Transition to Employment: Build Career, Vocational, and Social Skills

Career and technical education

- New Hampshire Career and Technical Education website
- CTE Programs in New Hampshire
- Infographic about how participation in CTE can help improve readiness and success in college and careers for students with disabilities. (PDF, 1 page, 2018)
- Making Good on the Promise: Improving Equity and Access to Quality CTE Programs for Students with Disabilities (PDF, 9 pages, 2020), developed by the National Center for Learning Disabilities and Advance CTE, outlines five actions state CTE leaders can take to ensure that secondary and postsecondary students with disabilities have access to the supports needed to thrive in high-quality CTE programs.
- NH Career Academy is a program for students entering their senior year of high school. They can get their high school diploma and complete an associate's degree or certificate program in two years.

Employability and soft skills

Employability skills are general social skills necessary for success in the workplace at all levels and in all types of jobs. These skills go by different names — soft skills, workforce readiness skills, career readiness skills — but they all refer to the same set of core skills all employers want.

- Habits of Work is an employment soft skills curriculum developed in New Hampshire. See especially the Keeping A Job units.
- WorkReady NH is is a practical, tuition-free program to meet the needs of job seekers and career builders by providing training in specific skills that employers are looking for in their current and future employees. Available online to anyone age 16 and up through the Community College System of NH.
- Skills to Pay the Bills — Mastering Soft Skills for Workplace Success is a curriculum developed by the Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP). It focuses on teaching workforce readiness skills to youth ages 14 to 21 in both in-school and out-of-school environments. The program is modular, with hands-on activities that focus on six skill areas: communication, enthusiasm and attitude, teamwork, networking, problem solving and critical thinking, and professionalism.
- The Employability Skills Framework is an interactive site to explore and support teaching nine key skills, organized in three broad categories: applied knowledge, effective relationships, and workplace skills. It was developed as part of the Support for States Employability Standards in CTE and Adult Education project, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education. There’s a professional learning module to introduce the framework and show how to integrate employability skills into lesson plans.
- Executive Function & Self-Regulation is part of an online Guide to Executive Function from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Lots of good resources including Executive Function Activities for Adolescents (PDF, 3 pages, 2015).
- What Works for Work: Evidence Based Transition Practices and Predictors, developed by OCALI with support from the Ohio Developmental Disabilities Council, teaches how to incorporate selected evidence-based practices into the academic, vocational and social education and preparation for transition youth. Each session includes a PowerPoint slideshow, handouts or links to resources, and notes and activities for greater understanding. You can do them in any order.
- Toolkit for workplace soft skills, from MindTools. Three hundred of the 1000+ tools are free.
- Northcentral Technical College in Wisconsin has a series of soft skill overviews in simple bulleted lists.
- Examples of rubrics and and evaluation forms for evaluating soft skills. Level of detail varies a lot:
  - - Employability and Soft Skills Manual (PDF, 29 pages, 2018) from the Pennsylvania Academic and Career/Technical Training Alliance (PACCT). It identifies 27 key competencies under five domains as a minimum set of skills to be attained by every student in preparation for successful employment.
    - Soft Skills Assessment Rubric and Tools from Feather River College in California. Includes supervisor and student sections (PDF, 5 pages).

Job-seeking skills

- My Next Move career exploration site. A wonderful resource!
- What are my needs, rights, and responsibilities at work?, from Transition Tennesee, is a series of online lessons to learn about specific ways your needs, rights, and responsibilities change as you leave high school and enter the workplace. Covers disclosure and communication as well. Includes nifty vocabulary flip decks.
- The Balance Careers has lots of short articles, images and infographics about job hunting and job keeping, suitable for high school and college students.
- Apprenticeship, a page in the Transition to Postsecondary Education and Training module.
- Novoresume offers free resume-building templates. Check out their Elon Musk sample!
- Teaching Networking Skills: Paving a Way to Jobs and Careers (PDF, 236 pages, 2008) is an 11-unit curriculum covering skills such as identifying your own network, approaching people, talking about your skills and interests, learning about what employers look for, exploring careers and job options, and exhibiting good business etiquette. From the New England Rehabilitation Continuing Education Program (NERCEP).

Updated 6-11-26