Career Readiness Teaching Library
Lead career learning with your own students. Faculty, staff, supervisors, student leaders, and community partners can use these lessons in classes, team meetings, organization programs, and workshops to put the Career Journey and NACE career readiness competencies into practice. Choose a lesson, download its presentation and facilitator guide, and adapt the examples to your group.
Career Journey Model: Build Your Roadmap
Introduce the four connected phases of the Career Journey, explore CES resources that support each phase, and help students create their own campus roadmap. This 45-minute lesson combines discussion, resource exploration, and a personal action plan. Students can revisit any phase as their interests and goals develop.
Discover Yourself: Understand What Matters to You
Help students identify their interests, skills, values, and preferences—and use what they learn to make more intentional choices. This 60-minute lesson includes structured self-reflection and a next step. The Traitify Canvas module provides assessment slides, facilitator notes, and a completion assignment.
Explore Careers & Academic Pathways: Compare Your Possibilities
Help students connect what they know about themselves with multiple career possibilities and the academic pathways that can lead there. In this 60-minute lesson, students compare options, investigate fit, and plan a conversation or small experiment to learn more. Exploration is an ongoing process, and one career can have more than one academic pathway.
Develop Skills & Competencies: Classes, Leadership & Campus Work
Make reflection part of a project debrief, organization meeting, or student employee training. These 60-minute lessons help students connect a specific contribution to NACE competencies, shape a STAR example, and practice explaining its relevance to an employer or graduate program. For an introduction to the competencies, download NACE’s own presentation below.
Develop Skills & Competencies: Research, Internships & Study Abroad
Use these 60-minute lessons during a research program, internship seminar, or study abroad re-entry session. Students identify what they did and learned, connect it to career competencies, and practice communicating the evidence through STAR with feedback and a second attempt. For an introduction to the competencies, download NACE’s own presentation below.
Pursue Your Goals: Connect, Apply & Interview
Help your group prepare for a career fair, recruiting cycle, or transition after graduation. In these 60-minute workshops, students practice a career conversation, tailor application evidence, or improve an interview answer through individualized feedback and another attempt. The Internship Search Canvas module adds slides, facilitator guidance, and an active learning activity.
Pursue Your Goals: Evaluate Offers & Plan for Graduate School
Use these 60-minute lessons with students preparing for their next step. Students clarify priorities, practice a negotiation request, or connect their preparation to graduate study and build an application timeline. The Offer Assessment & Negotiation Canvas module adds facilitator notes, slides, a simulation, and resources.
Career Readiness in Practice Across Campus
See how Rutgers–New Brunswick colleagues connect learning, leadership, and campus work to students’ futures. Explore an example, then use a lesson above to build reflection, feedback, and career conversations into your own group’s experience.
SMLR’s Career Management course (37:533:317) connects self-assessment with résumé writing, interviewing, and career decisions. Alongside this curricular approach, Teresitia Walters’s classroom example shows students earning career readiness badges. Adapt the Class Projects or Interviewing lesson to connect academic learning with students’ next steps.
On SEED2S’s workshop post, Mathematics professor Sheila Tabanli describes Ava Aulisi visiting her classes and engaging students. Connect career conversations to your own course, then use the Class Projects lesson to help students reflect on their learning.
The English Department highlights Joann Messina’s participation in the career ecosystem and its commitment to supporting English majors and graduate students. Use the Career Journey lesson to help students connect academic interests with multiple career possibilities.
Rutgers Today’s coverage of the 2026 EAB Experiential Learning Award features SEE participant Jada Harris, whose STAR Stories project helped students explain skills gained through campus work. Try the Student Employment lesson to support reflection and career conversations.
Supported by a ScarletWell Wellness Connection Grant, Christine Oller and Madinah Elamin announced LeadHERship Well: a planned series for student organization leaders centered on leadership, collaborative reflection, and inclusive communities. Adapt the Student Leadership lesson for your organization.
Former FIGS peer instructor Catherine Schoenfeld reflects on teaching, mentoring, and supervising students—and the confidence, professionalism, and NACE competencies she developed. Use the Student Leadership lesson to help peer educators tell their own story.
SAS’s Career Explorations in Arts and Sciences course (01:090:210) combines interests and values exploration with alumni conversations, a personal portfolio, and a purposeful future plan. Adapt the Career Journey lesson to help your students connect academic strengths with career possibilities and concrete next steps.
RBS’s Road to Success programs combine industry-focused coursework, mentoring, and career coaching. Open to New Brunswick students, Road to Consulting adds one-to-one mentorship, case practice, and mock interviews. Use the Networking or Interviewing lesson to help students prepare for professional conversations and act on feedback.
SEBS requires at least three approved experiential learning credits, with opportunities spanning research, internships, service learning, and study abroad. Rutgers Gardens’ hands-on internships are one example. Pair an approved experience with the Research or Internships lesson to help students reflect on skills and explain their growth.
Choose Your Next Step
Find opportunities that fit your role, connect your session to our shared Roadmap, or return to the campus-wide overview to explore the career ecosystem.