Career Coaching at the CCEC

Navigating the transition from college to career can be daunting for many students. At Whitman, the Career and Community Engagement Center (CCEC) serves as a crucial resource, offering comprehensive career coaching to guide students through this transformative journey. With a focus on individualized support, the CCEC equips students with the resources and strategies they need to successfully build their trajectory toward fulfilling personal and professional lives.

Career Coaching at Whitman

Launched in the Fall of 2021, this year’s senior class was the first Whitman incoming class to have a dedicated career coach from the CCEC assigned to them before they started their orientation. Working as a guide to help students understand and access their professional potential, career coaching is not about job placement; it’s about fostering a deeper understanding of oneself and the professional landscape. The coaching process begins with a one-on-one relationship between students and experienced coaches. This personalized approach allows for tailored guidance, ensuring that each student’s unique interests, strengths, values and goals are prioritized.

Whether students are first-years exploring potential majors or seniors poised to graduate, their career coach will help them clarify their aspirations, pursue interesting experiences and develop actionable plans to achieve their goals. The focus on individual goals means that no two coaching experiences are alike; each student is supported in building a customized roadmap tailored to their specific ambitions.

The Four-Phase Plan

One of the resources available, is a structured four-phase plan designed to guide students from self-discovery through experience and skill acquisition to successful launch. This scaffolded resource not only provides a bit of structure, but is accessible at any level so students build confidence as they move through each segment of the plan.

1. Get Ready & Explore: The journey often begins with self-assessment, where students are encouraged to reflect on their strengths, interests and values. Online assessments and skills inventories are available to help students gain insights into their capabilities, while coaches encourage students to begin seeking out clubs, campus jobs and off-campus opportunities to delve into areas of interest. This foundational phase is critical, as it sets the stage for informed decision-making later. Understanding one’s own skills and preferences enables students to target organizations, courses, and career trajectories that are not only aligned with their interests and strengths but are also personally fulfilling.
2. Seek & Gain Experience: Once students have a clearer understanding of who they are, they are encouraged to pursue opportunities. This stage involves researching organizations, career fields, off-campus programs, community events and specific roles that align with what they’ve learned. Coaches provide guidance in identifying relevant resources, such as job boards, campus activities, industry associations, and networking opportunities. The importance of networking cannot be overstated here; through informational interviews, networking events and professional connections, students dive deeper into the variety of paths available to them, gaining insights that are often not available through online research methods. Those networks can also help direct them to internships, research opportunities, elevated campus positions and job shadowing opportunities that will extend their skill sets while enhancing their first-hand knowledge of what a future in that arena may be.
3. Connect & Advance: With potential career paths identified, students are encouraged to transition into a preparation phase. Here, coaches assist in refining student plans, suggesting further experiential learning options, providing useful feedback on application materials and aiding students in connecting with potential mentors as they extend and advance their experience and skill sets to align with their chosen career paths. Effective search and interview strategies are discussed, equipping students with the tools to navigate job postings, leverage online sources, and articulate a positive impression to recruiters and industry professionals. Alumni mentors, available through a variety of programs and events further student connections to the academic and professional paths they choose to pursue.
4. Look Ahead & Launch: The final phase, implementation, involves putting these prepared strategies into action. Students are supported as they actively engage in the job search process, applying for post-undergrad jobs, fellowships, graduate schools and internships. Through this phase, coaches continue to advise on application materials, interview prep, and support for negotiating offers. As students face deadlines and rejection during this critical stage, their coach becomes crucial to share methods for staying organized and motivated. The CCEC encourages students to remain adaptable and resilient through this phase, essential traits in today’s dynamic job market.

The Value of Career Coaching

Career coaching at the CCEC offers numerous benefits that extend beyond simple job placement. One of the primary advantages is the way that coaching underpins the many opportunities that students can and will pursue throughout their own Whitman experience, from developing as a leader, to deepening their understanding of pivotal societal issues as they broaden their perspectives and global understanding. Through coaching, students gain clarity on their future aspirations and develop strategies to achieve them. This proactive mindset is essential in a competitive job landscape, where many students may feel overwhelmed or uncertain about their next steps.

However, the coaching experience is not exclusive to the CCEC. Whitman students continuously access information that informs their future trajectories – from faculty members, their academic advisor, staff mentors and their classmates. There are many resources that our colleagues and students across Whitman’s campus can access and share with each other. For example, every student can find the name of their career coach along with the name of their academic advisor on the myWhitman portal; and so can their advisor. A trove of developmentally-relevant student resources is available to every student through the Handshake resource library. All academic advisors can learn more about CCEC offerings through the “CCEC cheat sheet” posted to the Academic Advisor Canvas page. And our team of coaches has a regular stream of monthly notes that they send to students through individual emails. This variety of methods for accessing coaching information and CCEC opportunities or resources ensures that students can fit career coaching into any routine.

Real-World Impact

The immediate impact of career coaching from the CCEC is reflected in the success stories of so many current students. Many of our “coachees” credit their coaching experience with helping them identify the ways they can move into the world and impact issues that matter to them. They start by landing internships, research experiences, and fellowships that connect to their academic learning and inform their plans.

By utilizing the scaffolded four-phase plan, paired with insight from their academic advisors, career coaches, classmates and industry mentors, these students are empowered to explore their potential, prepare effectively, and implement their identified career strategies with confidence. As we move through this first year of every Whitman student having a dedicated career coach, we expect to fully realize the future impact of this intentional and individualized support for the Class of 2025 as they begin to launch into meaningful lives of purpose.