Each year the Career Services industry focuses on the college-to-career transition for students leaving the classroom and entering the workforce; analyzing the data on what employers desire, how students are performing, what students think about their abilities, and what the workforce needs at that moment in time. While this analysis is helpful, employer needs are ever-changing, and so too are students' skill sets.
"If living through COVID-19 taught us anything, it is that the world is unpredictable and change is constant" (Maietta & Gardner, 2023). The competencies that students believe to be the most essential at graduation tend to change as they become more knowledgeable in their role and more adept at their craft.
To secure employment - whether in a first role - or continuously throughout one's career - one must possess depth and breadth.
Depth comes from the disciplinary knowledge required to understand how to function and interact to accomplish desired outcomes within and across system(s).
Breadth is holding professional abilities that allow someone with profound disciplinary knowledge to interact meaningfully with others with different disciplinary knowledge to affect an outcome that might not otherwise be possible.
Together depth and breadth are two essential components of a T-Professional.
The most recent article published by NACE discusses the workplace landscape and employers' needs post-COVID and how the T-Professional remains flexible, more open to change, confident, and well-positioned to navigate the constantly evolving relationship between college and career.
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