Career Readiness

Critical thinking is the ability to assess, contextualize, and compare available evidence when you form a position on a complex issue.

It’s analyzing your own and others’ assumptions on a topic or situation. It’s also evaluating issues from multiple perspectives to address problems and solutions.

Communication is the ability to express thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively through writing or speaking. It also means that you can listen attentively and purposefully despite distractions.

You’ll need to communicate with a variety of audiences, from co-workers and supervisors to clients, customers, and other external groups.

You’ll also be able to verbally discuss and create reliable, succinct, and easy-to-follow professional documents. This includes every step: planning, researching, writing, editing, proofreading, and even designing documents.

Teamwork is the ability to work together with others closely to achieve the same outcome.

You’ll need to work well with people from multiple backgrounds and perspectives who bring a variety of specialized skills and knowledge to the task.

Building collaborative relationships in your workplace is important because you’ll:

• learn from other team members
• share knowledge, resources, and workloads freely
• help one another complete tasks

Digital technology competency is when you can use current digital technologies ethically and efficiently to:

• solve problems
• complete tasks
• accomplish goals

You’ll also be able to effectively adapt to new and emerging technologies.

Leadership is the ability to leverage the strengths of others to achieve common goals. An effective leader can organize, prioritize, and delegate work.

You’ll need good interpersonal skills to coach others toward success.

Leadership requires empathic skills to guide and motivate a team. It’s also the ability to assess and manage your emotions and the emotions of others.

Professionalism is the ability to demonstrate personal accountability and effective work habits.

You’ll understand how verbal and non-verbal communication affect your professional image.

Having professionalism means that you:

• show integrity
• demonstrate ethics
• act responsibly with the interests of the organization and wider community in mind

It also means that you learn from your mistakes.

When you can identify and talk about your skills, strengths, knowledge, and experiences related to a specific job and career goals, that’s career management.

It’s the ability to recognize and express areas where you need to grow professionally. It’s how you navigate and explore job options, then understand and take the steps to pursue opportunities.

Career management is also advocating for yourself and taking advantage of opportunities at work.

Community engagement is the ability to demonstrate commitment to respectfully collaborate across and within community contexts and structures.

You can connect and extend knowledge from your own academic study to benefit the greater community.

Global and intercultural fluency is the ability to value, honor, and learn from diverse cultures, races, ages, genders, sexual orientations, and religions.

It also means to demonstrate openness, inclusiveness, sensitivity, and the ability to interact with all people and understand individuals’ differences.