Exploring the NACE Career Readiness Competencies

So far, you’ve explored how different frameworks describe similar capabilities, often using different language.

One framework that has become highly influential in the US higher education and employability conversations is the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Career Readiness Competencies framework.

If you’d like to explore the full framework, you can access it here: NACE Career Readiness Competencies

A framework for career readiness

The NACE framework identifies eight core competencies that help learners prepare for work, lifelong learning, and professional growth. These include:

• communication
• critical thinking
• teamwork
• leadership
• professionalism
• technology
• equity and inclusion
• career and self-development

Together, these capabilities reflect more than disciplinary knowledge alone. They focus on how learners apply knowledge, work with others, solve problems, and navigate professional environments.

Many of these capabilities also appear across other higher education and employability frameworks, including graduate attributes, professional standards, AAC&U Essential Learning Outcomes, and workplace capability models.

See links at the end for some other frameworks to explore.

More than individual skills

One of the strengths of the NACE framework is that these competencies are not viewed as isolated skills.

They are often developed together through authentic learning experiences such as:

• placements and internships
• group projects
• presentations
• simulations
• workplace learning
• industry engagement
• research and inquiry activities

For example, when learners complete an industry project, they may simultaneously be developing:

• communication
• teamwork
• problem-solving
• adaptability
• leadership
• professional judgement

These capabilities are often embedded within learning experiences, even when they are not explicitly named.

Learning experiences matter

The framework also reinforces the importance of applied and authentic learning experiences in capability development.

Capabilities are strengthened when learners:

• engage with real-world problems
• apply learning in professional contexts
• reflect on feedback and growth
• collaborate with others
• navigate uncertainty and complexity

Many educators are already designing these kinds of experiences through authentic assessment, work-integrated learning, capstones, studios, placements, and project-based learning.

Often, the opportunity is not to add something new, but to make the capability already developing more visible to learners.

A useful lens, not another layer

Like many frameworks, the NACE competencies do not need to become another separate system or compliance exercise.

Instead, they can act as a useful lens for:

• recognising transferable capability already present in learning experiences
• connecting higher education with employability conversations
• supporting more consistent language around skills and capability
• helping learners articulate what they can actually do

Dr Sofia Ramirez sees this in her Health Sciences students regularly. During placements and simulations, learners are constantly communicating, collaborating, making decisions, adapting to feedback, and responding to real-world scenarios.

Yet many learners still focus only on whether they completed the task correctly, rather than recognising the broader capability they are developing through the experience.

Sofia begins using simpler capability language during feedback and reflection activities, helping learners connect what they are doing with the professional capabilities they are building over time.

Personal Reflection

As you look at the NACE competencies and examples of authentic learning experiences:

• Which capabilities feel most visible in your context?
• Which capabilities are developing but not always explicitly recognised or discussed with learners?

The language may vary across frameworks, disciplines, and workplaces, but many of the underlying capabilities are already present within higher education learning experiences.

The opportunity is to notice them, name them, and help learners make them more visible.