14 years, and I’ve seen, you know, different presidents come and go, different economies, job markets, you know, all this stuff. And people always ask me, like, Is it easier now? Is it harder? Now, you know what? If this new guy, president comes in, what are we going to do? And I would say, even when we thought the world was going to end during COVID, companies never stop hiring. They want to make money, even until the last day we’re alive, right? They’re going to charge someone. So hiring never goes out of style, I guess. I mean, we. Phrase that hiring good candidates never goes out of style. So companies are always hiring well, sometimes it is easier to get a job, yeah, maybe. But I always tell people like, no matter how many people are applying to a job, or if it’s just you applying to that one job, you have to be prepared. I think that’s a lot of people forget about that in good times, people don’t have to be as prepared. But even then, you find students that don’t have a job, they can’t land a job, and everyone’s just getting two or three job offers, and they’re like, why can’t I get a job so? Well, maybe you’re not prepared, or you’re not prepared the right way, but definitely during bad times, you have to be prepared, and that’s something we can never forget. No matter what’s got going on you, you can get 1000 applicants to one job, or you can have no applicants to one job. You can still not get that job if you’re not prepared.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 10:48
So it’s about being a good applicant, not really about the overall numbers at all.

Ramon Santillan 10:53
Yeah, going back to your question about how many applications, you know? I would say, I don’t. I don’t know how many applications, when you make what we want to do is, the applications we do send out, make sure that they’re strong. And to me, every step in the job search process is exactly just that a step, steps. You can move them around, you can skip them. You can do them again. But at the end of the day, the real goal here is a job offer, not how many applications, not how many resumes. It’s not even how many interviews. You guys the real goal, what we’re aiming for, is job offers. And that’s really what we focus on, job offers, not applications or connections or anything like that. We do all those things, but that is not our focus,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 11:35
right? We have to, well, I always say we reverse engineer going to college for our clients who are college bound, instead of saying, Where do I want to go to college? And, you know, I’m sure football factors in for all you Texas people when we’re looking at campuses and whatnot, but where do we want to go to college? And then they go, Okay, now what am I going to major in? And then what I’m going to do with this? We’re even reverse engineering. I’m always like, we have to begin with the end in mind. So for your work that you do the end is landing a job offer. For us, it is being able to identify a best fit career and then building the path so we are reverse engineer, so we have, can you know, if it’s a GPS, we’re putting the pen in a destination. We’re not just, you know, driving aimlessly and spending extra time and more money on gas and all those things when you are working with the students, and I know you have a specialty in neurodiverse students, what I love and what you do applies to all students, but you have a specialty in working with neurodivergent students. What year do you really buckle down on? You should be getting an internship like if we have a parent of a college freshman listening to this, do you see college freshmen landing internships, or are those more for upperclassmen?

Ramon Santillan 12:51
Usually, companies are more interested in upperclassmen because the company is getting ready to fill their employment pipeline. They want to make sure that you know this kid, he or she is going to graduate in about two years. So I think I kind of know how many people I need to hire in one or two years, so I want to test them out. That’s really what an internship is. They’re testing you out because they know that if you don’t turn out to be a good candidate, you’ll be gone in three weeks or in three months. I’m sorry, yeah. Whereas if you hire someone for full time, if you need to get rid of someone, you got to write paperwork, you got to have proof, and then you make maybe even severance, and then it might get nasty or whatever, right? But when an intern, no matter how bad there are in three months are gone, so you don’t have to worry about that. But one thing I do recommend parents of students and even the students themselves, is to make sure you get some kind of work experience before your freshman year or sophomore year, for sure, if you can again, it’s very, very hard for you to get an internship, because, again, companies are focused on the juniors and the seniors. But if you get a job at again, concessions, any job, basically, that you can prove to the employer, when you’re a junior or senior that you know what a job means. That’s very beneficial. One thing I do recommend, for the juniors of the freshmen, I’m sorry, and the sophomores, even brand new freshmen, use that time to start connecting with people at the companies you’re interested

