- Nav Karmacharya, a 23-year-old cybersecurity analyst, is one of the countless social media influencers who post career-related content on TikTok. He’s amassed 14,000 followers—primarily students and early career professionals—on the app in four months, just by posting his day-to-day life as a worker in cybersecurity. Karmacharya’s following represents a growing number of young adults looking for career guidance on social platforms, researchers tell Fortune.
Most times Pranav (Nav) Karmacharya works from home. Sometimes he decides to hop over to a local college and find somewhere comfy to catch up on Slack messages; other times he’s recording himself at 5 a.m. waiting in an airport to fly to San Francisco for a work trip.
Such is the life of a TikTok career influencer.
Besides following the common creator formula of day-in-the-life of—insert any job title imaginable here—the 23-year-old also posts advice suggesting favorable internships to secure if someone wants to get into the cybersecurity governance, risk, and compliance space, or quick explainers like: “Maturing is realizing that there’s a non-technical field within cybersecurity.”
Who watches a cybersecurity analyst work from home? Ask his 14,000 followers.
Karmacharya told Fortune in a direct message that he receives hundreds of questions and comments daily about his job through DMs and TikTok Lives. A two-hour-long July 9 Live of his racked up more than 600 comments, according to TikTok metrics reviewed by Fortune. The Chime cybersecurity analyst is one among countless social media influencers who post career-related content, growing a sizable following in just four months. His success comes as young adults find schools and employers inadequate in teaching them about career fields they’d like to explore.
A study released this week found that seven in 10 young adults aged 16-to-24 find educational and career opportunities on social media. Those surveyed prefer to find advice for planning their future on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube over meeting with teachers or professors and guidance counselors and exploring job search sites.
The study, which polled 2,820 young adults—the majority coming from low-and-middle-income households—reveals more than four in 10 of those surveyed also feel the education and employment resources available to them fail to provide effective career guidance.
“I feel like a job coach and mentor most days,” Karmacharya wrote.
Karmacharya said that most people who reach out to him are students or early-career professionals trying to break into cybersecurity. They often ask about his day-to-day life as a cybersecurity analyst, paths to take in the industry, and how to upskill and stand out.
“A lot of students don’t have strong mentorship from professors or peers, so they turn to creators online who are already doing the kind of work they want to do,” Karmacharya wrote.
The study’s finding aligns with Karmacharya’s perspective—four in 10 young adults report actively seeking career-related content on social media, while another 30% encounter it passively while scrolling.
“Social media has really turned into the new career coach for young adults,” Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a managing director at the Schultz Family Foundation, a Seattle-based nonprofit that worked on the study, told Fortune.
Chandrasekaran said the reason that young adults turn to social media for career advice is the opposite of what one might think: It’s less to do with them already using social media more often than previous generations, and more to do with traditional resources not meeting their needs.
“Adults who are supposed to be guiding and supporting young people in many ways are misaligned in providing outdated guidance to young people. And that is, in many cases, complicating their journey into the working world,” Chandrasekaran said.
Where to seek career-related content
Researchers who worked on the study told Fortune students and young professionals prefer social media over traditional networking sites like LinkedIn for career advice and exploration when filling in the gaps of real-life mentors.
For the 40% of young adults who actively seek career guidance on social media, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube top their daily use, the study found. LinkedIn was one of the social media platforms used the least on a daily basis by this subgroup.
Researchers of the study told Fortune the findings conflict with parents’ perceptions of the resources available to their children for success. The survey also polled 992 parents of 16-to-24-year-olds, 16% of whom encouraged social media as a tool for career and self-exploration.
But, that won’t stop these job hopefuls from exploring career options via doom scroll.
Some social media creators that post career-related content garner tens of millions of views. Take, for example, AdviceWithErin, a career and life advice creator with 2.2 million followers on Instagram, whose reels average hundreds of thousands of views and have reached 50 million plays.
AdviceWithErin is one of around 30 career-related content creators Lindsay Sardarsingh, a health insurance consultant, started following at 22 years old.
Sardarsingh told Fortune in a direct message the creators she’s followed have taught her how to communicate and ask the right questions when navigating through different career opportunities.
Cybersecurity analyst Karmacharya’s following is much more industry-specific, attracting people interested in learning more about his career. Yet, his expertise is in high demand for a niche industry, which he says is often misunderstood by young adults.
“The No. 1 question I get is: ‘What certs should I get to break into cybersecurity?’” Karmacharya wrote. “People tend to over-focus on certifications and overlook the importance of hands-on experience, soft skills, and networking—which are often more important when trying to land that first job.”
Karmacharya attributes his 9-to-5 success to mentors he met throughout five internships during college, one being at Deloitte, where he realized he wanted to go into cybersecurity full-time.
Dritan Nesho, the CEO of HarrisX, a Washington, D.C.-based research consultancy that directed the study, told Fortune young adults are substituting day-in-the-life content on social media for job shadowing and hard-to-find real-life exposure to learn more about potential career pathways.
“This is one of the big gaps that employers leave behind, which is not offering enough internship opportunities [and] mentorship opportunities for these young adults to get a feel for what working within these organizations is about and then how to kind of break through the door,” Nesho said.
Schultz Family Foundation’s Chandrasekaran added the study’s findings show just how much the younger generation is committed to seeking out information on career paths they might want to pursue.
“On one hand, it shows the creativity and gumption of young adults to find a solution, to lean into technology, to harness social media for good,” he said. “At the same time, we see in this a warning sign that traditional institutions that should be helping young adults are failing to help guide, navigate and support them on this journey from school to work.”
