4 Ways PathwayU Stands Out From Other Career Guidance Platforms

Given the statistics of student enrollment, retention, and feelings about the cost of education, universities now find themselves competing for students and striving to deliver a more relevant student experience and educational product. More than ever, institutions are finally recognizing that students want to see real value from the price they pay for tuition, and universities need to find a way to deliver actual results. Gone are the days when students would go to college for the sake of learning. It’s a difficult shift for some, but the reality that college must connect graduates with a fruitful career-life is driving great change within the realm of student success. 

Within this shift, comes opportunity. The role of the university career center is changing from historically being an afterthought for students looking for a job to a more integral piece of the learning lifecycle. For schools to rise and meet new student demands, career consideration must now be part of recruiting, advising, and classroom. The day of the evolved career center is here.

Enter, PathwayU.

PathwayU is a unique solution to many of the needs of modern universities. In this article, we’ll break down four ways our offering differs from others on the market, building out a more successful approach to career services.

1. Looking At Purpose Above All Else

With traditional career assessment tools in the marketplace, there are a variety of assessments and metrics that are used to help advise students. Typically, these findings are driven by factors like skills, aptitudes, and abilities, but at PathwayU, we believe that looking at these factors alone isn’t an effective way to mentor and guide students to successful careers.

Anyone can be great at whatever they set their mind to, but not everyone enjoys and finds meaning in what they do. 

PathwayU sets itself apart from the crowd by taking your purpose into consideration. We believe that you need to find passion in your career and life, and our tool can help you uncover where those passions lie. 

It’s no shock that students perform better in their classes and have greater job opportunities when they are passionate about what they’re doing. When students truly care about the material they are digesting and the careers they are working towards, you’re bound to see better results, such as more jobs placed and overall happier students. 

Once you’re able to identify a purpose using PathwayU’s tool, you’ll find it much easier to navigate your way from student to working professional.

2. Continuous Support Throughout The Whole Journey

The career assessment marketplace is riddled with tools that offer a quick, one-time solution or answer. Tests to showcase your strengths or skillsets only provide their results once, and often don’t give the kind of high-level insight into the findings that you need moving forward. 

For universities, the pricing model associated with these tools can quickly run up your budget, especially if you have expenses associated with every student that uses your services. That’s where PathwayU is different from the rest. 

Offering an annual site license, our tool is free for any and all of your students. And this one-time annual investment means your department can plan and prepare your budget, knowing exactly how much you’ll be spending, year-in and year-out. 

What’s more, the support PathwayU provides doesn’t stop once we deliver the findings. 

For students, we work to connect them to actual jobs and a purposeful career instead of a vague point of study. After we discover a student’s purpose, we stick with you on the educational journey, helping to ensure we build up the competencies you need to succeed. This means we keep your students in your programs longer, bringing higher levels of success for everyone involved in the process. 

On the institution side, we are the only career guidance platform that gives career services and university staff the information they need to effectively and efficiently guide your students throughout the whole process — from recruitment to admissions, all the way up to graduation and career placement.

That’s the power of career guidance centered around purpose: a more educated, more skilled, more confident, and more self-aware student.

3. A Deeper Focus On DEI

Diversity and inclusion are not the same things, despite what you might think.

Diversity is more outwardly expressed in the visual makeup of your university or organization. Sourcing students of different backgrounds, races, genders, and ages is a crucial element of building out a program that’s reflective of today’s society.

Inclusivity is much more internalized. Inclusion is focused on creating an environment and shared space in which people of all walks of life feel confident, comfortable, and welcomed. Both diversity and inclusion are two key pillars of creating a fair and positive environment.

With PathwayU, our career guidance platform helps to foster a deep culture of DEI.

Typical career guidance tools utilize templates and baselines that are not adequately applied across a variety of backgrounds. This one-size-fits-all approach can lead to bias in results and errors when delivering findings. PathwayU, on the other hand, focuses on tweaking and customizing our platform to meet each student where there are at.

This leads to better, more hyper-focused guidance for students and more all-encompassing support throughout their entire educational and professional journey.

4. Not Just A Career Assessment

Like we’ve stated earlier, PathwayU isn’t a career assessment using one-size-fits-most applications. We’re a life compass, dedicated to helping each learner find their greater purpose.

Our intuitive and insightful tools support both the educational institution and the students relying upon them for career guidance and advice.

Universities love our guidance solution because they see the value we provide instantly. Upon implementing our solution, you’ll immediately have a branded platform that you can deliver to each and every one of your students. What’s even better, is that these features are on a digital platform, helping you to reach markets previously unattainable outside of in-person support. Whether your staff and students are on campus or remote, you can be certain that PathwayU is there to help you guide your students down the right path, all at an affordable price.

Your students will appreciate our platform for the individualized value and information we provide them. By focusing our efforts on placing students on a career path derived from their passions, we find that students are more actively vested in and engaged with their education. Students who have found their purpose through PathwayU are more likely to stay on track for success and understand what they need to prioritize to turn their competencies and passions into a fruitful career. This helps to enhance the level of return on investment that students feel when they look back on their educational journey.

Long story short, PathwayU is a revolutionary tool.

With a focus on finding a sense of purpose, our tools can be used to guide countless current and future students down a successful and enjoyable educational path. As a career services professional, helping students to uncover this passion and find a clear path forward is crucial. PathwayU can help with getting the ball rolling, and, in return, you’ll find higher levels of retained, happy students.

For more information about how we stand out from other career guidance platforms or for tips on improving the offerings of your career services department, please visit pathwayu.com!

If you’d like to hear directly from one of our customers, book a meeting here. You can also check out our client testimonials and case studies here.