The Career Readiness Approach

The Career Readiness Approach ensures you can answer the all too common question: “What will you do with that degree!”

Unfortunately Liberal Arts students find themselves having to respond to this question all the time. They also have to put up with jokes about being a coffee barista for life – when it is simply not true!

Employers and business leaders report the ability to identify what to learn for the jobs of the future and how to develop the emotional resilience to navigate change are the most critical career success skills needed. They also stress the importance of ensuring you can think and respond critically and creatively, communicate effectively, collaborate in diverse team settings, and draw on different perspectives to solve problems.

A Liberal Arts education is where you gain these essential workplace skills.

This is why the career readiness approach of a Liberal Arts degree is your superpower for future-proofing your career.

Career Ready vs Career Readiness

Career Ready

Programs that explicitly offer career or technical training aligned to a specific occupation can market themselves as career ready.
Examples: These programs leave little doubt what occupation you will be doing after graduation. (e.g., Welding, Dental Hygiene, Engineering, Teaching, Nursing or Accounting).

Career Readiness

Programs that equip students with transferable knowledge, work habits, and employability skills that serve multiple occupations provide career readiness.
Example: These programs expand, as opposed to limit, your options. From these programs you can grow, change, or pivot your career options as the economy evolves. (e.g., Liberal Arts programs)

Why one over the other?

Both Career Ready programs and Career Readiness programs have benefits.  With Career Ready programs finding your first job may be easier.  However, your ability to advance, grow, or change your career can be limiting. Career Readiness programs may not provide a direct path to a specific job, but they equip you for your first job as well as all your future job transitions.  A career readiness approach supports you to become future ready and able to advance, expand, grow, pivot, or change your career direction as you and your life evolve.

Think of career development like a climbing wall instead of the old metaphor of a career ladder. The predictable progression from one established position to the next has given way to new career patterns. These are more fluid, flexible, and responsive to the needs of the labour market, society, and the individual. To develop a career in a contemporary workplace you need to think differently about how careers progress – through a series of moves up, down, sideways, and around again.

A Liberal Arts education takes a career readiness approach to ensure you are equipped to tackle your own career climbing wall.

There are many career resources available that support pathways to career ready programs. Career Mapping is the only resource designed to provide education-to-employment planning for career readiness programs.

References

  • Association of Talent Development
  • Brewer, A.M. (2020). The future of work: Careers, thinking, strategizing, and prototyping. Emerald Publishing
  • Business Insider interview with M Cuban, (2017) https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-liberal-arts-is-the-future-2017-2
  • Levine, A. & Van Pelt, S.J. (2021). The great upheaval: Higher education’s past, present, and uncertain future. John Hopkins University Press
  • Maybrey, C. (January 11, 2017). It’s time to treat career preparation as a student wellness issue. Academica Forum.
  • Weise, M.R. (2021). Long life learning: preparing for jobs that don’t even exist yet. John Wiley.