A Hidden Stage of Life Every Career Coach Should Know About

Between adolescence and full adulthood lies a distinct and fascinating life stage that shapes nearly every college student’s decision, motivation, and identity exploration.

Psychologist Jeffrey Arnett coined the term emerging adulthood to describe the period spanning ages 18 to 25. For career coaches, understanding this developmental theory can help us better guide students, recognizing the unique characteristics and stressors of this important life stage.

Understanding Emerging Adulthood

Emerging adulthood is defined by five key characteristics:

• Identity exploration: Young adults are figuring out who they are and what they want in love, work, and worldview.

• Instability: Frequent changes in jobs, majors, living arrangements, and relationships are the norm, not the exception.

• Self-focus: This is a time to gain independence, experiment, and make autonomous choices.

• Feeling in-between: Students often describe themselves as “not quite adults yet” but no longer adolescents.

• Possibilities and optimism: Despite uncertainty, most believe their future will be better than their past.

Arnett’s framework reminds us that students’ career indecision isn’t avoidance but actually developmentally appropriate exploration. This reframing helps coaches replace frustration with empathy and design experiences that meet students where they are.

Applying the Theory in Career Coaching

When career coaches adopt the lens of emerging adulthood, three practical applications emerge:

1. Normalizing Exploration

Rather than pressuring students to choose “the right major” or “the perfect first job,” coaches who recognize emerging adulthood as a distinct phase validate uncertainty as part of the process. Career indecision can be reframed as an active search for congruence, or a sign of self-reflection and curiosity.

2. Seeing Career Development as Identity Work

For emerging adults, choosing a career path isn’t just about skills and salaries. It’s about constructing a sense of self. Questions like “What do I want to do?” are deeply connected to “Who am I becoming?”

Integrate identity-based exercises such as values clarification, strengths assessments, or narrative career reflection. Using career coaching worksheets like this can help a lot with this.

Help students connect their personal stories to career goals: “What experiences have shaped how you want to contribute to the world?” By situating career exploration within a broader identity narrative, coaches help students see their professional path as a reflection of personal meaning.

3. Balance Support with Autonomy

Emerging adults crave independence but still need scaffolding. Coaches can strike this balance by acting as collaborative partners rather than prescriptive experts.

• Use coaching questions instead of giving answers: “What would success look like for you in the next six months?”

  
  

• Offer options, not directives. For example, “Here are two resources that might help you explore marketing. Which one feels like the better next step?”

  
  

• When setbacks occur, frame them as part of the growth process, such as asking, “What did you learn about yourself through that experience?”

This approach builds students’ decision-making confidence and models lifelong career adaptability.  (Related Reading: Helping College Students Stack Short-Term Certificates)

Why This Lens Matters

Viewing students through the lens of emerging adulthood encourages patience, perspective, and personalization. It reminds us that many of the “career crises” we see, such as major changes, anxiety about the future, and frequent pivots, are signs of healthy development rather than dysfunction. By meeting students in this space of exploration, we help them turn uncertainty into agency.

It also shifts how institutions measure success. Instead of judging outcomes solely by immediate job placement, we can value progress indicators such as self-awareness, clarity of interests, or increased career self-efficacy. These internal markers often predict longer-term career satisfaction.

A Reflection for Career Coaches

As professionals who have navigated our own seasons of uncertainty, we can empathize with the tension between possibility and pressure that defines emerging adulthood. Reflect for a moment:

• Do my advising conversations allow space for ambiguity and growth, or do I rush toward closure?

  
  

• How can I model lifelong learning in my interactions with students?

Ultimately, emerging adulthood is not a problem to be solved but a stage to be honored.

When career coaches embrace this perspective, we become facilitators of discovery rather than gatekeepers of decisions. We help students see that uncertainty is not a flaw in their journey, rather the soil from which purpose grows. (Related Reading: The Silent Dropout Risk That's Hard to Spot)