Lisa Marker-Robbins 14:14
in. Yeah, amen, say that again, yeah. So use that

Ramon Santillan 14:18
time to connect with the people at the companies you’re interested in, because you want to get a head start on all this stuff. That’s one thing I tell my clients, we don’t want to compete when we’re applying for jobs. We want to outsmart because a lot of times students come to me and they say, well, have the 4.0 and then, you know, took this class, and I took this class, I did this project. How come I’m not getting hired? I said, Well, the reason is because you’re competing. Guess what class your your your competition, which is your your peers, your other college students are taking the same class you took. You have a 4.0 Well, this other person, they have a 4.0 and also a minor, and they have a four point on that minor too. So when you start putting four point. Against four point zeros, you’re not winning anything. You’re not being anyone. So we don’t compete because we compete, we can lose, but if we got smarts, no one can beat us because we’re competing. We’re not even competing. We’re working on something else. We’re looking at something else differently. So I would encourage students to use the time to get some work experience in whatever it is, and then use that time to connect with people’s the companies you’re interested

Lisa Marker-Robbins 15:23
in. You know, I’m often asked of the high school students, they’ll say, you know, well, I’m doing all these, I don’t know, for lack of a better term, like these sexy activities for my activities list while I’m in high school, my extracurriculars, I don’t have time to get a job. Or colleges aren’t going to like a job, and they’re looking at just getting into the college. But I tell them all the time, work is a fantastic extracurricular, and you’re making a really great case in a much better way than I’ve worded it in the past. So I’m going to steal from you about, you know, we’re serving all the same people about why work can be valuable and important, and frankly, you know, I’m working with a primarily the younger group, but we also serve college students, and those have already graduated, but there are some internships even out there for other for high school students. We find them. We unearth them. They are hard to find. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t create your own, right? One of my past students comes to mind. She was volunteering at a food pantry and was having trouble landing a summer job, and she was really interested in marketing and digital marketing, so she approached the food pantry and said, Hey, you guys don’t have a newsletter, and you need more donations. You need more volunteers. You want to have a greater reach. Can I do that for you this summer? And she kind of created our own experience. And I know you would look at that and go, Oh my gosh, there’s so many rich things that came out of that that helped build that resume, that built the skills. So to your excellent point, these employers don’t want to have to teach you the basics of how to work, right? They want to teach you how to do the job. I have kids all the time say, Well, I don’t know how to do that. Well, that’s what the experience, the education, or the experiences you’re getting is for to build the skills.

Ramon Santillan 17:16
There’s a lot of experiences that you can get during a job that are valuable and to show on your resume. For example, one time, I was doing a workshop with all these students, and I was telling them, okay, let’s go, we’re working on the resume, and ask them, put your jobs. And one student said he did a lifeguard job during the summer. He’s like, Well, I’m good at swimming, and I’ve done it for several years. It doesn’t every time I do it, it’s not a big deal. And I said, What do you mean? It’s not a big deal? I was like, yeah, it’s not big. You know? I was like, you know. I was like, Do you corral people? Do you like, when kids are running, you tell them, yeah, okay, yeah, you do that. Okay. How many people do you do you manage anyone like, well, you know, the new lifeguards, I train them. Okay. Well, that’s management experience. You train people. Okay, what’s up you’re very proud of is that? Well, one time a little girl was drowning, and I said, drowning and I saved her. I was like, Okay, tell me that again. Yeah. You know this little girl, she was about three, and then she was playing, and kids didn’t pay attention, and she was drowning. Luckily, I’ve noticed, I pulled her out and I saved her life. I was like, so tell me okay, you did, yeah, yeah, the whole thing. And I was like, well, and I say, Okay, there’s about 50 students in the room. I say, How many of you guys have saved their life? And no one raised their hand? I’m like, okay, that’s going on your resume. Why? What does that show you act well under pressure. You take charge of the situation, and you know, you you continue. I said, Did you go home after that? Like, well, one of my shift was over, I went home and said, Okay, excellent. That means that you you stuck to the job. This didn’t phase you. How many employers would not want someone to have with that kind of skill set on board, you know? So there’s a lot of things there that you can put on the resume. You just have to think about them,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 18:56
right? Well, I think too, that’s why it’s it demonstrates it’s good to get somebody else to discuss it with right? I often say we’re so close to the thing that we do or the problem that we’re trying to solve that we miss things because we’re too close to it. So you brought a fresh eye or perspective to that one question. We were talking about internships, and I know you, and I know the difference between an internship and a co op. My youngest graduated a year ago from a university that requires co ops for many of their majors, and it’s a requirement and the kids that come out have jobs. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between internships and co ops and the value of co ops, like, do you value co ops more than internships? Or, I’m glad

