The Career Center at CU Denver is in the business of helping students identify good job opportunities that align with their skills and interests. Students transitioning from a learning environment into the workplace, require skills beyond the substantive knowledge earned through their degree programs.

For the Career Center, that’s where LinkedIn Learning came in. The staff wanted to address the skills gap employers have cited as a challenge in employing recent college graduates. This gap encompasses a universally applicable set of competencies that improve working relationships and project execution fall into eight main categories:

Sarah Trzeciak, the senior director of Student Career Development at the Career Center used LinkedIn Learning’s course curation capabilities to assemble collections of instructional videos relevant for entry-level job seekers. These videos specifically address each of the eight competencies.

The project was made more manageable by the Employee Learning and Development team at CU System. They worked with LinkedIn to get a spreadsheet of LinkedIn Learning courses that could be applicable for each category. With that spreadsheet, the Career Center worked alongside the Experiential Learning Center at CU Denver to review the list of videos and narrow down the resulting collections.

“We just tried to vet for what was more appropriate for a student versus, you know, someone with 20 years’ experience,” Trzeciak said.

The collection of resources has been available since April 2021. The Career Services team is reviewing and updating the materials in response to revisions the National Association of Colleges and Employers made to the eight competency categories in June.

In addition to the career readiness courses, the Career Center also offers curated LinkedIn Learning collections focused on five key job searching resources: assembling a resume, using LinkedIn effectively, engaging in networking, job hunting strategies and preparing for interviews.

If your department would like to employ LinkedIn Learning tools to bolster training opportunities for your staff or students, visit the Employee Services website for details on becoming a course curator or reach to the Employee Learning and Development team at system.training@cu.edu.