Essential Career Skills Series
The Essential Career Skills (ECS) Series is an annual series that invites guest speakers to speak on the importance of developing your Leadership & Professional competencies to become career ready.
Each session in the series includes a guest speaker, activity, and discussion/reflection. There is a certificate of completion associated with each series.
If you are interested in the Essential Career Skills Series Certificate of Completion or interested in viewing the final recorded videos from the sessions, please register for the Brightspace course (NOT "Competencies - Facilitator Guide" or "Competencies - Student"). The Brightspace course serves as a central hub for the content from the Essential Career Skills Series.
Series Available Now
Currently, the sessions from ECS Series 0 (Spring '22) are available in the non-credit and free Brightspace course under the module titled "Series 0 (SP 2022)."
- The sessions from ECS Series 1 (Fall '22 - Spring '23) will be made available May 3rd, 2023.
- The session from ECS Series 2 (Fall '23 - Spring '24) will be made available by May 3rd, 2024.
What are essential career skills?
Purdue provides students with rigorous academic preparation for entering their chosen career field. This consists of both general academic requirements (e.g., communication, science, mathematics and quantitative reasoning, and human cultures) and specialized knowledge in a major field of study.
The university also provides for the acquisition of opportunity knowledge, acquired from experiences inside and outside of the classroom. As students participate in course and co-curricular activities (e.g., student organizations and campus employment) they are practicing and developing their abilities to communicate, process and apply knowledge and information, interact and work with others, and regulate their own behavior.
The 4 Leadership & Professional (LEAD) Competencies are essential career skills. They are the skills and abilities that employers expect new college graduates to have developed before beginning their careers.
Program Structure
Except for the ECS Series 0 (pilot series), all ECS Series will have four sessions each and will be accessible in three ways.
- In-person sessions will be held during the fall semester.
- For updates on session dates, please follow @lead_purdue on Instagram and Twitter, and @lead.purdue on Facebook.
- Zoom sessions will be held during the spring semester, with content that builds on the in-person sessions. A facilitator will expand on and supplement information presented during the in-person sessions.
- Video recordings that include footage from the in-person (fall) and Zoom (spring) sessions will be uploaded to the Brightspace course.
Students who were not able to attend either the in-person or Zoom sessions can still earn a certificate by viewing the recorded sessions in Brightspace. The recorded sessions will be available in Brightspace at the end of the spring semester. See below for certificate reporting details.
How to Get the Certificate
After you have attended all four sessions (either in-person, virtual, OR by watching the videos posted at the end of the year), you will go to the certificate reporting survey form at the end of each module on Brightspace and report your attendance for the series.
You will receive a "badge" from Brightspace once you have successfully completed the survey. This will notify our department to review and confirm your attendance in the series. Once we have confirmed your attendance, we will issue you a certificate through Brightspace.
A separate certificate will be earned for each series. You can report your attendance at any time. You will be asked to report how you attended each session: in-person, via Zoom, or by watching the recordings.
Associated Programs
The LEAD Essential Career Skills Series is associated with other distinguished programs on campus. Your participation and attendance in the Essential Career Skills Series may count towards the requirements for the College of Science, Learning Beyond the Classroom program or the “outside events” requirement for the Data Mine Seminar course.
We are proud to announce that earning a LEAD Essential Career Skills Series certificate will count towards the Career and Professional Development category in the College of Science, Learning Beyond the Classroom program. If you are a student in this program, please visit this page for more information.
The LEAD Essential Career Skills Series is associated with the Data Mine Seminar class. The Essential Career Skills Series sessions count towards an “outside event (PD)” for students enrolled in the 1-credit hour TDM seminar class. Any upcoming ECS sessions will be listed on the Data Mine Upcoming Outside Events.
Help
If you have any questions, concerns, inquiries, or require technical assistance regarding this course, please contact the Roger C. Stewart Leadership & Professional Development Department at leadership@purdue.edu.