Ramon Santillan 19:42
you brought it up, because I think it’s just more of a north and south thing. Because I looked it up when I graduated from college. I needed to get an internship to graduate, and that’s what it was called, an internship. So I had to work my background in accounting. Had to work with one of the big account. Firms in order to get the credit so I could graduate. I went here at school, here in Texas, in Austin, so but my clients, most of them, are on the East Coast, on the north and they have to get a co op. And a co op sounds exactly like what an interest was for me. But I think, if I’m not mistaken, the co op is where you work side by side and industry you’re supposed to you’re majoring in, an internship is kind of like a job, kind of learning some of the skills you might use here in the south, we use internship. I know in the north, people use co ops, but I think same thing. I know it’s the same thing, but it’s supposed to be the same thing.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 20:38
I do think that the value of coming out of either of those is the experiences are about the same, right? One of the differences is for colleges that really double down on co ops. University of Cincinnati is where my daughter went, and then Drexel would be one in Philadelphia. Northeastern is known for their Co Op program. That’s almost like a, you go to school for a semester, you work for a semester, and it goes on for three years. So it’s a, it’s a bit more intensive, um, but Okay, so you so I like that you’re you’re going like, no, what’s coming out of this makes you employable, both of them. So you would just look at the value there. Now, if students are trying to find these internships and co ops on their own, like, Where do you usually send them? I know where I send them. So let’s, let’s make up, like, the best of list. So because I’m sure I’m missing some resources.

Ramon Santillan 21:40
So okay, a lot of times students come to me and they say, well, I need to find more jobs, because I already applied to 300 jobs and I can get an interview. I’m like, No, that’s not the problem. You don’t need more jobs, because what you’re gonna do is just gonna apply to more jobs and not get an interview. I say the first place you should look at is your school’s the job search portal, whether it’s handshake, Career Connect, and the reason we want to do that and apply through that portal is because those companies are looking for students just like you, because those companies are paying money to be in your school’s job portal. Yep, you don’t want to go apply to through LinkedIn, for example, at least I don’t think so, because anyone can apply to that job. I can apply to those internship, jobs that I’m not qualified for at all, and they’re not even looking for me, and I just muddy the waters, right? So again, when you apply on LinkedIn, you’re applying you’re competing against everyone else, everyone potentially in the world, right? But the jobs in your schools portal are only for students in your school. So that’s, that’s what I would say first. The second thing I would say is, like, okay, similar to what you said about your exercise. What do you want to do in 15 years? In 10 years and five years, where do you see and I think I’m through the whole exercise, not just work wise, but like, where do you think you want to live? Do you think you’ll have a hospital then? What kind of house would you have? What kind of car was your drive? Are your drive? Are you married, single and having kids? And then I take them back to the 10 years and then down to the five years, because once we have an idea of kind of job they want to do in the future, that gives us better idea what kind of job we need to get them now, a lot of times they say, Well, I just need a job that doesn’t matter. I’m like, Okay, I understand. I get it. You’re under a timeline, but let’s dream for a little bit. If you could get the perfect job, what would it look like? Who’s working with you? Who’s your boss, who’s your who are your peers? How far is your commute? What kind of apartment would you have? Would you live at home? Would you live in your university or you’re going to school, that the town, a new city you always wanted to visit. What is it? And we walk through that and then figure out, okay, what companies are there? Oh, well, these companies, and you’re interested in these companies? Well, not these, but this one, yeah, okay, let’s see what jobs are there, and let’s connect with people at those jobs and see how they got that job. They’re the experts at getting that job that you want, because they have that job that you want. So walk them through the whole exercise on how to connect with people and network. And I always remind them this isn’t just for this job search. This is a muscle, the networking muscle, is a muscle we want to start developing now, because in five years, after you leave that first job out of college, you’re going to need another job. And I don’t want you starting your networking, you know, when you’re 30. I want you to start when you’re 21 because now you’re stronger. You know how to use it, you know how it works. And you’ve been developing for, you know, five, seven years now. And

