I thought the counseling session Dr. Suddarth had with Leland was incredibly solid from top to bottom and there were several meaningful takeaways from it that could be extracted. I liked how she was very effective initially at putting him at ease as it seemed he was a bit nervous heading in with some fumbling over his words, lapses in thought process and some general fidgeting that was going on. She provided an extremely calming and reassuring presence that helped him to relax and let all the great interpersonal qualities he possessed pour out of him as he became more and more comfortable. Throughout the session Dr. Suddarth was great at speaking positively to all the beneficial activities Leland was doing in the job search process from his diligent follow up with organizations to his knowledge of professional organizations and overall networking prowess.

Don’t be misled though to think the session was simply lauding him for his methods as she helped to provide some tips and tricks to make him more efficient such as the suggestion to truly tailor his resume to each individual employer, ensuring that the buzz words and topics of interest from the job description are front loaded into his resume along with piggy-backing his way at times into chapter meetings of organizations. When looking at the ratio of resumes sent to interviews received, there’s definitely an opportunity to get more succinct and tailor the resumes to the prospective employers so I really liked how she touched upon that.