Making High-Quality Career Coaching Accessible Beyond Business Majors

Often students will completely overlook coaching offered because they simply don’t know it’s there. What we’ve begun is integrating and building the coaching into the curriculum itself, especially for non-business majors. We bring the tools directly into the classroom: resume building, interview tips, job search strategies, and how to accurately research companies hiring. Because the coaching is built into the curriculum, it is all in-context to their field of choice. Career support shouldn’t be dependent on a student knowing where or when to ask for it, but instead should be a basic included in their studies.

A strategy that works well for us is interest-led coaching, not major-led coaching.

At DiscoverU.in, we don’t start with what someone studied, we start with who they are. We use an Interest Assessment (Dr. John Holland’s proven RIASEC Assessment: https://discoveru.in/interest-assessment-test/) to identify a client’s work-related interests and job personality, then map those to their strengths to explore alignment across creative industries, government, armed forces, entrepreneurship, social impact, and more.

This matters especially for people outside well-supported paths. A fine arts graduate, a mid-career bureaucrat, or a retiring Army Commander all need the same thing, someone who takes their background seriously and helps them find a meaningful next step, not a generic resume template or a rigid linear path ahead (https://discoveru.in/client-testimonials/).

Our entirely one-on-one model means there’s no popular major bias. Every client gets a personalised roadmap, regardless of whether their field has a traditional hiring pipeline.

One strategy we used is building an online career portal called Pathwyz.org. It gives people structured and high quality coaching support no matter their major or industry. I partnered on this project with Brenda Mariah who is a certified professional job search coach strategist and writer. We designed the portal to guide job seekers from the moment of a layoff all the way through salary negotiation and their actual start date.

I personally built several modules including one focused on clarifying values because those priorities apply to every field. We paired these lessons with practical tools so job seekers can move forward at their own pace between coaching conversations. The goal is to deliver individualized coaching to thousands of people who might not otherwise get this level of support. This approach helps us serve a broad mix of people with the same standard of excellence instead of only supporting a few traditional majors.

One effective strategy has been embedding career coaching directly into interdisciplinary learning pathways rather than limiting support to traditionally career-focused majors like business. Students in fields such as humanities, social sciences, and arts increasingly benefit from structured exposure to transferable skills, industry certifications, and project-based learning aligned with evolving workforce demands. According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, nearly 44% of core workplace skills are expected to change within five years, making adaptability and continuous learning critical across every discipline. Career coaching becomes significantly more impactful when tied to real-world applications, mentorship, and industry-recognized credentials rather than academic specialization alone. This approach has helped create more equitable career outcomes while preparing learners for a labor market that values skills over traditional degree boundaries.

One unconventional hiring practice that has worked exceptionally well for us is giving candidates a chance to have informal conversations with the people they’d actually work alongside before we make a hiring decision. It’s not a formal interview, and there’s no scorecard. We simply want to see how naturally the conversation flows and whether both sides can picture working together day after day.

Over the years, I’ve learned that technical skills can be taught far more easily than attitude, communication style, and willingness to collaborate. In recruiting for skilled trades and workforce-focused roles, I’ve seen candidates who looked average on paper become top performers because they fit the team dynamic and genuinely cared about the work.

I remember one hire who had less experience than several other applicants. During an informal discussion with future teammates, he asked thoughtful questions about safety, training, and how he could contribute in his first few months. The team immediately connected with his mindset. He ended up becoming one of our most dependable employees and later helped mentor new hires.

What this practice has done for our culture is create shared ownership of hiring decisions. Employees feel their input matters, and new hires join with a realistic understanding of the people and environment they’re stepping into.

One thing I often tell hiring managers is, “Resumes tell you what someone has done; conversations reveal how they’ll show up every day.” Culture isn’t built by hiring the most impressive candidate on paper; it’s built by hiring people who make the team stronger once they’re in the room.