Lisa Marker-Robbins 24:38
I’m going to back it up and say, do that when you’re in high school. We teach in the course for everybody, like, build out a strong LinkedIn profile. We take them step by step how to do it. And then I’m like, I know it’s scary to start, you know, connecting with people that you don’t know. So just start with your parents, your parents, friends, your principal, who might be on there. And. And slowly start to build that network as early as you know, middle of high school. Honestly, I love that. Now, let’s go with neurodivergent. Let’s, let’s kind of land the plane as we’re talking about your specialty, which is neurodivergent. Students often come in feeling like they’re going to have a more difficult time, and they and they might, but there you have really honed in on how to help them. And just like I had an episode of the podcast back in March with somebody from a college that’s only for Neuro divergent students, and we both use the Berkman personality assessment and coaching students, and we both come at it from a strengths based perspective, and I’m going to guess that you do too. So tell us a little bit about what what can those neurodivergent students do to level the playing field, on landing internships, interviewing better? What advice would you have for them?

Ramon Santillan 25:59
For me? You know, my back was in accounting, so I always see things as a from a business perspective, to me, there’s a lot of hiring initiatives people put out there. They’re they’re they’re doing their best, they’re trying their best to have people included. But to me, it’s always been like, Sure, well, maybe one day it’ll be the world will be perfect, and everyone’s gonna be seeing the same and all given the same opportunities, that kind of stuff. But we can’t wait for that. I can’t wait, you know, my case, when I was a college student, you know, Hispanic first generation college student working two jobs to pay for college, and I wanted to go in an industry that it had no connections and no work experience in. So I said, I need to make a business case for myself, not like, oh, hire me because I’m Hispanic. Like, no, that’s not, that’s not all I am. There’s a lot of the things I am too. So I made a business case for myself. So the same thing with these college students come to me who are neurodivergent. I was telling them, let’s do a business case. Why should they hire you? A lot of times students struggle with that because they say, Well, no, I don’t have I’m just a college student. I’m like, on top of that, I have this, you know, disability that. And I was like, Okay, I’m not a doctor. I can’t say you have a disability or not. But what does that disability, as you call it? What are the bad things that it does? Well, I get nervous. I can look at people in the eyes when I talk to them, and it’s okay, fine. What does it do on the positive side? Well, I can allow them to say, well, I can focus really well. I can see patterns, you know, all kinds of things. If you met one person on the spectrum, you’ve met one person on the spectrum. It was very different. But also I’m like, let’s focus on the strengths. And again, let’s make a business case. And this is not like, oh, hire me because I’m neurodivergent. I’ve had clients come to me who had previously been hired through a hiring initiative, and they got a job, and then they left that job, and then they came to me because they couldn’t find a job. And I always ask them, you know, why? Why do you feel you can’t get a job? Like, you got one job before, before working with me through this hiring initiative? And they tell me, Well, that was, I was a pity hire. And what does that mean? It’s like, yeah, they they got a bunch of, you know, autistic kids, and that’s what they say, like, they got a bunch of autistic kids, and they picked the one was least autistic, and I was me, and that’s why they gave me the job. But I was not an I was not a regular employee, and they’re sad about it makes me sad too, because these kids are smart, and they know how to do the work, but no one really takes them seriously. Because there’s an autistic kid like, well, just kind of put them on there, give them some work and, you know, but and they say, well, they never showed me how to get a job. They gave me a job, and I don’t want that. I want to get a job. So they come to me, and I show them, I walk them through the process, and I was telling them, like, you’re going to earn this. This is not, I’m not going to make a call to someone I know. Your parents are going to, you know, call their friend and put your resume. No, you’re going to earn this. And it works, you know, they develop that skill. They know how to do it, how make a strong application, how to find the job, how to connect with people and make their own network. And now welcome to the process of how to prepare themselves for the interview. Something I’m very proud of is that I don’t have a lot of repeat customers.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 29:17
That’s great. You work. You want to work your way out of a job, exactly,

