CareerPrepped is a comprehensive system, thus, before getting started with implementation, identify your goals. Do you want to onboard students and/or alumni? Do you want to scale career education, improve specific student outcomes, or embed soft skills into core curricula to improve student career-readiness? How you implement will depend on your goals and the partners you may need to get onboard to help you achieve them. Some implementation ideas are presented below:
Student Tactics
Identify other institution stakeholders whose partnership you need to achieve your goals. Strategically send customized emails targeted to different stakeholder partners to highlight the benefits of CareerPrepped and how each stakeholder partner can talk about CareerPrepped. For example, review this suggested email: Tips for Faculty on How to Talk to Students about CareerPrepped.
Have new students signup to CareerPrepped upon enrollment or at orientation to introduce it as early as possible explaining that the school has sponsored their free, lifetime access, why the school has sponsored their access, and how it will help them prepare for their careers.
Talk about CareerPrepped and the benefits of using it to increase labor market competitiveness at orientation.
Present CareerPrepped in students’ first class, giving them an overview of the platform, or have faculty do so in the first class of every program.
Establish consistent touchpoints in specific courses for every program where Career Services can discuss CareerPrepped such as during resume, portfolio, job search, salary negotiation, or interviewing presentations.
Create formal recognition and/or reward programs to motivate students and encourage the use of CareerPrepped resources from your own developed standards (e.g., Best Portfolio Awards, Best Career Site Awards, or Best Skill Badges Awards). Rewards could be exclusive informational interviews with employer partners, “field trips” at a local employer’s facilities, school supplies, trophies or plaques, digital achievement certificates for students to save in their Career Portfolio, lunch with an employer or significant leadership person at the institution. Be creative!
Share student Career Sites, Skill Badges, and/or ePortfolio files with strong employer partners who are willing to give constructive feedback to students, to motivate students with feedback directly from their industry.
Staff & Stakeholder Involvement
Claim your own Skill Badges and build your own ePortfolio and Career Site as an example to model for students.
Talk to Academics about having faculty develop and maintain their own ePortfolios, as portfolios can help substantiate faculty qualifications to accrediting bodies and may be used in performance reviews.
Help faculty develop their CareerPrepped presence to create a culture of professionalism to model for students.
Show staff/faculty bios on your institution’s website with names/photos linked to their Career Sites.
Partner with Academics to embed Career Management Skill Builders in core curricula to scaffold, scale, and/or supplement existing programs that build students’ career management skills.
Partner with employers and Academics to identify work samples employers want to see and how course assignments can help students produce portfolio evidence of skill demonstration for employers.
Discuss CareerPrepped in employer advisory board meetings for input on the work samples employers think students should show to substantiate their skill claims.
Completion Requirements and Alumni Tactics
If it makes sense for your institution, consider an exit interview process in which students must have their Career Site reviewed & approved as a condition of graduating. If not a graduation requirement, consider a requirement for a course or capstone project.
Consider an exit interview process in which students must have their CareerPrepped portfolios reviewed & approved as a condition of graduating. If not a graduation requirement, consider a requirement for a course or capstone project.
Consider requiring students to have claimed any number of Skill Badges from the "Career Management" Skill Builder category and having those claimed Skill Badges reviewed & approved or Endorsed as a condition of graduating. If not a graduation requirement, consider a requirement for a course or capstone project.
Consider requiring students to produce a one-minute video summarizing their personal brand, achievements, and career goals to insert into their Career Site as a summative assessment near graduation. (Refer to Deakin University’s Me in a Minute program here as an example: https://blogs.deakin.edu.au/meinaminute/. The YouTube channel for Deakin’s “Me in a Minute” videos is here: https://www.youtube.com/user/deakinmeinaminute.) Ensure students are prepared for this requirement by assigning appropriate Skill Builders throughout their program.
Refer non-responsive graduates to CareerPrepped resources, with links to see if this elicits a response.
Reach out to alumni to offer access to CareerPrepped as an alumni benefit to maintain alumni relations.
Proactively help prominent alumni build their CareerPrepped presence, to use them as examples to inspire students.
Create an alumni mentoring program by facilitating alumni-student connections on CareerPrepped so alumni can offer feedback on student Career Portfolios, Skill Badges, Career Sites, etc. and answer questions for students. Consider formal recognition to alumni mentor participants to motivate alumni and allow them to distinguish themselves.