Faculty & Staff Toolkit

Lecture Integration Ideas

• Share a 5-minute testimony of how you discovered God’s unique design for you and the career journey you have been on up to this point. Share your strengths, interests, talents, skills, etc., and how have you seen God’s purposeful design shape your career path.
• Connect course concepts to stewardship, encouraging students to consider how what they are learning helps them to better utilize their gifts and talents for God’s glory.
• Highlight alumni stories illustrating how unique strengths shaped their work
• Use the “Calling: What It is and Why It Matters” info sheet to define “calling” and encourage students to pursue it

Assignment Ideas

• After completing a Strengths Finder, Strong Interest Inventory, Personality Assessment, and/or Focus 2 assessment (Career Center can provide), students reflect on how God has uniquely designed them. (1-2 paragraphs)
• Based on what you’re learning about yourself (strengths, interest, personality, etc.) how could God use you in the field of {insert occupation or industry}? (1-2 paragraphs)
• At the end of a project, discussion, or assignment ask students:
  • What aspects of this work energized you most?
  • What parts felt natural or intuitive?
  • What challenges did you enjoy solving?
  • What might these experiences reveal about how God has gifted you?
  • How could these strengths be used to serve others through your future work?
  • As you reflect on this semester’s work, what recurring strengths or interests have emerged that may point to how God has uniquely designed you?

Lecture Integration Ideas

• Show examples of career roles within your discipline and how they differ in fit for different personalities or strengths
• Invite alumni to share how they discerned their career path (including missteps)

Assignment Ideas

• This career exploration worksheet is a Word template students can download from Canvas and fill out on their computers. Some possible uses include:
  • Assigned for a completion grade
  • Paired with a reflection paper
  • Connected to an advising or mentoring conversation

• Informational Interview: Students identify someone in their field of interest and ask questions about alignment and fit

• ONET Assignment: Ask students to visit ONET to look-up information on a career or industry they are interested in and report back on various elements – skills and competencies, salary and education, tasks, companies hiring, or anything they learned that impacts their pursuit of that career.
• Explore by Industries or Major/Occupation – Students use the video library on Career Quest to gather information about 2-3 possible career paths that interest them to be shared in an advising session or as a completion grade.

Lecture Integration Ideas

• Explain how course projects mirror real-world, on-the-job tasks (and why they matter). Students often need faculty to connect the dots for them. For example:
  • “This research project uses many of the same skills (name them) employers seek in market research internships.”
  • “The skills you’re developing in this lab are the same skills used by professionals in the field.”
• Share examples of the types of experiences students should be pursuing as necessary career preparation for their field (internships, research, service-learning, study abroad, competitions, etc.)
• Share your own professional journey: experiences that shaped your career path, research opportunities that influenced your interests, internships, ministry opportunities, or projects that helped clarify your career/calling journey
• Reflection questions that can be asked throughout the semesters:
  • What experiences would help you deepen your understanding of this topic?
  • What aspect of this course would you like to explore further through hands-on-practice?
  • What questions about your target career or calling could be answered through an internship, research project, study abroad, or service opportunity?

Assignment Ideas

• Complete the internship readiness checklist

• Professionalism Module: Mini module on workplace professionalism. Students complete the module and write a reflection piece on how the content in the module translates to their career field/industry and/or the content in your course. (This link is shareable.)
• Job Shadow Experience: Ask students to shadow a professional for X amount of hours and share their observation notes and reflection on how what they observed connects to course concepts. Possible prompt: “Identify 3 concepts from class that you observed during your shadowing experience”.
• Research and engage with a professional organization or association connected to their field or industry of interest. Perhaps they could attend a local meeting or a webinar or join as a student member.

Lecture Integration Ideas

• Invite the Center for Career and Calling to do a Networking Presentation
• Explain the importance of networking as it relates to your industry
• Share examples from your experience for how networking helped to advance your career or share stories of alumni who have benefited from their networking efforts

Assignment Ideas

• Build/update a LinkedIn profile and connect with 3 alumni in their field
• Complete the informational interview assignment
• Attend one in-person networking event either on or off campus and record your answers to these questions

In-Class Activity

• Use one of the networking activities for in-class instruction

• Write an Elevator Pitch and practice sharing it in class

Lecture Integration Ideas

• Explain typical next steps in your field (grad school, certification, internships, auditions, etc.)
• Invite the Center for Career and Calling to do a Resume, Interview, and/or Job Searching Workshop

Assignment Ideas

• Next Step Plan (1-2 pages): Students write specific next steps for the next 3, 6, or 12 months. For those who are unsure of what their next steps are (or could be) they can write about how they will go about acquiring the knowledge they need in order to figure out some possible next steps. Are they lacking clarity on a target career? How can they figure that out? Do they know what they want to pursue but just not how to get from here to there? How will they figure that out?
• Resume Assignment: See the links below. You can also refer students to the Resume and Cover Letter page on Career Quest for additional information

• Job Search Assignment: Ask students to complete the microlearning job search module (This link is shareable.) You can also refer students to the Search for a Job page on Career Quest for additional information.
• Application Process Assignment: Ask students to complete the microlearning job application process module (This link is shareable).
• Ask students to complete one of the Mock Interview modules in Career Central and submit it for review to the Center for Career and Calling. You can also refer them to the Prepare for an Interview resources here on Career Quest.
• Career Quest is filled with resources. One assignment could be to have them explore the site and share 3 things they learned about career readiness. Or you could locate a few items or resources and ask them to find them on the site.