Wondering how well you’ll excel in the workforce after graduating from college? If you’re part of an internship, co-op or other work experience, it’s a great opportunity to hone your skills and get feedback from your employers on how you stack up on the workforce skills that employers are looking for, such as critical thinking, being a great team player and professionalism.
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A Focus on the Workforce Skills in Demand Today
The Step-by-Step Guide to Career Success
While there’s nothing new about colleges and universities working to prepare students on the relevant skills in their field, institutions are becoming more focused on the behavioral competencies or soft skills that employers desire. This is becoming more necessary in a workplace that is highly augmented with technology and automation.
However, soft skills have not been formally taught in classes, so internships and other collaborative projects or work simulations can be among the best ways for students to develop these competencies.
The National Association of Colleges and Employers and its NACE Center for Career Development and Talent Acquisition performs research and collaborates to create a shared understanding of what students need to launch and develop a successful career. It has defined eight competencies that link to skills in high demand by employers. The NACE competencies and brief definitions are below:
- Career and self-development: Tapping into learning resources and taking advantage of opportunities to advance professionally.
- Communication: Clearly and effectively exchange information, ideas, facts and perspectives with persons inside and outside of an organization.
- Critical thinking: Understanding the context of situations and using logic to respond.
- Equity and inclusion: Demonstrating an awareness and commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
- Leadership: Recognizing and capitalizing on personal and team strengths to meet goals.
- Professionalism: Understanding and demonstrating effective work habits – even among differing environments – and acting in the interest of the larger organization.
- Teamwork: Building and maintaining collaborative relationships aimed at a common goal, while valuing diverse viewpoints and shared responsibilities.
- Technology: Understanding and leveraging technologies ethically to enhance efficiencies, complete tasks and accomplish goals.
Readiness Reports Help Students Assess Strengths, Opportunities
A growing number of the country’s top colleges and universities are helping students find out how they specifically rate in these competencies by using a technology solution developed by the NACE and industrial organizational psychologists at SkillSurvey. (Editor’s note: The author of this article is SkillSurvey’s president and CEO.)
The tool helps collect feedback from students’ managers and supervisors following internships, co-ops or other work experience on how students rate on work behaviors tied to the NACE Competencies. The colleges and universities using this assessment tool can produce career-readiness reports to help students learn about their workplace strengths and improvement opportunities. They can also compare the feedback from their supervisors to the students’ own self-assessments. Students then have the information they need for their own self-development, for example:
- A comparison of students’ self-assessments against those of their supervisors and co-workers.
- Comparisons against a larger database of all students (including at other schools) who were rated with the same survey criteria following their internships, co-ops and other work arrangements.
- Many students even use their reports to promote their readiness for the workforce, posting them on LinkedIn as certificates.
If you’re a student who is applying for an internship – or you’re already in one – find out how you’ll be assessed for the experience. Consider using the above list of competencies as a guide for discussions with your program supervisor, manager or co-workers.
It’s beneficial to understand how your co-workers and supervisors see your behaviors and practices. With that knowledge, you can zero in on the areas you can develop before graduating. Plus, career readiness feedback can help you promote your proficiency in soft skills, like critical thinking, that today’s employers want.
