The National Association of Colleges and Employers has done extensive research asking employers about what they are looking for in college graduates to demonstrate that they are career-ready and they have identified eight competencies. The list below comes from NACE Career Readiness Competencies and the descriptions and the graphics are used with permission. For each section, you will see a definition and sample behaviors. I have added examples of what these might look like in your portfolio.

Career and Self-Development

Proactively develop 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 without one’s organization.

Sample Behaviors
• Show an awareness of your own strengths and areas for development.
• Identify areas for continual growth while pursuing and applying feedback.
• Develop plans and goals for your future career.
• Professionally advocate for yourself and others.
• Display curiosity; seek out opportunities to learn.
• Assume duties or positions that will help you progress professionally.
• Establish, maintain, and/or leverage relationships with people who can help you professionally.
• Seek and embrace development opportunities.
• Voluntarily participate in further education, training, or other events to support your career.

What This Might Look Like In Your Portfolio.

• • Show certificates or badges demonstrating your training.
  • List development programs or special lectures you attended and how you grew from the experience.
  • Discuss your personal journey map or your goals.
  • Write about examples of a project that you initiated and saw through to completion.
  • Write a reflection about a strengths assessment that you took and what it means to you.
    

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Communication

Clearly and effectively exchange information, ideas, facts, and perspectives with persons inside and outside an organization.

Sample Behaviors
• Understand the importance of and demonstrate verbal, written, and non-verbal/body language, abilities.
• Employ active listening, persuasion, and influencing skills.
• Communicate in a clear and organized manner so that others can effectively understand.
• Frame communication with respect to the diversity of learning styles, varied individual communication abilities, and cultural differences.
• Ask appropriate questions for specific information from supervisors, specialists, and others.
• Promptly inform relevant others when needing guidance with assigned tasks.

What This Might Look Like In Your Portfolio.

• • Show your graded speech or an outline of one of your speeches and write a reflection about it.
  • Show evidence of a persuasive social media plan, persuasive speech, or other persuasive act.
  • Show a multimedia product from a class.
  • Show an article you wrote for the newspaper.
  • Show a press release.
  • Present a paper that you wrote. Include the various drafts to show progression.
  • Write about a grant or fellowship proposal that you wrote.
  • Upload a video of a presentation that you gave.
  • Provide a variety of writing samples: Research paper, poetry, blog, essay.
  • Write a reflection about an encounter with someone different than yourself.

Critical Thinking

Identify and respond to needs based on understanding situational context and logical analysis of relevant information.

Sample Behaviors
• Make decisions and solve problems using sound, inclusive reasoning and judgment.
• Gather and analyze information from a diverse set of sources and individuals to fully understand a problem.
• Proactively anticipate needs and prioritize action steps.
• Accurately summarize and interpret data with an awareness of personal biases that may impact outcomes.
• Effectively communicate actions and rationale, recognizing the diverse perspectives and lived experiences of stakeholders.
• Multi-task well in a fast-paced environment.

What This Might Look Like In Your Portfolio.

• • Show a paper you wrote that involved complex reasoning and write a reflection about the process.
  • Show a lab report where you gathered facts and came to a conclusion. Write about the process.
  • Show photos of a problem-solving situation you encountered.
  • Display a SWOT analysis or VIN diagram showing complex connections.
    

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Equity and Inclusion

Demonstrate the awareness, attitude, knowledge, and skills required to equitably engage and include people from different local and global cultures. Engage in anti-racist practices that actively challenge the systems, structures, and policies of racism.

Sample Behaviors
• Solicit and use feedback from multiple cultural perspectives to make inclusive and equity-minded decisions.
• Actively contribute to inclusive and equitable practices that influence individual and systemic change.
• Advocate for inclusion, equitable practices, justice, and empowerment for historically marginalized communities.
• Seek global cross-cultural interactions and experiences that enhance one’s understanding of people from different demographic groups and that lead to personal growth.
• Keep an open mind to diverse ideas and new ways of thinking.
• Identify resources and eliminate barriers resulting from individual and systemic racism, inequities, and biases.
• Demonstrate flexibility by adapting to diverse environments.
• Address systems of privilege that limit opportunities for members of historically marginalized communities.

