Jessica Sweet, CPCC, CEIP, LICSW

Executive Career Coach

Wishingwell Coaching

I am The Career Therapist. What does that mean? I help with all those sticky places where your mindset and emotions overlap with work. 

Getting clear on what you really want. 
Achieving that next level. 
Managing your anxiety. 
Stopping limiting beliefs or patterns that hold you back. 
Creating work life balance. 
(Re) Building confidence. 
Being the leader you really want to be. 
Putting all of your ADHD magic to work for you. 
Setting boundaries
Dealing with burnout. 
Recovering from toxicity
And more. . . 

WHAT YOU WANT:

You want make an impact, make money, find a great corporate culture, grow, learn and feel like you’re contributing. 

Is that really so much to ask? 

Nope.

But you know that you’re holding yourself back, and sometimes you wonder: do you need a therapist, or a coach?

How about both?

As a trained therapist (Harvard Teaching Hospital Psychiatry Training Program) and a certified coach x 14 years, I can help you feel empowered. 

WE COULD:

✔Gain the confidence to get a new job or advance even if you have battle scars from previous roles, haven't job searched in years, or feel stuck and confused.
✔Get past mindset blocks holding you back from having the career you want
✔Reset your boundaries
✔Make a career transition and find a job and company that's exciting, a match for your skills and experience, and pays!

SOME OF MY WINS INCLUDE:

✔Coached 100s of clients over 14 years to 6/multiple 6 figure jobs doing work in alignment with their values, skills and experience
✔Helped several clients start their own business
✔ Invited to write articles for/quoted in several leading business + career publications, including Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, The Huff Post, CNBC, Business Insider, Monster.com, and more
✔Helped clients increase salaries by as much at 100%
✔ Top 25 Career Coach + Forbes Coaches Council

If you're stuck, feel you're wasting your potential, or feel like we should talk, message me on LinkedIn or: jessica@wishingwellcoach.com

Executive Career Coach for Midlife Leaders

Forbes Coaches Council

I'm a member of this invitation only organization for leading career and business coaches.  My articles on career coaching, job search and strategy have been accepted and published on Forbes.com. Read them in my publications section. Collaborated with some of the top minds in the coaching industry.

Official Member

Executive Connexions Ltd.

Cambridge Health Alliance

Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Trained under top trauma specialists to learn about and practice cutting edge trauma treatment, and treat patients in 1-to-1 and group therapy settings.

Victims of Violence Fellow

Montgomery County Methadone Center

Counselor

My father hated his job but stayed for 30 years to support our family, even though it made him sick and angry. He could have done a million other things, but he couldn’t see the options. Instead, he was miserable until the day he up and quit. 

The rest of the family suffered, too. 

My first job was toxic and “not me." I quit without notice. 

𝗜 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗱: 𝗮 𝗷𝗼𝗯 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼 𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲. 

You’re not the kind of person who can feel one thing and do another.

💔 Your career isn’t working, and you're feeling: 
	
➔ Stress, 
➔ Burn out,
➔ Undervalued, 
➔ Mis-matched/Confused/Unfocused
➔ You need a job that's more than a paycheck

➡ You’ve wished for a career coach who can help with difficult emotions, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 has a solid, proven system. 

𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗺𝗲.  

⭐ 𝗠𝘆 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗶𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲, 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲-𝗼𝗯𝘀𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗱, 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵 𝗘𝗤, 𝗝𝗮𝗰𝗸/𝗝𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝗳 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗲𝘀 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗱, 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗳𝘂𝗹, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝘆 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿𝘀. 

I use effective and proven career tools + systems I’ve created + refined over 15 years, + my therapy background.

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗜 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽: 

⭐ 𝗩𝗜𝗦𝗜𝗕𝗟𝗘, job search system + weekly group coaching + mental wellness/support. https://www.linkedin.com/redir/invalid-link-page?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwishingwellcoach%2ecom%2Fjob-search-coaching%2F

⭐𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲, 6-month group +1:1 coaching program: https://www.linkedin.com/redir/invalid-link-page?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwishingwellcoach%2ecom%2Fjob-targeting-group%2F

⭐𝟭:𝟭 𝗖𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴, Get clear, make decisions + resolve emotional career conflicts.
https://tinyurl.com/coaching-chat

𝗖𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝘀𝗮𝘆:
“I cannot emphasize enough - if you are considering any of the topics on her page or listed above . . . - work with Jess.” Jeffrey Rapp, MBA, PHP

“I would recommend Jessica to anyone looking to resolve a career dilemma!!” Julia Wooding, MBA

“Her personalized approach, combined with her expertise and encouragement allowed me to make significant progress and achieve remarkable results in a short period of time.” Tim Freeze, Sales Leader

𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲 𝗺𝘆 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆.
	⇨ Send me a DM and let’s chat.

𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀: 
https://wishingwellcoach.com/career-resources/

Jessica Sweet, CPCC, CEIP, LICSW 🇺🇦

Digital Marketing and Technology Recruiter @ Knak Digital | Fractional Talent Acquisition | Hitting Hiring Roadblocks? I can help 🙋🏻‍♀️ Job Search Advisor & Myth Debunker | Baltimore & D.C. 🔊 (Riv-Knack)

Are you struggling to hire tech and marketing talent to keep up with your organization’s growth?

Maybe your internal applications are jammed with tons of inbound resumes, but very few that are actually on target. Meanwhile, your team is buried, deliverables are slipping, and the right roles stay open way too long.

That’s where I come in.

I’m Kelli Hrivnak, a Marketing & Tech Recruiter, who helps hypergrowth companies fill critical roles faster than traditional methods.  For nearly two decades, I've been a trusted ally to small to midmarket businesses in DC, Virginia, and Maryland, building teams that boost revenue, innovation, and collaborative success.  

My background in hospitality and outside sales taught me the art of relationship building and high-pressure, often intense, decision-making skills that translated to the recruiting world.  That experience shaped how I recruit.

Hiring Hurdles Impacting my Clients:

✔️ Speed to hire.   A vacant position is slowing down your project deliverables and product development.
✔️ Hiring surge and internal recruitment/TA team is swamped.
✔️ Burned by past mis-hires and unsuccessful track record of hiring
✔️ No time to review resumes or screen candidates thoroughly.
✔️ Job Postings that result in 100's of applicants with no time to review
✔️ Underlying need to replace underperformers, confidentially
✔️ Skills gap and the relentless competition for the same pool of talent

Knak Digital Solutions:

Placement & Sourcing:
✔️ 30,000+ vetted tech and marketing contacts in our proprietary database
✔️ 100% dedication to networking, sourcing, and interviewing for faster fill times
✔️ Tailored recruiting approach that fits your team’s culture
✔️ Project-based consultants when you don't need full-time specialists

Embedded Recruiting Support:
✔️ On-demand, flexible recruiting help that scales with your needs
✔️ Extra capacity during hiring spikes so your team doesn’t get overloaded
✔️ Alternative model to project-based searches, especially when hiring 3 or more roles.

Talent Consulting:
✔️ Discreet searches for underperformers, leadership changes, and succession planning
✔️ Employer brand support to improve candidate attraction
✔️ Market intel on competitors, salary trends, and talent movement

Ready to break through your hiring bottlenecks?  Let's start a conversation. 

📧 Email: kelli@Knakdigital.com

Search job listings here ▶ https://jobs.crelate.com/portal/knakdigital

Kelli Hrivnak

Feels relevant on this Friday the 13th.

Looking at the handful of people who just landed job offers, I can say they earned those roles because they were the best candidates in the pool.  They crushed their assignments in the interview, prepped for those calls, and asked the right questions when it came to an offer.

No doubt, luck comes into play here and there.  Referrals being one.  But luck can only get you so far.

When you outreach to a Yahoo address thinking it’s inactive…and it delivers.

And they actually write back.  #recruiterwin

IYKYK.

Sunday job search tips.....

1️⃣ If the role is hybrid, your location matters.

If you’re applying from out of state and the resume says nothing about relocation, that's going to be a rejection from me. I will not be reaching out to everyone individually to clarify that they understand the in-office requirements. 

If you are relocating, define this in the resume. If you’re self-funding the move, even better. In high-supply roles, companies are not stretching on geography unless they have to.

2️⃣ All this "reverse recruiting" talk.  Take a tip out of what should be their playbook and track your search.  A simple spreadsheet with company, role, date applied, and traction.

PS. You know what signals organized? When a candidate immediately references their job search data during a screen.

3️⃣ Get clear on your positioning.  I hear people considering a few job tracks.
 “I could do Customer Success or Account Executive.”

Okay. But can you back that up? Revenue growth. Sales targets. Expansion metrics. Implementation ownership. Relationship management.  Audit your tasks and outcomes first, then engineer if those can be proof to your target job tracks.

Toggling from tech to GTM recruiting, there is one interesting difference.

In some tech searches, fraud is an issue.  As in bait and switch, deepfakes, or just fraudulent profiles in general.

In GTM, I haven't come across this (yet).   The only deception is the interpretation of results.

Quota numbers.  Millions worth of business.  Strong pipelines.  But the nuance of not knowing team dynamic, support, and strength of territory can change things.

A few weeks ago, I was talking through this exact problem with a sales leader, specifically how to sniff out BS.  So how to get past the actual numbers and understand what a candidate actually did to drive them. 

Because any outcome is only meaningful with context around strategy and process.

