JA Career Success®
JA Career Success equips students with the tools and skills required to earn and keep a job in high-growth career industries.
This new program covers key topics, such as:
- 4Cs: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity
- Strong soft skills
- Work priorities
- STEM and other high-growth industries
- Personal-brand and job-hunting tools—resumes, cover letters, interviews, and digital profiles
JA Career Success is composed of seven 45-minute sessions recommended for high school students. Materials are packaged in a self-contained kit that includes detailed plans for the volunteer and materials for 32 students.
Session-specific, student-friendly materials are included to increase student interaction and emphasize JA's experiential approach to learning.
JA teachers and volunteers are encouraged as part of this program to implement the JA Success ParkTM Extended Learning Opportunity, which includes a downloadable app for student use, and teacher and volunteer discussion topics to enhance the skills students need to compete in today's job market.
JA programs correlate to state social studies, English, and math standards, and to Common Core State Standards.
Junior Achievement gratefully acknowledges Accenture for its dedication to the development and implementation of JA Career Success.
| Pillars of Student Success | Entrepreneurship: | Financial-Literacy: | Work-Readiness: |
|---|
| Program Implementation | Program Grade-Level |
|---|---|
| Classroom-Based | High School |
| Program Concepts | Program Skills |
|---|---|
| Career clusters, Career planning, Career preparation, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict management, Critical thinking, Education and training, Employer expectations, High-growth jobs, High performance teams, Interests, Inventory and ordering, Job interviews, Job outlook, Job retention, Post-secondary options, Problem-solving techniques, Retail stocking, Skills, Soft skills, STEM, Technical skills, The 4Cs, Working priorities, Workplace skills | Analyze data, Collaborative discussions, Conflict resolution, Communication, Competition, Creativity and innovation, Critical thinking, Decision making, Following written instructions, Formulating answers from personal experiences, Goal-setting, Identify behaviors, Interpersonal skills, Organizing information, Prioritizing, Problem solving, Research skills, Role-playing, Self-assessment, Time management, Work collaboratively, Working in groups |
Program Sessions
Get Hired: Critical Thinking and Creativity
Students are introduced to the need to be work ready by developing the 4Cs skills that employers want from people entering the workforce. Students apply critical-thinking skills and creativity to solve problems in a real-life work scenario.
Get Hired: Communication and Conflict Management Skills
Students apply communication skills to resolve conflicts in work-based scenarios. Students will role-play conflicts and conflict management. They will explore behaviors that inflame conflict and behaviors that lead to a resolution.
Get Hired: Collaboration and Creativity
Students practice collaboration—a 4Cs skill—by using a team-building model referred to as the GRPI model (Goals, Roles and Responsibilities, Processes, and Interpersonal Relationship Skills). The model describes the behaviors found in high-performance teams in the workplace.
Get Hired: Strong Soft Skills
Students will review soft skills that are in demand by employers and rate their own soft skills. They will use personal stories in a job-interview workshop to communicate these skills to a potential employer.
Get Hired: Know Your Work Priorities
Students learn that in the current workforce, people change jobs or careers several times over a lifetime. That means it is important to be prepared and adaptable. Students explore which of their priorities should be their anchors as they prepare to enter the working world.
Get Hired: Know Who's Hiring
In groups, students analyze factors to consider when researching careers: skills learned through training and education; interests in various career clusters; and specific high-growth jobs and the requirements needed to earn them.
Get Hired: Know Your Personal Brand
Students work in teams to rate the personal brand of candidates applying for a job by comparing cover letters, resumes, and digital profiles of the candidates.