Faculty & Staff Toolkit

Students are thinking about their futures, often with uncertainty. By connecting course content and campus experiences to real-world applications, you can help students:

• Understand how their academic learning applies to a range of career paths
• Identify and articulate transferable skills developed in your class
• See how what they’re doing now can lead to opportunities later
• Build confidence and clarity as they navigate their major and career decisions

You don’t need to be a career expert to make an impact. Small additions—like weaving in career-related examples, introducing alumni stories, or highlighting transferable skills—can leave a lasting impression.

At BSU, we believe all students deserve to have the necessary career education, professional network, practical experiences, and life design plans to navigate their career endeavors.

At the end of their academic journey, BSU students will have had the opportunity to:

Establish and utilize a professional network  to become an engaged citizen

Create and implement career and life design plans

Participate in experiential learning and high-impact practices

Develop and articulate industry-relevant skills

Build lifelong professional skills to manage their careers

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) has identified eight core competencies that define what it means to be career-ready. These competencies align closely with the skills students are already developing in the classroom and through co-curricular activities.

NACE’s 8 Career Readiness Competencies:

1. Career & Self-Development
2. Communication
3. Critical Thinking
4. Equity & Inclusion
5. Leadership
6. Professionalism
7. Teamwork
8. Technology

By incorporating the language of these competencies into assignments, discussions, and feedback, you help students recognize their skills—and begin to communicate them effectively to employers, graduate schools, and other future opportunities.

This shared vocabulary also strengthens cross-campus collaboration and supports a unified approach to preparing students for life after graduation.

Data on Student Career Outcomes to share in your department

Sample Syllabus Statements & Assignments

Career Exploration Resources for every major and discipline

Skill-Building Activities aligned with NACE competencies

Slide Decks, Handouts, and In-Class Prompts

Strategies to Collaborate with Career Services & Internships Office

You don’t have to change your entire curriculum to support students’ career development. Whether you’re adding a career reflection to a paper, inviting a guest speaker, or encouraging students to visit the career center, every touchpoint helps students connect the dots between college and career.

Let’s partner to prepare our students not just for their first job—but for a lifetime of growth and meaningful work.

Here is an example of texts:

Identifying and articulating the NACE Career Competencies, technical, and transferable skills you acquire in this course and during your time at BSU are critical to your success both as a student and for life after graduation. In this course, you have opportunities to enhance and gain transferable and technical skills such as Critical Thinking and Communication, all of which are skills that employers and graduate programs are seeking. This will occur via assignments and class conversations and will contribute to your ability to identify and articulate these competencies and skills when applying for leadership roles, internships, jobs, graduate school, fellowships, and more.

Courses such as this class and degrees from BSU will equip you with limitless possibilities for meaningful and successful career paths. This course helps you develop transferable skills that are essential to almost any career or graduate program without being tied to a specific vocation. These skills include the ability to think critically, communicate effectively in verbal and written forms, research effectively, solve complex problems, and collaborate across diverse settings. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) has categorized these skills into eight Career Competencies that students need in order to be successful post-graduation. I encourage you to document these learning and skills developed throughout this journey and work with a career advisor at the Career Services & Internships Office to explore how you can articulate these competencies and skills when employers. These are critical to your success both as a student and as you explore career options and life after graduation.

• Add Career Resources such as Forage, LinkedIn Learning, Labor  Market Insight, Handshake, Big Interview, and others to your class.

•Encourage students to participate in career events, workshops, activities, and use of the Career Services & Internships office.

•Incorporate real-world projects into your classes.

Complete a Forage project and submit the certification of completion. Post your experience throughout the process in a discussion board, with a focus on the following:

•Why did you select this project?

•What did you learn from completing this project?

•How did this experience influence learning from this class?

•Did this experience help you gain perspectives on possible career options?

Here is the information regarding Career Readiness from the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

Check out this 1-page handout featuring all eight career readiness competencies.

Full presentation on Integrating NACE Career Readiness Competencies Into the Classroom.