Have you saved a TikTok about “3 phrases that make you sound smart in an interview”? Added “corporate girl aesthetic” to your wishlist after watching a Get Ready With Me? No judgment. We totally get it — TikTok has basically become Gen Z’s version of Google when it comes to career advice. But let’s take a second and look at the reality behind the screen.
The American Reality: TikTok as a Career Guide
A survey by ResumeBuilder.com, cited by CNBC, shows that in the U.S.: 41% of Gen Z made a career decision based on a TikTok video,15% received a job offer for a position they found through the app, and nearly 80% say they’ve used the platform for professional networking.
According to Pew Research Center (February 2024), 56% of U.S. adults aged 18–34 use TikTok.
And two of the most popular content formats are:
- A Day In My Life (DIML) – where someone shows what their typical workday looks like;
- Get Ready With Me (GRWM) – mixing morning routines with personal and professional insights.
It’s catchy. It feels personal. It seems honest (at least on the surface). But the real question is: Is it complete? Or just really pretty in 15 seconds?
Europe & Romania: High Consumption, Low Filtering
According to a piece published by ZF – Gen Z Trends, the situation in Europe (and especially Romania) looks like this:
- 97% of young Europeans aged 16–29 use the internet daily.
- But in Romania, only 46% of young people have strong digital skills — compared to an EU average of 71% (Germany – 90%, Finland – 94%).
- Romania also has the highest TikTok usage rate in the EU, with around 47% of the population on the platform. That’s a 20% increase in just one year — from 7.6 million users in 2023 to nearly 9 million in 2024.
The issue? Even though we’re extremely connected, critical thinking and content filtering are often missing.
Young people are overexposed to shallow content, and that’s affecting their motivation, mental health, and ability to make clear career decisions.
TikTok is cool — but it’s not your career GPS
It’s not wrong to get inspired on TikTok. Or to save videos that motivate you. But your career needs more than pastel filters and animated text. It needs: patience, clarity, people you can talk to, real experiences — not just “vibes.” What you can do, without panicking:
- Treat TikTok like a snack, not a full meal. It’s great for inspiration, but also look for deeper content: podcasts, articles, real people.
- Write a CV that tells your story — not someone else’s. That pink font won’t help if you don’t know what you’ve learned or what you can really do in a job.
- Take digital breaks. You don’t have to know everything all the time. Sometimes, what you need more than “tips & tricks” is a bit of quiet.
- Ask for real advice. From a colleague, a teacher, a mentor. One message sent on LinkedIn can be more valuable than 50 scrolls.
TikTok is cool. But so is responsibility. Choose content that helps you, not just entertains you. And don’t forget: your professional reality may not be aesthetic — but it’s yours. And it’s worth building with care.
And if you want to start building it for real, we’ll see you this October at Connecting Careers. A job fair that doesn’t promise magic fixes — but gives you real people, visionary companies, and opportunities that begin with who you truly are.
It’s not about “where you see yourself in 5 years,” but about where you have the courage to be YOU — right now.