Ramon Santillan 29:22
server for business, right? Like, you know, they always say the first that thing when you’re starting your own business, have repeat customers. I don’t have repeat customers. And the reason for that is because I train my guys and my girls so well. The next time they’re looking for a new job, they do it on their own. And I’m very proud of that, because that means I’m I help them become independent. They don’t depend on me. They don’t depend on the parents. And then these aren’t just some computer repair job down the street like these are name brands, you know, the Amazons, the Facebooks, Googles, or Blue Origin name brand companies

Lisa Marker-Robbins 29:56
I love. I mean, let’s just go back to you. Told me the story before we. Just hit record. Maybe I should always start hitting record earlier. But you told me the story about the the mom she was was she was a physician, and she was told her kid would never, he was nonverbal, that he would never speak. I’ll let you finish the story, because it, it made me choke up as you were sharing it.

Ramon Santillan 30:18
Yeah, that was, I’ll tell you that one story. But again, that’s that same story, I’ve had the same phone call many, many times with different accents in different parts of the country, but the same story, the mom calls me says, you know, he got an awesome job after I finished working with her son. And I think he had two or three job offers in like, 32 days, 33 days, and she called me back crying, saying, you know, I I never thought this could happen. I was hoping for a computer repair job at some shop, but you gave him a career. And she said, You also gave me dreams I never allowed myself to have, because when he was little, he was nonverbal. He didn’t speak until he was five. And, you know, people told me put him in a home. You know, he’s he’s never gonna finish Elementary School, he’s never gonna finish high school, he’s never gonna make it in college, he’ll never get a job. And now you’ve helped me prove everyone wrong. He has an awesome job that pays very well with benefits, a career path. It’s not just a job, it’s a career path. He might get a promotion one day, which means he can support himself, so I don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen to him when I’m gone. And he can, even if he can support himself, he might be able to support a family, which means maybe one day I’ll have grandkids. And she said, That’s a dream I never allowed myself to have. Like, just be happy that he might be able to support himself when he’s, you know, at some job when you’re gone, but now he can, he might be able to support a family, and I might have grandkids. And you gave me a dream. Again, she told me, and again, I’m telling you one specific one, but that same story have been told by many moms to me, you know, ugly crying on the phone, right? Because they say, you know, I never allow myself to maybe he’ll graduate college, I don’t know, as long as he’s okay and like, but no, he has a career. He makes more money than we do. Sometimes, I’ve gotten that call many times, you know, so I don’t have to worry about what’s gonna happen to happen to him when I’m gone, because he has a job, a career where benefits for 1k you know, bonuses and so, yeah, I mean, it’s to me that’s very fulfilling, helping students and not just get a job, but help a career, especially students who maybe, in our society we wrote off for whatever reason, you know, and now we’re proving everyone wrong that these students, they don’t need a special hiring initiative to get them a job. They don’t need to be treated like, you know, fragile little things to be able to live in a or survive in a workplace. If we teach them the right way how to do these things, they’re going to do very well. And one day, actually, by now, a lot of these guys I’ve worked with, you know, 13 years ago, they’re someone’s boss.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 33:08
I love it. You’re a hope creator. I love it. Yeah, you truly are.

