This past summer, Arup—a multi-disciplinary engineering firm—expanded its career readiness programming for summer interns by working with its internal learning and development team to implement a series of competency-focused workshops.

“The students who enter Arup’s internship program are all coming from an academic environment, so we believe it is important to provide them with proper training to develop these career competencies because the work environment is very different from what they might be used to at school,” explains Jamia Scranton, Arup’s campus recruitment lead.

“The earlier we instill young professionals with the proper tools to seek and implement feedback, communicate effectively, take control of their career journeys, and build strong working relationships, the better they will be set up for success in a corporate environment.”

Arup’s intern professional development program addressed all eight of NACE’s Career Readiness Competencies in various combinations depending on the topic of the session.

Scranton points out that each session addressed Career & Self-development in various ways, most specifically by encouraging the interns to show awareness of their areas of strength and areas where they need development. The sessions also gave interns the necessary tools and confidence to address these areas when seeking feedback and advocating for themselves professionally.

The sessions were:

• Using the Mentorloop platform and leveraging interns’ assigned buddies—Arup's Mentorloop program is designed to facilitate meaningful mentoring connections within the organization. Mentorloop provides a platform, tools, and resources to help mentors and mentees maximize the potential of their relationships and have exceptional mentoring experiences. The program supports participants through various mentoring milestones, ensuring continuous development and knowledge transfer.
• Asking for Feedback—Arup intentionally held this session toward the beginning of the internship so that the interns could leverage the skills learned in the workshop throughout the summer. This session addressed the NACE competencies of Communication and Professionalism by normalizing the process of approaching supervisors and peers for feedback and being able to effectively implement the feedback they receive to set and accomplish goals.
• Interpersonal Skills—This session addressed Professionalism, Equity & Inclusion, Leadership, and Teamwork by helping the interns to fine tune different aspects of their interpersonal skills at work. The guidance presented aimed to help them improve verbal and written communication skills, model good behavior, practice inclusivity, and ultimately build collaborative and positive working relationships with their coworkers.
• Adaptability—This session addressed Critical Thinking by encouraging interns to think creatively and practice being agile when solving problems and prioritizing action steps.

Summer 2024 was the inaugural run of Arup’s Career Readiness Program for its interns in the United States, Canada, and Colombia. At the end of the summer, the firm sent out a survey to all interns to gather feedback on the internship program overall, which included several questions about the career readiness series and its effectiveness.

“The qualitative feedback the interns provided has helped us identify which elements of the sessions we would like to continue and which ones we will be changing for the next iteration of the series,” says Olivia Cotroneo, campus recruiter.

Cotroneo says the overall feedback has been positive, with the interns particularly appreciating the “Asking for Feedback” session. Meanwhile, Arup intends to make several improvements, including:

• Polling the incoming Summer 2025 intern class to find out what topics they’d like to learn about the most;
• Making sessions more interactive by including more polls, quizzes, and breakout rooms; and
• Reintroducing the Resume + LinkedIn workshop that Arup has held in previous years.

Among the elements that make the Career Readiness Program effective is that Arup’s internal learning and development team has taken the lead on creating and delivering presentations that provide information and advice on how interns can not only improve their overall professional skills, but how they can specifically implement these skills at Arup.

“General career advice is great, but in order for our sessions to be as useful as possible for our interns, the guidance they receive must be immediately applicable within Arup and within their role as an intern,” explains Emma Chew, Arup campus recruiter.

“Our learning and development team has a strong and intimate knowledge of Arup’s company values and culture, which means the sessions they develop are specifically designed to help the interns thrive during their time with us.” 

When Arup’s new college graduates begin, the firm runs a milestone program for three days during which it acclimates the new hires to the world of Arup.

“Since this is the first time we have five different generations in the workplace who all work differently, we instill the values and beliefs of the firm as well as going over presentation skills, which will help when pitching to clients and other teammates; listening skills; and emotional intelligence,” says Jacqueline Liantonio, Arup’s learning and development program manager.

Liantonio notes that as these graduates continue their career journey at Arup, they are invited to other forums for their personal growth and other milestone programs.

“We continue to focus on all of our employees the same exact way to ensure everyone has the same opportunity to grow, personally and professionally,” she says.

Arup’s campus recruitment and learning and development teams have several recommendations for creating a professional development program for interns and new college graduates that is based on career readiness competencies:

• Leverage any internal learning and development team your company may have—Including Arup’s learning and development team in its internship program has been seamless and beneficial for all involved.
• Become well-informed on the career readiness competencies for early careers professionals—After doing so, provide interns and graduates with a list of potential career development topics that can help with development.
• Poll interns and graduates to determine which topics they know the least about or in which they would like specific training and guidance—This way, you can tailor any programming to meet the needs of the incoming class and get right to the hot topics while avoiding redundant messaging.
• Collect feedback from participants—This will help you keep evolving the program so it remains as relevant and effective as possible.

“The NACE Career Readiness Competencies are like muscles that early career professionals are typically not very accustomed to using in purely academic spaces, so our career readiness programming aims to provide our interns with guidance on how to begin following best practices right away once they join Arup,” Scranton says.

“This helps them to ramp up quickly so they can make the largest impact possible during their internship, and additionally those who rejoin us as graduates will already have some of the tools necessary to hit the ground running and be confident and comfortable contributing right away.”