National Association of Colleges and Employers
Since the launch of NACE’s Career Readiness Initiative in 2015, NACE has been working to create a tool to help members measure the competency and skill proficiency levels of students. Our goal: to support higher education and industry in understanding and closing the competency/skill gap.
The NACE Competency Assessment Tool is the result of those years of effort, providing a means by which to measure the proficiency of students, candidates, interns, and new hires in the eight career readiness competencies.
NACE engaged more than 100 member colleges and universities and more than 600 volunteers—including students—in the development of the NACE Competency Assessment Tool through rigorous field testing.
Field testing—conducted in three phases and totaling more than 18 months—provided much needed data for refinement, ensuring the validity, reliability, and usability of the final tool, which will be rolled out in summer 2024.
NACE is partnering with Career Launch and Suitable to deliver the new NACE Competency Assessment Tool to the higher education community and industry.
COMING IN SUMMER 2024: Our exclusive partners will integrate the tool into their technology so their customers can use it in concert with the other functionalities provided through these student engagement and success platform.
Practically speaking, the tool will serve campuses and employers in their efforts:
Career center staff will be able to use the tool with students to enhance students’ understanding of their career development and their levels of competency proficiency. This will also give career services members the ability to provide their institutions with data to demonstrate the value of higher education in helping build a career-ready workforce.
Employers will be able use the tool with interns, candidates, and new hires to assess their proficiency and identify areas for professional development.
More broadly, our partnerships with Career Launch and Suitable will provide important data that will shed light on the dynamics surrounding students’ career readiness. In turn, this will enable us to identify impactful strategies and practices to support students’ career readiness to achieve equitable employment outcomes. Results and outcomes will be shared in a variety of ways, including:
An annual National Career Readiness Benchmarks report, featuring national benchmarks for competency proficiency across various demographics, including class year, major, gender, race, and ethnicity, to benefit the development and success of our workforce.
Special reports that delve into specific competencies and proficiencies, based on gender, race, first-generation status, and more.
Trainings, presentations, and articles that provide updates and insights into competency development.
Reach out to our partners, Career Launch and Suitable, to learn more about their plans to support the career readiness of students and candidates in partnership with NACE.
Questions for NACE? Contact research@naceweb.org.
