This resource guide serves as an interactive roadmap to help guide graduate students toward success. It can be adapted to fit the needs of the individual student and referred to throughout their graduate career. The guide is filled with resources and planning suggestions for Ohio State graduate students (both master’s and doctoral level). The programs, training and other resources included in this document are compiled from multiple offices across the university. It provides a one-stop destination for graduate students and advisors alike to identify key transferrable (soft) skills and find the related resources on campus. Ideally, this site will be used by the graduate student and their advisor to determine the skills the student needs to develop prior to graduation and map the way to building those skills through resources offered around the university.
This guide includes five broad job categories graduate students often pursue: higher education, business and industry, nonprofit, social media and public sector/governmental. This section describes each career track broadly and provides examples of job titles within each track. Students can determine the tracks they resonate with and follow the rest of the guide with those tracks in mind.
The next section focuses first on hard skills versus soft skills, followed by lists of both skill types (including a list of general soft skills, along with the specific soft skills desired by employers within the five job categories). Hard (technical) skills are also listed for each of the five job categories.
Some of these are key soft skills, such as communication, while others will be more unique to specific career tracks (such as performs effectively in deadline environment, business trend awareness, etc.). Graduate students (potentially in conjunction with their advisors) should review the soft skills in their ideal career tracks and identify the skills they have empirically mastered, the skills they have some experience with, and those that need development. The individual development plan (IDP) (create a link to the IDP) can help organize this process.
Once the graduate student determines the skills they need to develop prior to graduation to become career ready, they can use the Resources and Training sections to locate skill-growing opportunities across campus and beyond. Use the IDP to track the resources used and training attended, and be sure to review and revise the IDP annually with your advisor/mentor.