VCU Career Works
It is important to understand that the goal of education is not simply to graduate, but do so at minimal cost with the most impact on students’ personal goals. Nationally, we know that roughly 85% of the job opportunities available to our graduates come from people they know—so we have built a planning tool that ensures every VCU undergraduate is engaging with all the right career planning resources, work-based learning opportunities, and professional networks to maximize their success immediately after graduation.
What is Career Works?
In partnership with VCU Major Maps and Transfer Maps, Career Works was developed by VCU to help students complete steps in each of their academic years that our research shows leads to positive career outcomes for our graduates. Using Career Works with an academic advisor and career services professionals will help students explore majors and career pathways early, engage with employers and professional networks often, and ensure job search materials (resume, portfolio, interview skills, etc.) are spot-on when applying for an internship, job opportunity, or graduate school.
How does Career Works help?
Just like VCU Major Maps, our goal is to help students explore, enrich, get experience, and excel when it comes to job outcomes after graduation. VCU has created milestones that mirror critical markers within Major Maps and tracks progress through each academic year. As students attend events, schedule a career counseling appointment, or complete their first internship, Career Works will reflect these accomplishments in a Career Transcript. Our academic advising and career counseling teams will also use the tool to help identify students who need additional support completing their career development journey.
VCU’s Career Readiness Model
Career readiness and success for VCU graduates includes experiences both within and outside the classroom that develop critical competencies in:
- Career & Self Development
- Communication
- Critical Thinking
- Cultural & Global Agility*
- Leadership
- Professionalism
- Teamwork
- Technology
*Reprinted courtesy of the National Association of Colleges and Employers
- Explore: Help students learn more about their interests, values, and skills while also learning more about the many majors, concentrations, minors, and certificates available to match their future career aspirations.
- Enrich: Connect students to learning opportunities that begin to develop their skills, their professional networks, and their engagement with employers with relevant, experiential and applied learning.
- Experience: Through work-based learning experiences, students have the opportunity to apply classroom learning to real-world work settings and gain practical skills, knowledge, and experience that are directly relevant to their future careers. These experiences can take various forms, including internships, practicums, clinical labs, co-op programs, research, and other experiential learning opportunities.
- Excel: Through senior seminars, projects, portfolios, or fieldwork, faculty and students engage in a culminating experience that not only builds stronger connections to professionals in their fields, but results in a culminating experience prior to graduation.
Academic Advisors
Career Works is a new tool for your advising toolkit. Just like a degree audit, Career Works is a way for you to help students see their four critical milestones each year, and to review their progress as part of your overall review of the student’s academic and career development. Major Maps remains the critical focal point for talking to students about the intersection of their academic and career goals and finding engagement opportunities throughout their academic journey.
Career Works provides the academic advisor a view of the student’s engagement/completion rates with critical milestones within Major Maps, while also providing opportunities to explain each of the milestones and how to connect to them and their value to learning more about their field, professional networks, and access to resources.
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- Later next year, students will have the ability to earn digital badges that showcase their career development success based on milestones completed, which can be displayed on LinkedIn or in email signatures.
- We will also provide a downloadable/printable electronic transcript (PDF) from the Career Works tool, which can be added to portfolios, included with graduate school applications, or as part of job applications.
- A toggle button will show how a student's career journey compares to their VCU peer group (same class standing/major).
Questions?
Email careerworks@vcu.edu for further assistance from our Student Success team.