Anyone can put those important numbers in a resume.  It's the story behind the numbers that is a differentiator.

What questions are you asking to gain clarity around metrics in a resume?

Attention to my lady community interested in building apps!  

In honor of International Women's Day, Lovable is offering free usage of its platform for 24 hours on March 8th.   Anthropic is throwing in $100 worth of API credits, too.

If you have time next Sunday, this could be a good opportunity to bring an idea to prototype.

Open article: SheBuilds on Lovable for International Women's Day by shebuilds.lovable.app

SheBuilds on Lovable for International Women's Day

Mark Cuban says SAAS is dead.  

Instead, hello "service as a software."

I get the take.  On every social platform I am on, I read about people spinning up apps with Claude Code, Replit, or Lovable.  Sometimes, within a matter of hours.  

In theory, everyone can be their own product managers now.  Problem solvers are everywhere.

But I'm just not convinced we are all problem understanders.  Let me give an example near and dear to my little recruiter heart:  The ATS.

There are dozens and dozens of applicant tracking systems. All have their nuances, with different audiences like Enterprise, SMB. Internal TA or Agency.  What's rarer is finding a recruiter who uses one and adores one platform.

🔸Business development workflows are clunky
🔸Tagging and rediscovering talent is complicated
🔸Reporting dashboards aren't tracking the data you want.
🔸The UX is terrible.

And yet, new ATS tools continue to ship and recruitment teams continue to demo them, hoping to discover the one that understands how *that* team moves through their day.

The barrier to building software has crumbled.  The barrier to diagnosing and recognizing the legitimate pain point has not.  

Duplicating an existing product may decrease subscription services for some businesses, but for new custom software--there isn't a guarantee for a product-market fit. 

I'm also not even addressing the maintenance and scaling piece of it... 

Curious to hear everyone else's thoughts here.  Is accessibility really the game changer here?

Some hiring managers don't see what goes into a search.  Here is what is happening in my day when leaders are focused on scaling business:

🔹Researching the landscape first, before a single outreach goes out. This is mapping competitors, understanding the skill sets, and finding those gems that are adjacent and could be overlooked.  (Yes, there are AI tools that can help, but they don't always pick up nuance.)

🔹Fielding and engaging in emails, texts, calls, and video conversations with prospects.  This can consume hours on end per day.

🔹Creating and maintaining a running list of these targets. In an ATS or even a simple spreadsheet.  Tracking who's a miss and why (comp misaligned, timing off with a growing family, skill set not quite there)

🔹Gathering real-time comp data, not what's published on Level.Fyi.

🔹Learning WHY talent is passing.  This is the intel to bring back to hiring teams when time-to-fill exceeds the usual TTF.

🔹Hearing where your brand resonates and where it doesn't.

Every prospect who passes is still giving data.  Hesitations on equity, comp, benefits, team structure, title inflation, or off-leveling.

Some of those things just can't be changed, period. Budget or onsite needs. But bringing those market realities back to a hiring team, with legit intel instead of gut or opinion, is where that advisory piece comes in.   

 At the end of the day, a search is the outbound strategy. Inbound is dandy, especially when it attracts solid talent, but it's not JUST the plan.

Are you validating your hiring strategy with real candidate feedback?

Returning from a week semi off the grid.

Watched a Super Bowl with targeted ads for Alka-Seltzer and Meneparol Plus as opposed to the Levi's, Google, and Lays ads here in the States.  A different experience to say the least....

The only AI conversation I overheard was a man saying he just discovered ChatGPT last month and saying “what a game changer it is.” 

Huge thank you to a client partner who gave me grace to take a beach bum video call.

Playing catch up now--please hit me up if I missed your DM or email.

(Good news is that it looks like it may reach over 50+ degrees this weekend and finally melt the snow away).

Attrition.  There tends to be two waves.

The first wave could be a single employee departure on a team or a mass RIF.  

The second wave is one I think most should anticipate but often don't:  the people who stayed.

The disruption of the team dynamic can stir up a feeling of instability and uncertainty.  And some can power through.  In some cases, a toxic employee peaced out, which can improve the dynamic among the standing soldiers.

The adverse?  Workloads are reshuffled and reporting lines are changed.  Teams could be understaffed and overworked.    Just the catalyst for those still on the team to start thinking and planning for options outside the company.   Typical in M&As.

If you're hiring right now for a replacement role or just leading a team through it, pay attention to who's still standing and check in on them.

taplio

The Battle

Jessica Sweet, CPCC, CEIP, LICSW 🇺🇦

Kelli Hrivnak

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taplio

The Battle

Jessica Sweet, CPCC, CEIP, LICSW 🇺🇦

Kelli Hrivnak

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Kelli Hrivnak's LinkedIn Performance

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