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Have a friend who is just starting Eldar. He's quite a fan of Pathfinders and Swooping Hawks, with Baharroth. A squad of each being the only things he has so far.
Suggestions on what direction in which to take the army, while using a squad or two of each of those? (yes, I know Hawks aren't exactly...ideal)

Here's my suggestion:

1. Figure out how much the favorite units cost, and subtract that amount from the overall army points.

2. Build a real Eldar army with the remaining points.

3. Add the favorite units back in.

I don't think there's any way to really integrate these units into an overall army list. Pathfinders can sometimes be integrated into a mainly footslogging list if there is a character nearby to give them some support, and/or a falcon for them to jump into when the flamers come. Hawks can just deepstrike every turn for grenade packs and then jump back into reserve immediately (Baharroth, I think, will let them do this without needing an exarch), but that's just an annoyance for like 350-400 points.

When your player sees that his sub-optimal units are dying and not doing anything, he might reconsider.

Pathfinders are fairly easy. A unit of 7 to 10 with a farseer in range is awesome. A guide and especially a doom will make them into a MC and heavy armored infantry killer.

Swooping Hawks esp with Baharroth will be a lot tougher to make useful. I would recommend not using the template and instead use them as a ranged shooting unit. The grenade pack will just not make them shine for the amount of points sunk into them.

These are both alternate units and not mainstays. Both are on foot so I would suggest an on foot Eldar approach.
Otherwise the pathfinders and SH will be the only infantry on board and get shot up by enemy fire.

DA, Dark Reapers, perhaps Guardians for firepower. Wraithlords or guard or fire dragons in serpents for anti-tank work. War walkers for more firepower and perhaps EJB for speedy objective grabbers.

Wow, I've recently vetoed the idea of pathfinders altogether from my lists. The thing is that while they do their job quite well, they are extremely vulnerable to assault, and to flamers etc. They give your opponent a focal point to attack, so you will need a) the ability to defend them with some assault unit, and/or b) some kind of cunning plan to predict your enemy's moves. That's assuming nothing deepstrikes in and annihilates them, sternguard being what usually did for mine. The other problem is that sniper rifles aren't all that. 3+ to hit and 4+ to wound, with so few shots, means that they only do worthwhile damage against MCs or super-elite troops who are not in cover. Useless against vehicles, futile against massses of light infantry.

Swooping hawks I have no experience with, but I guess the best use would be either bombing people with grenade packs and skyleap, or attacking vehicles with haywire grenades and intercept. Seems like small squads would be best.

Ten pathfinders plus a farseer is something like 350 points? For three or four wounds per turn at range 36"?

The problem with having swooping hawks on the table--like with any T3 4+ save models in the Eldar list--is that a couple of bursts of heavy bolter fire will take them out. They won't live past one or two turns on the table.

tactics ... don't bother upgrading the Hawks or the Rangers.

5 Hawks aren't a bad unit. 105pts DS for a Large Blast and very fast able to place haywire any vehicle within 19-24". There are many better units like warp spiders ... but if you're tanking them keep them cheap.

Rangers are 19pts each ... upgrading them to pathfinders is great but only really want 5 pathfinders per 1000pts of army. Split them into two units.

Rangers aren't terrible, however when I play them I tend to not upgrade them to the pathfinders, I am not sold on the upgrade cost to worth ratio.

Hawks, as said should be haywire throwers and if you dump anymore points in them you will really feel the hurt when they get taken out.

I would play both in a foot slogging list (Guardians, Wraithlords/guard, Dire Avengers, Seers, etc.)

I do think that if taken, rangers should have the pathfinders upgrade. The better cover save alone is worth it, and ignoring cover can help them move toward an objective or flee from an assault more reliably.

I was just crunching some numbers, and I see that you can get the following for around 1000 points:

2X5 fire dragons in wave serpents with scatterlaser/shuriken cannon
2X5 dire avengers in wave serpents with scatterlaser/shuriken cannon
2 fire prisms (or 2 falcons with EML/holofield for about 100 points more)

That's a good base for an army that will be able to take on just about anything. With this core, you can add hundreds of points of crap and still have a playable force.

I'm kind of surprised by all the pathfinder hate: I use them and absolutely love them-they haven't failed me yet. Of course, they've only seen 2 games, but I love the concept of them too, and how they are on paper-I used 5 units of 8 to completely wipe out a space wolf army! I say try them, but if you don't like em, drop em later. But at least give them a chance.

Fritz recently covered a Swooping Hawk list, running 3x10 hawks with exarchs in two squads for skyleap, Baharroth in the odd squad. An Fusion/PW/Mandi/Wing-Autarch pairs up with one of the squads with the exarch. Use 30x Guardian Jetbikes with cannons to round out the list with troops.

Reserve everything if going second or field the hawks if you go first, then Skyleap on your turn. Yo-yo the hawks to drop your template, staying away from assaults. When the bikes come on, use the cannons to pop transports so the hawks can template them. To capture objectives, move a bike squad close enough for the TL shuri's and land Baharroth or the autarch's squad close enough that they can attach to the bikes for the assault.

It's highly mobile and uses null-deployment tactics, but it's going to fail against heavy bolters. The theory here is that most armies are mech/anti-mech and the occassional missile, lascannon, or melta is going to take out a hawk, but they're less vulnerable en masse.

That's not to say you won't get your face smashed playing it - it's not a hard list - but play it enough, find the nuances of deployment, movement, and unit synergy and it's got the same killer potential of other eldar lists.