Be a Career Champion
As BC faculty and staff, you are key partners in empowering students to pursue meaningful careers and lives. Our community's collective participation in career education is vital to ensuring all students have equitable access to career resources and opportunities.
Key Resources For Students
Create your own account to reconnect with former students and support current students by linking coursework to career goals. Faculty can invite guest speakers to provide real-world perspectives and facilitate projects like case studies and capstones by connecting students with industry professionals
Activating your own account allows you to better advise your students and connect them with opportunities. To access Handshake, visit bc.edu/handshake and use your Agora log-in credentials to sign-in. Complete your profile as if you were a student with the school year, school, major, etc. that best positions you to experience Handshake as one of your students.
Faculty and Staff Career Toolkit
Support your students’ career development with these tools and resources designed specifically for faculty and advisors. Use the materials below to help students identify their strengths, make connections between academic learning and career opportunities, and provide meaningful guidance through letters of recommendation.
Career Tools for Faculty and Advisors
Use these interactive resources to help your students or advisees identify their strengths and areas for growth, explore career paths, and connect what they’re learning in the classroom to potential career opportunities.
Use this resource to help students reflect on the skills they built in a class that they have taken. Recommended time: at the end of a semester.
Use this resource to help students set goals for building skills in their future coursework. Recommended time: at the beginning of a semester/during course registration.
Tips for Writing a Strong Letter of Recommendation
Provide meaningful support by writing strong, personalized letters of recommendation for student job, internship, fellowship, or graduate school applications. Explore our tips for crafting effective letters that highlight each student’s strengths and potential.
Discuss students’ specific skills as developed and applied in their work with you and how they may translate to the opportunity to which the student is applying.
Be specific about students’ performance in your course. Was the course a demanding one? How well did the student perform relative to other students? Did the student do something that stands out in your mind? For example, did the student write a superior term paper or essay? If so, indicate the topic and why it was a superior work. Note the student's potential for intellectual development.
Indicate how long and in what capacity you have known the student. If you are familiar with the student’s achievements outside the classroom, you may mention them, but remember, keep your comments specific to your direct work with the student. Do not simply rehash the student’s resume.
If you are submitting a hard copy, print the letter on Boston College letterhead, and seal it in a letterhead envelope. It is advisable to sign your name across the seal.
Avoid any questions about confidentiality. Send the letter directly to the institution via mail, email, or an application service instead of giving it to the student to send on your behalf.
Under no circumstances should you have students draft their own letters of recommendation to which you will sign your name.
Upcoming Faculty Events
Let's Work Together
We invite you to partner with us to provide the best possible career resources to our students. Below are actions you can take to support students with their career journeys.
Invite us to collaborate with you – whether through organizing a program for your students, joining a department meeting, or facilitating an interactive workshop in your classroom. We’re here to support your teaching and student engagement
We welcome your ideas, feedback, and opportunities to collaborate! Whether you’d like to share student input, pilot a new initiative, or get support in solving a challenge, our team is here as thought partners. Reach out to Joe DuPont or Rachel Greenberg to discuss
Use our career outcome data to better understand the types of opportunities students majoring in your discipline pursue. Reach out to Joe Du Pont to discuss the data if you have questions.
Our team is available to facilitate interactive workshops for your class or to provide a brief overview of our services and resources. We invite you to request a presentation.
Students are gaining the skills they need to succeed in their careers in the classroom. To help them make the connection, highlight the skills they will be learning in your class on the syllabus.
Following is language to add to your syllabus to help your students understand the concrete skills they will gain in your class:
- The Skills You Will Build in This Course
The Boston College Career Center identifies eight core competencies that employers in all industries seek from college graduates. In this course, we will develop and advance our competencies in ## areas (include those that apply directly to your course):- Critical Thinking/Problem Solving
- Oral and Written Communication
- Teamwork and Collaboration
- Digital Technology
- Leadership
- Professionalism and Work Ethic
- Career Management
- Global and Intercultural Fluency
- Boston College Career Center
Southwell Hall | bc.edu/careers | 617-552-3430
Interested in learning how to connect the skills and/or content that you learn in this class to your professional goals? The BC Career Center provides career coaching and various career-related services to help you explore your interests, develop your skills, and achieve your goals, regardless of your interests.