What This Might Look Like In Your Portfolio.

• • Discuss the diversity programs you attended (for example, you may have taken the Ouch That Stereotype Hurts program or the Intercultural Development Inventory).
  • Show projects where you encountered new ways of thinking about diverse ideas.
  • Give examples of how you worked with people who thought differently and how you bridged those differences.

Leadership

Recognize and capitalize on personal and team strengths to achieve organizational goals.

Sample Behaviors
• Inspire, persuade, and motivate self and others under a shared vision.
• Seek out and leverage diverse resources and feedback from others to inform direction.
• Use innovative thinking to go beyond traditional methods.
• Serve as a role model to others by approaching tasks with confidence and a positive attitude.
• Motivate and inspire others by encouraging them and by building mutual trust.
• Plan, initiate, manage, complete, and evaluate projects.

What This Might Look Like In Your Portfolio.

• • Write reflections about your leadership experience.
  • Write about your leadership philosophy
  • Give examples of classroom projects where you took the lead.
  • Write reflections about community projects where you were the leader.
  • Take a leadership assessment and reflect on the results.

Professionalism

Knowing work environments differ greatly, understanding and demonstrating effective work habits, and acting in the interest of the larger community and workplace.

Sample Behaviors
• Act equitably with integrity and accountability to self, others, and the organization.
• Maintain a positive personal brand in alignment with organization and personal career values.
• Be present and prepared.
• Demonstrate dependability (e.g., report consistently for work or meetings).
• Prioritize and complete tasks to accomplish organizational goals.
• Consistently meet or exceed goals and expectations.
• Have attention to detail, resulting in few if any errors in their work.
• Show a high level of dedication toward doing a good job.

What This Might Look Like In Your Portfolio.

• • Reflect on artifacts such as this internship time sheet with reflections. 
  • Write about a time you had to press to get the job done.
  • Give an example of how you demonstrated professionalism. (See this example by Rachel Smith.  
  • Show a teacher’s evaluative comments where they commented about how you exceeded expectations.

Teamwork

Build and maintain collaborative relationships to work effectively toward common goals, while appreciating diverse viewpoints and shared responsibilities.

Sample Behaviors
• Listen carefully to others, taking time to understand and ask appropriate questions without interrupting.
• Effectively manage conflict, interact with and respect diverse personalities, and meet ambiguity with resilience.
• Be accountable for individual and team responsibilities and deliverables.
• Employ personal strengths, knowledge, and talents to complement those of others.
• Exercise the ability to compromise and be agile.
• Collaborate with others to achieve common goals.
• Build strong, positive working relationships with supervisor and team members/coworkers.

What This Might Look Like In Your Portfolio.

• • Provide examples of team projects.
  • Share any team leader feedback about your contributions.
  • Share the results of any personality or team assessment and reflect on what it means.
  • Provide the output of a team project and write about your contributions, your challenges, and your lessons learned.
  • Show photos of your working as a team and write about what you learned.

Example of Teamwork in a Portfolio

Teamwork

The amount of work you put in is the outcome you get back. In the African Students Organization, I serve as the Content Creator developing posts for our social media accounts and flyers for people to see as well as submitting awards for the different programs we held. While I only create content, I have had the pleasure of being involved in all aspects of the organization by helping my other executive members. I work closely with the Webmaster who is responsible for posting the content, working the website, and creating captions for posts. I felt a sense of personal responsibility to ensure that not only was our organization a legitimate one at the University of Arkansas but also recognized African culture from the students who shared that. My parents were both born and raised in Arkansas, but I lived all my life in America. Because I was not well-versed in the experience of African students, I utilized the experiences and advice of my executive team who were all born and raised in an African country to develop informational posts. While I served my role to contribute to the organization, I was also able to work with my executive team to get help with some of the responsibilities my role entails. While getting help with some of my weekly content was helpful, the most notable instance of teamwork came from preparing for the African Gala Night.

