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Your
Career Readiness journal

Welcome!

With this journal, you’ll connect what you’ve learned in college and through Career Readiness videos and simulations to the skills employers value.

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You will: 
  • Capture
    important details about your experiences.
  • Reflect
    on the questions that apply to you.
  • Prepare
    to confidently share your story in interviews and during your career.

Reflection questions

Choose

Choose the questions below that you feel match your experiences. You don’t have to answer every question.

Write

Write down what you’ve learned and how you’ve applied your skills.

Practice

Practice shaping your experiences into a clear story you can share.

  • Adapting to change

    • Describe a time when you faced something unexpected. How did you handle it?
    • Describe a time when you didn’t achieve a goal you were aiming for. What did you learn?

  • Building inclusive connections

    • How have you built meaningful connections with people who have different perspectives or backgrounds?
    • When working with people you don’t know well, how do you build trust and strong working relationships?

  • Communication

    • How have you used communication to build relationships, solve problems, or collaborate effectively in different settings?
    • When preparing a presentation, what strategies do you use to make it successful?

  • Giving & receiving feedback

    • Describe a time you gave feedback to help someone improve a project such as a presentation, performance, or essay. How did you incorporate positive feedback as well as your suggestions for improvement?
    • Describe a time you received feedback. How did you incorporate the feedback to make your project better?

  • Leadership

    • How did you inspire or guide others?
    • How do you show respect for people with different backgrounds, beliefs, and perspectives?

  • Learning from mistakes

    • Describe a time you made a mistake. What happened? 
    • What did you learn from the experience? How will you avoid similar mistakes in the future?

  • Problem-solving

    • What’s a challenge you’ve overcome with creative thinking?
    • Have you ever worked on a project or task where the rules weren’t clear? What steps did you take to figure it out?

  • Teamwork

    • How did you work with others to achieve a goal?
    • How would you delegate a task to a team member?

  • Technology

    • How have you used technology to complete tasks, adapt to new tools, or improve your work?
    • How do you go about learning new technology?

  • Time management

    • How did you balance multiple tasks successfully?
    • Have you ever missed a deadline? What did you do?

Download your Career Readiness journal

Download a printable PDF that you can fill in and save.

You have experience!

Experience ideas
  • Class projects
  • Competitions
  • Internships
  • Student leadership
  • Study abroad
  • Team sports
  • Theater & music performances
  • Volunteer work
Questions to consider
  • What did you learn or achieve?
  • What happened?
  • What was your role?
  • What challenges did you face?
  • What actions did you take?
Break it down
  • What specific actions did you take?
  • What skills helped you succeed?
  • How did you make an impact?
Checklist for a great story

✅ Highlights your strengths and growth

✅ Has a beginning, middle, & end

✅ Is clear, concise, & easy to follow

✅ Connects to the skills employers value

Sharing your story

As you prepare to begin your professional career, you might be nervous about what to say in job interviews, especially if you’ve never interviewed for a job before. This journal can be a tool as you prepare. 

Review what you wrote in response to the reflection questions. Consider how to put the pieces together and tell your story in a way that highlights your strengths. 

Worried you don’t have enough experience? Refer to the You have experience! sidebar to help you identify life experiences you have that might be relevant to share with potential employers and in work settings.

  Interview prep tip:
As you prepare for an interview, think about how you can tell your story in a way that fits this structure:
“During [experience], I [actions], using [skills], which led to [outcome].”

 

Example

This fictional scenario shows how you can use your journal to reflect on your experiences and to prepare for interviews.

Communication

  • How have you used communication to build relationships, solve problems, or collaborate effectively in different settings?

Last semester, I led the group for a group project for my psychology class. None of us had met before being assigned to work together so I suggested we meet for lunch and get to know each other before we got started on the project. We didn’t make any decisions at lunch, but I got a sense of our different personalities and communication styles. I went to our first working meeting with a good idea of how to get us started on the right foot. 

  • When preparing a presentation, what strategies do you use to make it successful?

I paid attention to our different strengths and helped keep everything organized. One of the people in the group was an art student so I asked her to make our slides look nice. And another was a communication major and liked writing so I asked him to work with me on writing and editing the content. The other woman was chatty and confident—she’d been active in class discussions all semester—so I knew she’d be the best person to lead the actual presentation in class. We were all assigned different areas to research, and when our classmates asked us questions after the presentation we each answered the questions that were pertinent to our sections.

Sharing my story

I’m proud of the psychology project—it was an intensive project, relevant to my major, and my group got a great grade! So I want to be prepared to talk about it in my first job interview in a few days. 

I’m referring to the tip above; I want to make sure the way I practice the story incorporates these elements: 

Example: “During [experience], I [actions], using [skills], which led to [outcome].”

My story

As the leader of this in-depth group project, I used communication and organizational skills to facilitate a friendly environment, to identify everyone’s strengths, and to organize tasks logically. Not only did we get an A on our project but we also gave an engaging presentation. At the end, our classmates asked us a lot of interesting questions (which, of course, we were very prepared to field)! 

That’s how I’m going to practice. The job I’m interviewing for involves public speaking and working in teams, so I think this will be a great story to tell! I feel more confident about the interview knowing that I have relevant experience and a story I can share.