Faculty & Staff

Encourage your students to reflect on their skills, interests, competencies, personality and values. Suggest Career Services resources. We offer a variety of self-assessment tools, as well as information about competencies and career readiness (see below for more detail), including practical ways that students can strengthen workplace skills.

• Our career counseling team can help you evaluate your skills, interests, and life goals in order to make an informed decision about the right major and career path for you. To get started, you should complete FOCUS2 ( access code: mountaineer), a customized online, self-guided, interactive program designed to help you select your college major and plan your career.
• Tools like What Can I Do With This Major? and other sites listed on the Careers Resources page can be used to research career options for a variety of majors. What Can I Do With This Major? features 100 major profiles with information on common career paths, types of employers that hire in the field, and strategies to maximize opportunities. Scroll to the bottom of each profile for links to professional associations, occupational outlook information, and job search resources.
• O*NET Online is valuable because it links self-assessment tools with real-world career data. It supports informed decision-making by helping students:
  • Discover careers that fit their interests
  • Understand the academic path required
  • Plan for future job market trends
• ORIN151 Choosing a Major and Career course is periodically available to students throughout the academic year. The course offers guidance and clarity to students who are uncertain about their major and career path. It addresses first-time freshmen who are undecided about a major and students whose initial major or career choice does not match their personal, academic, and professional aspirations. Students will be guided through a formal assessment of their characteristics, considering possible career options and identifying majors that may help them obtain those options.

Explore the networking strategy resources below to help students begin their networking journey. Encourage your students to schedule an appointment with their Career Development Specialist through their Handshake account or contact Career Services at 304-293-2221.

• Remind students to attend career fairs and networking events scheduled throughout the academic year.
• Many internships and jobs are found (directly or indirectly) through proactive networking. At fairs and events, programs and on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, networking is a valuable professional resource. It is a way to meet and connect with people in your field, alumni and to gain different perspectives throughout your professional development journey.
• Create and periodically update your profiles on Handshake and LinkedIn.
• Share personal networking stories with your students. Networking can be an intimidating process, especially for novices, and your success stories — or even times when things didn’t go as planned! — will help demystify the process for students. Have you ever found a job lead through a connection? Received great career advice from a conversation with someone? These are examples of networking in action.

Each year, Career Services is involved with a number of in-person and virtual career events, including everything from large-scale career fairs to industry-focused networking nights and skill-building workshops.  Request a Handshake student account or visit our employer events page to find out about upcoming career fairs and events, including opportunities you may want to suggest to your students.

How you can help your students:

• Announce Career Services events in your classes and encourage all majors, all class years to attend relevant events
• Help publicize events that are not an obvious match for your students, e.g., someone majoring in English can find a job in the life sciences industry (major doesn’t define you!)
• Offer extra credit for attending relevant events or make an assignment out of attending a Career Services event once per semester

How you can partner with Career Services for events and employer outreach:

• Suggest alumni for events, e.g., networking nights, or career fairs
• Recommend companies to invite to career fairs and/or to post jobs and internships in Handshake
• Volunteer to be on relevant panels and participate in events of interest (students like to see professors at events and there are always new things to learn!)
• Bring a Career Services staff member with you if you’re coordinating an employer site visit (Explore + Tour) or let us plan it for you!
• Attend employer events to hear more about what is going on in industry or to find funders for your research

If you’d like to host an alumni or employer panel discussion, Career Services can help you think through your plan and advertise the event.  Typical steps to planning a panel discussion:

• Write blurb for advertising. The Career Center can publicize events in Handshake and through our social media channels
• Determine the panel topic
• Secure date, time, room, etc.
• Determine the appropriate number of panelists (we suggest securing 4-5 people to ensure 3-4)
• Determine the various perspectives on the topic you want represented on the panel
• Solicit possible panelist names from other faculty members, students and the Career Center
• Send invitations to potential panelists in waves (as people are busy, you’ll need to invite many more than you need) well in advance of the event
• As alumni respond yes/no, determine who you’ll ask next so as to maintain a variety of perspectives on your panel
• Once panel is finalized, stay in touch with panelists. Write communication plan, including dates to send reminder emails
• Complete facilities requests and finalize logistical details

Career Services offers numerous resources for finding jobs and internships, including tools just for WVU students, field-specific career sites, and much more. In addition, we meet with students in 1-on-1 appointments to discuss resumes and cover letters, internship and job search strategies, and more.

Handshake is our online, mobile-friendly platform that connects students and alumni to employers for jobs, internships and career events.  Students can find postings for thousands of external jobs and internships, WVU’s on-campus student positions, career resources, virtual career events and announcements.

NOTE: Since Handshake does not have a faculty platform, Handshake encourages you to request a student account to see exactly what students see. If you need to post an on-campus position, please use the Student Employment Job Posting Request Form to receive applications via email.