Ramon Santillan 33:15
I don’t take my job lightly. I’m very I take my job very seriously. And those words have been used to describe me by moms. And I always kind of just, even though I tell my clients like, you know, accept praise or good, positive feedback, that’s something I still struggle with, because, again, I can’t imagine, no one else gave these kids not a chance, but just taught them the right way how to do things. You know, a lot of coaches out there, they teach students what they need to do. I think what makes me successful with my clients is that I teach them what needs to be done. I teach them how to do it, but I also teach them the why. And no one’s ever taken the time to teach these guys and girls the why of why we need a smile or what a firm handshake, because why we do a firm handshake? Right? Everyone says smile during the interview. Give it a good answer. What’s a good answer? What does it sound like? Well, how does it present you? And no one’s done that. I haven’t seen it. I think I’m like I mentioned earlier. I think I’m the only one in the country, maybe in the world, who does it this way. And I wish that wasn’t the case. I wish I didn’t have this business, not because I don’t like doing it. I love what I do, but I wish that, yeah, that someone in elementary school or even high school, or even Career Services would have done this already, but it’s no one has, and I have to do it myself.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 34:38
Well, I think a lot, I think part of it is you’ve doubled down on that. I’ve doubled down on career development, helping students identify their path. And we take it so seriously that I’ve had the same experience students coming from, you know, use the Career Center at UVA or Notre Dame, and, you know, Butler University in Indiana. Uh, that are already in college, and they’re not landing things. They don’t have a clear path, and they there’s like, a label on something that’s going to give you the answer, but it doesn’t, and it’s just they’re not taking it as seriously. They’re not doubling down on the one thing, and so grateful for you that you’re doing this work. And you know, frankly, as you tell these stories about the the narratives that these kids have running through their minds, the reality is, from a personally personality standpoint, whether you’re neurodivergent or you’re not anything in overdrive can either be a strength or it can undermine you, right? And it’s getting the tools to be able to navigate that appropriately. So that’s for all of us. Thank you so much for making the time to come on the show. Thank

Ramon Santillan 35:48
you for having me. I’m really enjoyed, and it’s always great talking to you.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 35:51
Well, we will have you back, for sure, because this was great. I as we’re sitting here talking, I can, I’m thinking of like all these other topics we can talk about together. But for this one, that’s a wrap, and thank you for being on

Lisa Marker-Robbins 36:08
what a fantastic conversation. Ramones insights about helping all students succeed in competitive job markets really highlights how the right coaching and strategy can make a student more confident and effective in their job search. The key takeaway your student doesn’t need to wait until they have the perfect experience to start building their professional presence. Every job, from babysitting to retail, teaches valuable skills, and it’s all about how they present those experiences to potential employers. If you want to learn more about Ramones work or explores coaching services. You can find him@persuasiveinterview.com I’ll also put his LinkedIn profile in the show notes, speaking of professional presence, whether your student is in high school or college, having a LinkedIn profile is becoming essential for networking and discovering opportunities. I’ve created a step by step guide for students that walks them through building a compelling LinkedIn profile that will help them connect with professionals and stand out to potential employers. You can get my free guide on how to build a LinkedIn profile at flourish coachingco.com forward slash LinkedIn. This resource will help your student create a professional online presence that opens doors, whether they’re seeking their first part time job or preparing for internships and career opportunities. If today’s helpful episode was helpful to you, please share it with a friend who needs this too. Sharing, following the podcast, rating and reviewing helps us resource more students to launch into a successful future. Thank you for listening to College and Career Clarity, where we help your family move from overwhelmed and confused to motivated clear and confident about your student’s future. You.