JA Career Success equips students with the tools and skills required to earn and keep a job in high-growth career industries.

Following participation in the program, students will be able to:

  • Apply 4Cs: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.
  • Demonstrate strong soft skills.
  • Rank work priorities.
  • Recognize STEM and other high-growth industries.
  • Identify personal-brand and job-hunting tools—resumes, cover letters, interviews, and digital profiles

Session One: Get Hired:Critical Thinking and Creativity

Students are introduced to the need to be work ready by developing the 4Cs skills that employers want from people entering the workforce. Students apply critical-thinking skills and creativity to solve problems in real-life work scenarios

Session Two: Get Hired: Communication and Conflict-Management Skills

Students apply communication skills to resolve conflicts in work-based scenarios. Students will role-play conflicts and conflict management. They will explore behaviors that inflame conflict and behaviors that lead to a resolution.

Session Three: Get Hired: Collaboration and Creativity

Students practice collaboration—a 4Cs skill—by using a team-building model referred to as the GRPI model (Goals, Roles and Responsibilities, Processes, and Interpersonal Relationship Skills). The model describes the behaviors found in high-performance teams in the workplace.

Session Four: Get Hired: Strong Soft Skills

Students will review soft skills that are in demand by employers and rate their own soft skills. They will use personal stories in a job-interview workshop to communicate these skills to a potential employer

Session Five: Know Your Work Priorities

Students learn that in the current workforce, people change jobs or careers several times over a lifetime. That means it is important to be prepared and adaptable. Students explore which of their priorities should be their anchors as they prepare to enter the working world

Session Six: Know Who’s Hiring

In groups, students analyze factors to consider when researching careers: skills learned through training and education; interests in various career clusters; and specific high-growth jobs and the requirements needed to earn them.

Session Seven: Know Your Personal Brand

Students work in teams to rate the personal brand of candidates applying for a job by comparing cover letters, resumes, and digital profiles of the candidates.