This toolkit, created by the Career Connections Department at Community College of Philadelphia, provides a practical framework for faculty, staff, and administrators to integrate career readiness across all campus experiences. It covers the NACE eight core competencies, strategies for recognizing and developing skills, and methods for helping students articulate their value.
This document is a practical campus-wide guide created by the Career Connections Department at Community College of Philadelphia. It is designed for faculty, staff, and administrators to help students recognize, build, name, prove, and communicate career-ready competencies. The toolkit emphasizes that career readiness is a student-success strategy applicable to all students, whether they plan to enter the workforce, transfer, or pursue further education.
The guide introduces the NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) framework, which defines career readiness and outlines eight core competencies: Career and Self-Development, Communication, Critical Thinking, Equity and Inclusion, Leadership, Professionalism, Teamwork, and Technology. It provides a student-friendly bridge for each competency and explains what each looks like in action, such as solving problems for Critical Thinking or working with others for Teamwork.
The SEE IT section helps users identify where career readiness is already happening across campus, including coursework, campus experiences, and everyday interactions. Examples include research papers developing Critical Thinking and Communication, advising appointments building Career and Self-Development, and work-study roles fostering Professionalism and Communication.
The NAME IT section focuses on making skills visible and building what is needed. It provides role-specific callouts for faculty, advisors, student life staff, work-study supervisors, administrators, and Career Connections. It also includes a development cycle: notice, name, practice, feedback, reflect and repeat, with concrete examples of how to build missing competencies.
The PROVE IT and SPEAK IT sections guide users on helping students gather evidence and articulate their experiences using career-ready language. The toolkit concludes with an implementation planner, quick-use prompts, and resources for putting the framework into practice in courses, programs, and interactions.
The document includes data from NACE Job Outlook reports showing the shift toward skills-based hiring, with 70% of employers using skills-based hiring in 2026. It also notes that nearly 90% sought evidence of problem-solving ability on resumes, and nearly 80% sought strong teamwork skills. The guide stresses that campus-wide career readiness is an expanding practice in higher education.