The African Gala Night is the biggest event of the semester for our organizations. I was placed to head the food committee and publicity committee. In those roles, I helped to get a list of ingredients and a menu for the food that would be served during the time of the event. Being on the publicity committee was essentially the role of the Content Creator centered on the gala. I helped make posts and flyers to be publicized for students and non-students to see. While each executive member was a part of their committee, we eventually had an all-hands-on-deck mentality. It took extensive meetings, long nights of preparation, traveling to different places, and cooking before eventually finishing the night.

While my role consisted of only doing content, it was a great experience of helping others and getting help. Everyone has days when they may experience questions or encounter unexpected situations, so serving in a leadership position also entails helping others in times of need. I can say that I can not only be relied on, but I can also rely on them when I need help. That can look like asking upper executive members questions or ideas about potential future projects. Teamwork is an expected skill to have because there could be a time when a person experiences hardship or would like to collaborate on things where they rely on another person.

Lidia Belete, Biochemistry, University of Arkansas

Technology

Understand and leverage technologies ethically to enhance efficiencies, complete tasks, and accomplish goals.

Sample Behaviors

• Navigate change and be open to learning new technologies.
• Use technology to improve efficiency and productivity of their work.
• Identify appropriate technology for completing specific tasks.
• Manage technology to integrate information to support relevant, effective, and timely decision-making.
• Quickly adapt to new or unfamiliar technologies.
• Manipulate information, construct ideas, and use technology to achieve strategic goals.

What This Might Look Like In Your Portfolio.

• • Share any media projects.
  • Share data sheets.
  • List all programs where you demonstrate proficiency.
  • Write a reflection of all the media used in a project.
  • Write about a time that you had to adapt to a technology shift.

Closing

Your portfolio is not just a digital repository of your past accomplishments; it is a tool for showcasing your readiness to tackle real-world challenges.  Employers are looking for you to provide concrete examples and quantify your achievements whenever possible, especially when it comes to showing that you have career competencies. By infusing your portfolio with artifacts and reflections that highlight career competencies, you are creating a professional portfolio to get you noticed by future employers.

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“Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.”

Marianne Williamson

References

Driscoll J. (1994). Reflective practice for practice. Senior nurse, 14(1), 47–50.

Finley, A. (2021). How College Contributes to Workforce Success: Employer Views on What Matters Most. Association of American Colleges & Universities: DC.

Flaherty, C.  (2021). What employers want. Inside Higher Education.

Gladd, J. (2023)  Write What Matters  licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License,

Jay T. (1995). The use of reflection to enhance practice. Professional nurse (London, England), 10(9), 593–596.

Lumsden, J. A., Pinataro, C. M., Baltuch, A. L., & Reardon, R. C. (2009). Assessing career skills and competencies with an electronic portfolio. Career Planning and Adult Development Journal, 25(4), 126–137.

Mekolichick, J. (2021). Mapping the impacts of undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative inquiry experiences to the NACE Career Readiness Competencies. National Association of Colleges and Employers.

National Association of Colleges and Employers (2022). Development and Validation of the NACE Career Readiness Competencies Downloadable PDF

National Association of Colleges and Employers (March 2021). Competencies for a Career-Ready Workforce.  

Polziehn, R. (2011). Skills Expected from Graduate Students in Search of Employment in Academic and Non Academic Settings: Printable PDF

Reynolds, N. & Davis, E. (2014). Portfolio keeping: A guide for students.  Bedford St. Martin.

Simpson, A.  & Stuard, H. ( January 2019) Adapted from Driscoll, J. (1994). Reflective practice for practice. Senior nurse, 14(1), 47-50. University Writing  Copyright: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC License

Western Michigan University. Sample Interview Questions for Career Readiness Competencies. Career and Student Employment Services.

The definitions and sample behaviors are taken directly from the NACE Career Readiness Competencies and used with permission according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers reprint online statement.

Portfolios Referenced

Lidia Belete

Baylee Brown

Megan Diem

Annabelle Farrow

Patricia Gonzales

Emirra Harris 

Montana Humphries

Rachel Smith