Career Readiness

Career Readiness

Career Readiness data can be recorded in your platform via two methods:
  1. Students can update their own status within targetconnect
  2. Data can pushed into your targetconnect platform using the student feed import process

(1) Students updating their status with targetconnect


Enabling your Career Readiness settings

To configure your Career Readiness settings, navigate to Maintenance > System Settings > Business Settings > Student and Graduate Settings.

Here you will be able to see the following field:
  1. Allow users to update Career Readiness Stage?
If this is set to 'Yes' then students will see the 'Career Readiness' section on their profile. Students can then select their Career Readiness stage and subsequently update this information.

If you intend to provide student’s Career Readiness stage via the Student Import Process and you do not want students to update their status within the system, then this field should be set to 'No'.

If this field is set to 'No' and you are not providing Career Readiness data via the Student Import Process the 'Career Readiness' section within the Student Profile will not be shown at all.


Career Readiness “Category” and “Stage”

The Career Readiness Stage field supports a two-tier data set.
  1. The top level is the overall category, e.g, Decide, Plan, and Compete
  2. The second level is the specific career statement that the user has selected.
These values can be populated via the import process, completed by the student when they update their profile, or both. Once set, the Career Readiness stage is clearly displayed next to student's name when viewing their profile.

Suggested Categories and Stages:
Decide

Plan

Compete

Complete

I'm not ready to start thinking about my career yet

I have a career in mind and intend to gain relevant work experience

I am ready to apply for graduate level/professional opportunities

I have already secured employment for when my course is complete

I have no career ideas yet but want to start thinking

I know what I want to do but I'm not sure how to get there

I am ready to apply for further study

I have already secured a place on another course for once my course is complete

I have some ideas about my career and I am ready to start planning

I want to spend a year gaining experience

I have been applying for opportunities and so far I have not been successful

 


Updating Career Readiness list entries

If you want to update your Career Readiness Stages or Categories, you can update the following lists under Maintenance > Manage Lists > Student Lists




Career Readiness Category

The category list would include top-level Career Readiness categories such as ‘Decide’, ‘Plan’, or ‘Compete’.

Categories are used in several places in targetconnect. It is possible to use Career Readiness categories to tag Pathways that are targeted towards students at specific stages in their Career Journey, or possibly send a bulk email to students in a specific category.

This list will be empty the first time it is accessed and only needs new categories to be changed to add new categories, remove existing ones or rename an existing category that is already in use.

When adding a category, make sure the ‘code’ is a single word as this will be used to map to the Career Readiness Stages that will be set out in the next step.



Career Readiness Stages

The stage list contains the actual career readiness statements that students will select when updating their profile (or will have selected at the time of enrolment). E.g., ‘I have a career in mind and intend to gain relevant work experience’ or ‘I am ready to apply for further study’.

All current Career Readiness stages are in this list.

When adding a new value, the code should contain the code used in the category set up in the Career Readiness Category list, followed by an underscore, and a number. That number will determine where this stage will appear in the list. For example, decide_2 would be the second stage under the ‘Decide’ category.



From the student view:



Manage Career Readiness as an Operator


Filter
As an operator you are able to filter the Student Search page based on career registration data. To do this navigate to Students > Search Students and locate the relevant filters along the left-hand side. You are able to filter by Career Readiness Stage as well as Language and Skills which both can be found when expanding the Advanced Student Search filter.
 
Bulk email
When using the bulk email wizard you are now able to filter the recipient list by the career readiness stage. This is particularly useful as it allows you to target students based on where they are in their career journey. For more information on bulk emails please view our documentation.
 
Updating student data
You are able to update career readiness data on the student’s behalf by locating the specific student then navigating to ‘Work as student’ > ‘Update profile’.
‘Skills’ can also be updated directly from the students dashboard in a similar way to Tags. An operator can use the search box to add ‘Skills’ and also remove existing skills by clicking on the cross.
 
Custom help text
Operators are able to define custom messages which appear to students when they are updating their profile. To add a custom message, go to Maintenance > System Settings > Customisations > Student section text.
 
Here you will be able to update the code template for the following sections of the student profile:
  1. Student occupational interest – appears when editing profile
  2. Student email settings – appears when editing profile
  3. Career readiness help text – appears when editing profile
  4. Career readiness short help text – this appears when clicking on ‘What’s this’ when viewing profile


(2) Importing Career Readiness data

 
How can we import and display the data field?
Please refer to the student import specification.