Day 3 of the Career Champions Challenge

Welcome to Day 3 of the Career Champions Challenge! Today’s topic is on Career Readiness Competencies.

What are Career Readiness Competencies?
In 2015, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), surveyed over 600 employer members to determine the most critical skills and competencies when hiring new graduates. In 2020, the list was revised, and these are now called the 8 Career Readiness Competencies:

  • Career & Self-Development
  • Professionalism
  • Communication
  • Critical Thinking
  • Equity & Inclusion
  • Leadership
  • Teamwork
  • Technology

This resource provides further explanation on each of the Career Readiness Competencies. Please feel free to share this with your students as well!

Discrepancy between Students and Employers
In a recent 2022 student survey by NACE, graduating seniors were asked what they thought their proficiency levels were for these career readiness competencies. They ranked themselves as “very or extremely proficient” particularly in communication, professionalism, and teamwork competencies. However, employers rated their new graduate employees’ proficiency in these competencies as only “somewhat to very proficient.” While the article acknowledges that these ratings aren’t terrible, it does indicate that there is a discrepancy between what the students and employers feel about their readiness in the work environment.

How can Career Readiness Competencies be implemented?
It is important for students to be able to explain their accomplishments and the growth they’ve gained with these career readiness competencies during their four years at UAlbany. Students need to highlight these skills to future employers through their resumes, networking opportunities, and interviewing for internships and jobs. It is hard for students to articulate these concepts in tangible ways though. As faculty and staff, we are the front-line supporters in preparing students for their success after graduation. In our classes and other programs, we instill these important skills every day. However, in parallel to instilling these skills, we want to make sure the students are aware of how they are developing these competencies.

So, how can we do this? We don’t have to make any drastic changes to our courses or the way we interact with students to incorporate these career readiness competencies. We can do them in subtle or more explicit ways.

Examples of subtle ways could be the following:

  • Incorporate a teamwork rubric when doing a group project. You can explain to the class how teamwork is needed in the workforce, and how one gets assessed for the work that they do in a job.
  • If you’re an advisor for a student club or organization, you can educate your students about the career readiness competencies they’re building up as they create programs and coordinate events on-campus.
  • Choose one of these eight career competencies and include it into your course objectives.
  • Explain to your students the concept of how critical thinking is essential and connect how these skills are important in their future workplace.
  • Simply ask your students to reflect back on the skills they’ve gained from a recent school project, on-campus job, or from any experiential learning opportunity they’ve had.

Examples of more explicit ways could be the following:

  • Collaborate with the Office of Career & Professional Development to come into your class or student group meeting to talk on a career-related topic of choice.
  • Create an assignment for students to develop one or more of the career readiness competencies. An example assignment using Focus 2 self-assessment is listed in today’s resources.

Career and self-development are a critical part of a college education. Employers want students to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses and to be able to articulate them. Everything students do in class and their experiential learning activities help to build up their career readiness competencies. When faculty and staff are able to connect the dots for students to become aware of the awesome things they are learning and doing, and how those skills will be valued in their professional lives after graduation, this will help them further articulate these concepts to potential employers.

To answer today’s quiz successfully, please be sure to do the following:

You need to take all 8 quizzes to receive your certificate of completion. Thank you again for participating in the challenge. If you have any questions or comments, please contact us at career@albany.edu.

Today’s Resources (there is no video today)

Take today's Quiz