Transcription
Welcome, Coogs! If you're viewing this video, this means you're considering the Carson College of Business and acquainting yourself with the program requirements. That's a wonderful first step! Here in Carson, we've designed co-curricular programming to help you meet industry expectations by the time you graduate. These industry expectations are what we'll refer to as career readiness competencies.
What are career readiness competencies? Well, they're essentially a set of behaviors that indicate you'll be able to smoothly transition into the workforce after graduation. The competencies were identified by the National Association of Colleges and Employers based on a nationwide survey that asked employers what skills employees need to succeed in the workplace. It turns out that most college graduates rank themselves higher on these competencies than employers do, which means you likely have some areas for growth.
Now, competencies are similar to muscles: when we exercise them, they become stronger, and when we don't engage for a while, they become a little rigid and need more practice. The Carson College has designed our co-curricular program requirements with these competencies in mind. These career readiness competencies largely describe why our program requirements include what they do.
In these next slides, we'll offer a glimpse of sample behaviors related to each of the competencies, as well as relevant badges within the Career Amplifier program that you'll need to acquire to stay on track with Carson College requirements. It's important to note that the following badges mentioned are just some of the Career Amplifier requirements; they do not include the entire badging system. But we will teach you how to access Suitable, which is where your entire Amplifier program progress can be monitored for complete and incomplete tasks.
The first of the competencies includes career and self-development. NACE defines this as proactively developing oneself and one's career through continual personal and professional learning, awareness of one's strengths and weaknesses, navigation of career opportunities, and networking to build relationships within and outside one's organization. Some sample behaviors include showing an awareness of one's own strengths and areas for development, developing plans and goals for one's future career, and displaying curiosity by seeking out opportunities to participate in further education, training, or other events to support one's career.
One of your first opportunities to get started with career development in the College of Business is through your business administration classes. Introduction to Business will expose you to the different types of work activities in accounting, marketing, finance, and more. For example, you might work with peers to conduct market research and pitch a sales plan to stock products in a specific region based on your interpretation of demand for such a product. In the course titled Exploring Careers in Business, you'll take work interest assessments and conduct further research to learn about your career pathways you might find desirable. You'll learn how to use various online research tools and networking opportunities to support your decision in choosing a major and developing action plans toward your clarified career goals. You'll even take an assessment within Focus 2 titled "Am I Career Ready?" where you'll rank your own proficiencies across the career readiness competencies before you receive an outline of action steps to help you strengthen each one.
To supplement your career exploration opportunities in the classroom, you'll have access to business-specific career advisors who can offer you individualized guidance on career and major exploration, networking strategies, job and internship search methods, resume and cover letter review, and so much more. After your first year in the College of Business, we want to ensure you continually engage with the career and self-development competency. That's why we've designed the Career Amplifier program to guide you through required milestones each year until you graduate.
For students with less than 30 incoming credits, typically those planning to spend about four more years in the College of Business, you'll follow the Amplifier track titled Tier 1, 2, 3, and 4. For students with more than 30 incoming credits, typically those planning to spend about two to three more years in the College of Business, you'll follow the Amplifier track titled Crimson Pathway 1 and 2. These tracks help you understand your College of Business program requirements that support your career readiness upon graduation.
Now, you should note the use of the phrase "program requirements." It's important you pay attention to these requirements now so that you can remain within the College of Business each semester. To help you stay accountable and on track, you can view your Amplifier program requirements in a software program called Suitable. We've added a Suitable login button to the home screen of the Career Amplifier info page, which can be found using the QR code on this slide or through the links housed at the end of this presentation.
Once you've logged into Suitable, you'll likely land on the dashboard page. The dashboard offers you a quick snapshot of your progress; it highlights which tier or pathway you're currently in and how much you have left to complete. You'll notice that our demo account, Butch Coog, has only completed 33 percent of their Tier 1 requirements, which means that Butch needs to find some more activities to complete before the year ends to stay eligible for acceptance to the Carson College of Business.
Within the featured tab, you'll see a tile for whichever tier you're actively in. If you're not on the Amplifier track titled Tier 1, 2, 3, or 4, you should instead see Crimson Pathway listed. Next, you'll want to select the tile of your active tier to discover what's left to complete. Per tier, you'll have several badges or activities to complete. Students on Tier 1 will need to complete the badges titled Collegiate Foundations, Discovery, and Community. Since Butch has already completed the Community badge, we only see the two badges left to finish, which is why this tier displays 33 percent complete. Click below the badge title where it says "View Requirements" to learn more about your options to earn this badge.
You'll now see an outline of requirements for the specific badge titled Discovery, and you'll see that Butch has completed zero percent of these activities. When you hover over the titles of each listed item, a bubble appears to describe what general actions are necessary to earn that badge. If you've already completed materials to fulfill one of these components, you can select the round button to the left of the item, which will often take you to a file upload screen. However, if you are searching for ways to fulfill a requirement, select the "View Requirements" button to learn about various options for fulfillment. Here, you'll see that there are multiple ways to complete this requirement, including meeting with a career consultant and attending a virtual webinar titled "Accountability and Productivity" hosted by the Cougar Career Academy.
