Workplace Skills Development Program at St. Olaf College
Consistent with the College’s mission, on-campus employment is a formative learning opportunity that fosters personal responsibility, transferable skills, and vocational discernment. On-campus work offers students opportunities to cultivate breadth and depth in the career competencies that will help them flourish in their chosen vocation. The toolkit in this section is designed to help supervisors make student employment a high-impact practice through an emphasis on skills development.
What is Career Readiness?
The St. Olaf College Workplace Skills Development Program uses eight career readiness competencies adapted from the National Associate of Colleges and Employers (NACE). These competencies provide a common language for talking about the skills students develop through their employment.
See more detailed explanations of each of the eight competencies on the NACE website.
Proactively develops oneself through continuous learning, self-reflection, and goal-setting; seeks and applies feedback to improve.
Clearly and effectively exchanges information, ideas, and perspectives with others across formats and audiences.
Identifies and analyzes problems, evaluates information, and makes informed decisions and solutions.
Demonstrates respect for diverse perspectives; contributes to inclusive and equitable environments.
Motivates, guides, and supports others toward a common goal, while demonstrating integrity and accountability.
Demonstrates responsibility, integrity, effective work habits, and appropriate behavior in a professional setting.
Uses and adapts to digital tools and technologies to accomplish tasks efficiently and ethically.
Understand and leverage technologies ethically to enhance efficiencies, complete tasks, and accomplish goals.
Three Levels of Student Employee Development
The Contributor
(Entry-Level)
At the Contributor-level, students demonstrate foundational workplace readiness and reliability while learning how to operate in a professional environment.
Overall, Contributors are reliable, coachable, and consistent, focusing on doing assigned work correctly while developing the habits and awareness needed for higher levels of independence.
The Independent Contributor
(Mid-Level)
At the Independent Contributor-level, students demonstrate reliable performance with increasing independence and initiative while improving how work gets done.
Overall, Independent Collaborators are expected to consistently execute their work independently while actively improving team effectiveness.
The Team Leader
(Supervisory-Level)
At the Supervisory- or Team Leader-level, students demonstrate accountability for team outcomes, people, and operational effectiveness beyond their own work.
Overall, Team Leaders are expected to be accountable for both their own performance and the effectiveness of the team as a whole.
Job Descriptions and Skills Development
Job descriptions set clear expectations for both student workers and supervisors about the duties and responsibilities student workers will have and the transferable skills they will build in their role. Use the guide below to learn about the College requirements for student job descriptions.
Guide to Building Job Descriptions for Skills Development
Every student job description at St. Olaf College must have a list of transferable skills. Discuss the job description with each of your new student employees during the onboarding process and talk about how their workplace responsibilities are related to the transferable skills listed in it.
Reflection-Based Conversations for Skills Development
Use these resources to help you facilitate reflection-based conversations with your student workers about skills development in the workplace. Research shows that encouraging reflective thinking about skills development promotes student workers’ professional growth.
Resources:
Skills Development Resources for Students
We provide resources for student workers to help them explore vocation and prepare for the future workforce through their on-campus employment. We encourage you to review these resources and consider how you can implement them into skills development conversations with your student employees.
National Student Employment Week
National Student Employment Week is an opportunity for colleges and universities across the country to recognize and celebrate the contributions of student employees during the second full week of April each year. As a part of this celebration, National Student Employees of the Year are selected in six categories: (1) Leadership, (2) Community Service, (3) Social Impact and Belonging, (4) Critical Thinking, (5) Technology & Innovation, and (6) Overall Student Employee of the Year.
As part of the College’s participation in National Student Employment Week, we honor the outstanding contributions of student employees and supervisors in each of these categories.