Career readiness is more than a college degree or doing well in one’s major.  The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) defines career readiness as “the attainment and demonstration of requisite competencies that broadly prepare college graduates for a successful transition into the workplace.” In other words, soft skills matter.

Much has been written over the last few years about the fact that employers think students lack some of these important skills when they get to the workplace. NACE has identified competencies that students should be developing, and Career Services dedicates itself to helping students continue to build these competencies so as to be more fully prepared when they leave WVU. As faculty, you most certainly foster these competencies with students throughout their years at WVU. 

NACE’s Eight Career Readiness Competencies and What Employers Are Looking For:

• Career & Self-Development
• Communication
• Critical Thinking
• Equity and Inclusion
• Leadership
• Professionalism
• Teamwork
• Technology

Here are a few suggestions for helping students more intentionally focus on competencies:

Make competencies visible in your syllabus and assignments.
Highlight which NACE competencies are being developed through specific projects, presentations, lab work, or group activities by using NACE Ready + Suitable. To request administrative access to create and manage student assessments and activities, please complete this form. For reference, see the sample course assignment description as an example.

Have students reflect on their skill development.
Encourage brief reflections at the end of major assignments, asking students to identify which competencies they strengthened and how.

Integrate real-world examples or employer feedback.
Share insights from your discipline’s industry partners about which competencies matter most and how they’re demonstrated on the job.

Build in low-stakes opportunities to practice professional skills.
This might include team-based problem solving, short presentations, email etiquette exercises, or project management check-ins.

Collaborate with Career Services.
Invite a career development specialist to speak to your class, partner on résumé or internship prep activities, or connect students with relevant career resources.

Encourage students to document their competency growth.
Suggest they update their résumés, portfolios, or Handshake profiles with concrete examples from your course that show skill development.

Model and emphasize professionalism.
Reinforce behaviors—communication, time management, critical thinking—that mirror workplace expectations.

For your convenience, here are the NACE Competency Assessment Tool for Student/Observer Version and the User Manual For Higher Education Professionals where there are resources, tools and activities to assess and develop each competency.

We are pleased to introduce Big Interview, a free and innovative training system designed to help your students prepare more effectively for job interviews. This online platform combines comprehensive training with practical exercises to enhance students’ interview techniques and build their confidence.

A letter of recommendation is “expert testimony” to a student’s ability to perform a task: contributing to a team project, succeeding in graduate school, or learning from a particular experience (such as foreign study/travel). You need to be confident of the applicant’s ability to be able to write convincingly. You could put your professional credibility at risk if you consistently write letters for applicants who are not qualified.

Recommendation Letters for Graduate School Applicants
For graduate school, there is a kind of “code” for levels of confidence. Letter writers use these phrases at the beginning or end of the letter to express their professional evaluation. Generally speaking, there are four levels of confidence as suggested by graduate school forms themselves:

• Strongly recommend – You are very confident in the applicant’s ability
• Recommend – You are confident in applicant’s ability
• Recommend with reservations – You are somewhat confident, but have specific areas of doubt (include an explanation)
• Do not recommend – You do not believe in applicant’s ability to succeed (include an explanation)

Tips for Successful Recommendation Letters
A letter of recommendation succeeds on the same merits as any form of persuasive writing: good vocabulary, solid essay structure, appropriate content, and relevant details.

• Vocabulary – use strong, vivid language in both nouns and verbs.
• Essay Structure – Structure the letter as a four-to-five-paragraph essay with a thesis.

1. The first paragraph should state how long writer has known applicant, in what context, and general “thesis” statement regarding applicant’s abilities/suitability for position.
2. The main body should provide two or three examples or qualities that inspire confidence (or lack of confidence) in the applicant’s skills or character.
3. Conclude with an explicit level of recommendation (strongly/highly, recommend, recommend with reservations [must provide explanation], do not recommend [must provide explanation]).

• Appropriate Content – Avoid exaggeration or speculation outside of your knowledge base.
• Details – Include a few well-chosen examples of why you recommend this individual. The examples should be obviously within your sphere of knowledge.

Format of Recommendation Letters
These are official documents and should be written using the following professional/business format:

• On professional or organizational letterhead; Appropriate addressing
• Block flush-left paragraphs; Appropriate greetings and closings
• 11 pt. font; One to two pages long

We would love to speak in your classroom or seminar! Students, faculty, and staff are invited to request a variety of free Career Development presentations. Please submit requests no later than two weeks before the desired date. Location/reservations are the responsibility of those requesting the presentation.

Topics can include:

• Resume and Cover Letter
• Job Search Process
• Experiential Learning
• Networking
• Interviewing Skills
• Job Offers
• Dining Etiquette
• Career Readiness

Central Career Services Career (for audiences across all majors)

Chambers College of Business & Economics

College of Creative Arts and Media

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Davis College of Agriculture and Natural Resources

Health Sciences Center

Statler College Career and Professional Development Center

For questions, please email Career Services or call 304-293-2222.