Now, it's not enough to just attend activities that are listed within Suitable; you'll have to provide evidence of your participation. Of course, sometimes this means you'll need to submit forms. Any time Suitable requests that you submit a form to show evidence of your attendance or participation, it will note which form you need. Forms can be found on the Carson Career Amplifier Program webpage, and additional tips on how to submit forms and find required activities can be found through the resource titled "Amplifier Help Videos." The video titled "Meeting the Requirements for Your Career Amplifier Achievements" is a great one to start with.
Now that we've offered guidance on how to track your progress in the Career Amplifier program, let's continue learning about the rest of the career readiness competencies. You'll notice that the badges listed here cover Tier 2 and Tier 4 badges. You'll often have various opportunities to strengthen your career readiness competencies throughout the Amplifier program and beyond.
The next career readiness competency is communication, defined by NACE as clearly and effectively exchanging information, ideas, facts, and perspectives with persons inside and outside of an organization. Some sample behaviors include framing communication with respect to diversity of learning styles, varied communication abilities, and cultural differences; asking appropriate questions for specific information from supervisors, specialists, and others; and promptly informing relevant others when needing guidance with assigned tasks. To strengthen your communication skills, you'll have opportunities in Tiers 2, 3, and 4, as well as in your BA classes titled Ethical Decisions and Values.
Critical thinking is the third career readiness competency, defined as identifying and responding to needs based upon an understanding of situational context and logical analysis of relevant information. Sample behaviors include gathering and analyzing information from a diverse set of sources to fully understand a problem, accurately summarizing and interpreting data with an awareness of personal biases that may impact outcomes, and making decisions to solve problems using sound, inclusive reasoning and judgment. You will experience many opportunities to think critically in the classroom, beginning in your first BA classes and throughout until your capstones. When you complete your high-impact learning experience, you'll have the chance to demonstrate what you learned, what you were challenged by, and how you grew as a result of applying yourself in an experiential way. For more info about what types of activities or projects can fulfill the high-impact learning experience requirement, navigate to the QR code or find the HIEL page through the main Career Amplifier Program website.
Equity and inclusion are defined as demonstrating the awareness, attitude, knowledge, and skills required to equitably engage and include people from different local and global cultures, and engaging in anti-racist practices that actively challenge the systems, structures, and policies of racism. Sample behaviors include soliciting and using feedback from multiple cultural perspectives to make inclusive and equity-minded decisions, identifying resources and eliminating barriers resulting from individual and systemic racism, inequities, and biases, and advocating for inclusion, equitable practices, justice, and empowerment for historically marginalized communities. While the Career Amplifier will require you to attend one equity and inclusion event, there are numerous ways in which you can strengthen this skill through continual training and by putting your knowledge to action through advocacy, even if it starts on a small scale.
Next is leadership, which involves recognizing and capitalizing on personal and team strengths to achieve organizational goals. Sample behaviors include using innovative thinking to go beyond traditional methods, motivating others by encouraging them and building mutual trust, and planning, initiating, managing, and evaluating projects through their completion. There are so many options for developing your leadership skills throughout college. You might choose to do so through club involvement, a volunteer project, a conference presentation, or by implementing a new system at your place of employment.
Professionalism is defined as understanding and demonstrating effective work habits and acting in the interest of the larger community and workplace. Sample behaviors include acting equitably with integrity and accountability, being present and prepared by demonstrating dependability, and showing a high level of dedication toward doing a good job. We encourage you to learn some of the universal skills necessary to demonstrate effective work habits beyond content expertise through self-awareness, social intelligence, and respectful communication. These badges give you a glimpse of ways to strengthen your professional skills, but remember previous resources mentioned, as well as how to find events, training, and self-development resources beyond these requirements.
The technology competency is next, defined as understanding and leveraging technologies ethically to enhance efficiencies, complete tasks, and accomplish goals. Sample behaviors include using technology to improve the efficiency and productivity of work, adapting quickly to new or unfamiliar technologies, and managing tech to integrate information for relevant, timely, and effective decision-making. Given the technology-heavy aspect of a business degree, you'll receive direct training on how to collect, analyze, and visualize data to make data-driven decisions in the future. That being said, some of you will find interesting careers that require even higher competency with technology, so you might consider expanding your skill set by taking some computer science, economics, or coding classes, whether at WSU or through free online platforms, to really strengthen this part of your skill set and become career-ready.
Last but certainly not least is teamwork, defined as building and maintaining collaborative relationships to work effectively toward common goals while appreciating diverse viewpoints and shared responsibilities. Sample behaviors include exercising the ability to compromise and be agile, listening carefully by taking time to understand and ask others appropriate questions without interrupting, and managing conflict effectively by respecting diverse personalities and meeting ambiguity with resilience. Many of your upper-division business classes will involve a team project, and your capstone classes will include group work as well. Beyond these classroom experiences, you'll have plenty of opportunities to strengthen teamwork skills through extracurricular environments as well.
This sums up our review of the career readiness competencies and relevant resources to support your growth as you complete requirements for the Carson Career Amplifier Program and beyond. For quick links to the resources mentioned earlier, use this slide to navigate toward those WSU web pages. For any additional questions, feel free to reach out to the Amplifier Help email at ccb.amplifier@wsu.edu.