Depending on the content of your course, you may refer your students to one of our industry-specific career coaches. Our coaches can work with your students to connect what they’re learning in your course to relevant career paths.
To demonstrate to students the interconnectedness of our work and to help students easily find our resources, we encourage you link to the Career Center website on your department website.
Apply for an Integrative Learning Faculty Grant
The Division of Student Affairs — in collaboration with the Center for Digital Innovation in Learning (CDIL) and the University Council on Teaching (UCT) — is excited to announce the Integrative Learning Faculty Grant, a new initiative designed to recognize and support faculty members who are interested in fostering integrative learning in their classrooms. To learn more about the grant and to apply, visit the CDIL website.
Congratulations to our 2025 winners: Conevery Valencius (MCAS, History), Julia Whitcavitch-Devoy (LSOEHD), Joshua Seim (MCAS, Sociology) , Beth McNutt-Clarke (CSON).
Yes, our team is available to facilitate interactive workshops for your class during a full class session or to provide a brief (~10 minutes) overview of our services and resources. Request a Career Center Class visit.
"I’ve partnered with the Career Center to host a workshop for my first-year students, and the staff consistently excels at demonstrating how a liberal arts education equips students with essential workplace skills. I also value the evidence they present to help students understand that their major doesn’t have to directly dictate their career path. The feedback from students has always been overwhelmingly positive, and it’s an excellent opportunity to familiarize them with the wide range of services available early in their academic journey."
- Akua Sarr, Ph.D. , Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs
Boston College’s First Destinations dashboard provides an interactive platform where you can explore what graduates from your specific school or major go on to do immediately after they graduate. Simply filter by your school and department and you will be able to see the percentage of students who went directly into employment, graduate school, service or fellowships. Reach out to a member of the Career Center team with questions or for assistance using the dashboard.
We ensure students discover opportunities across both the visible and "hidden" job markets. We start by directing students to Handshake, which hosts internships and jobs specifically targeted at our students. After Handshake, we encourage them to explore industry-specific job boards and professional association websites, which are curated and linked on our career cluster webpages. Finally, we strongly emphasize networking, encouraging students to leverage their personal contacts, faculty, and especially our alumni network via Eagle Exchange. Connecting with the alumni network helps students learn how jobs and internships are posted in specific industries, potentially leading to referrals and uncovering roles in the "hidden job market."
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Our services are available to all Boston College undergraduate and graduate students, except for those enrolled in BC Law, the Carroll Graduate School of Management, or any non-degree programs.
International students have multiple potential career paths after graduation, though options are primarily governed by visa regulations. The most common and immediate path is Optional Practical Training (OPT), which grants F-1 students 12 months (or 36 months for STEM majors) of temporary work authorization in their field of study. For long-term employment, securing an employer-sponsored work visa (H-1B) is typically required, though many students also find success utilizing their U.S. degree and experience in highly-valued roles back in their home country. We strongly recommend that international students consult with the Office of International Students and Scholars (OISS) to understand visa regulations, while the Career Center assists with career exploration and job search strategy.
Yes, we encourage faculty to get their own Handshake account. Doing so allows you to better advise your students and connect them with opportunities. To access Handshake, visit bc.edu/handshake and use your Agora log-in credentials to sign-in. Complete your profile as if you were a student with the school year, school, major, etc. that best positions you to experience Handshake as one of your students.
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Our faculty and staff have diverse networks of contacts, and we invite your collaboration as we seek to increase opportunities for our students. If you have a contact in any industry that is (or might be) interested in posting internships or jobs to recruit BC talent, supporting career educational efforts, or raising their visibility on campus, please complete this brief referral form and our Employer Engagement team will follow-up with them. Alternatively, you can forward or add us to an email with your contact to make an introduction.