Becoming Career Ready Faculty & Instructor Guide

Essential to Becoming Career Ready is the development of eight *Career Readiness Competencies. The one thing that all eight competencies share is that they are important to employers and more specifically how employers evaluate job candidates and employee performance. The experiences that students undertake at UConn and beyond offer many opportunities to develop and enhance the Competencies, including participation in classroom learning, internships, co-ops, research, on-campus involvement, work experience, or other on- or off-campus endeavors.

*The Career Readiness Competencies have been adopted by UConn through the Center for Career Development and are referred to as Career Readiness Competencies, ‘NACE Competencies’ or ‘Career Competencies’.

Career Readiness Competencies have been identified through extensive research and observations conducted by the National Association of Colleges & Employers (NACE), with input from employers across all industries, as necessary skills for success in today’s workforce and other post-collegiate pursuits.
Engaging in NACE Career Readiness Competencies can contribute to students’ accomplishments in courses, campus activities, internships, jobs and other opportunities.

All UConn faculty want students to succeed, not only in their classrooms, but also in their post-graduation pursuits. When integrating NACE Career Readiness Competencies into their courses, faculty can help students enhance and articulate these critical skills that employers and graduate programs seek. Students benefit from seeing where and how they are engaging in Career Readiness and competency development within their courses and academic field(s).

Engaging In and Integrating Competencies and Career Readiness

UConn faculty have been integrating Career Readiness Competencies into courses and class assignments long before the phrase emerged in the higher education landscape. As you review the list of eight NACE Career Readiness competencies (right sidebar) you may realize that you already have course content or assignments that provide students with opportunities to enhance or develop one or more of them.

Integration Ideas to Consider:

Access the Career Center’s HuskyCT site that is populated with career-relevant content including syllabi, assignments, and advising tools already created by UConn faculty.

To be granted access to this course, submit a Module Request Form.

In the right sidebar of this page you can review each Competency and the sample behaviors that demonstrate utilization of the competency.
- Consider identifying which competencies students will engage in while taking your course and highlight those on your syllabus, perhaps including them with learning objectives;
- Taking a similar approach, review course assignments and consider adding proficiency indicators (sample behaviors) to grading rubrics;

When having an outside presenter join the class, ask the individual which competencies they use most widely in their work and how;
Invite your students to take the Am I Career Ready assessment in Focus2 to gauge their current proficiency level in the eight NACE Career Readiness competencies and have them determine if and how they might enhance specific competencies during your course;
If journaling is part of your syllabus, consider creating reflection assignments relevant to each of the eight competencies as well as any other competencies that are integral to the course or academic field;
When students have a final project, research poster, or capstone, require them to include which of the eight NACE Career Readiness competencies they engaged in while working on the project, including examples of how the project contributed to their competency development.

Additional Support & Resources

Consider these resources:

Operationalizing Career Readiness into Courses and Curriculum: Judy Brown, Institute for Systems Genomics, and Danielle DeRosa, Sports Management Program, share best practices around incorporating career-relevant content into their courses and curriculum. Both Danielle and Judy are of the mind that if there are resources and content available, it doesn’t make sense to start from scratch, and are willing to share what they’ve already developed.
Teaching Toward Career Readiness – University of Oregon, Office of the Provost
Resources that instructors can use to develop students’ career competencies.
- Transparent Career Readiness Assignments
- Reflective Career Readiness Assignments
Faculty Resources for Promoting Career Readiness – University of Washington
- Provides a number of different ways that faculty can integrate Career Readiness in courses.

Consider becoming a Career Champion and:

gain access to live and recorded training events highlighting the latest resources and best practices in career development;
meet and connect with like-minded faculty, sharing tools and strategies.

Enroll to join UConn’s Career Champion community!

Staff at the Center for Career Development are available to learn about your course objectives and will work with you to develop course content and class assignments that engage students in developing one or more of the NACE Career Readiness competencies. Partner with Us – Career Center Contacts