By Nisa Gül
Students begin developing employability skills long before they enter the workforce.
In classrooms, students communicate with teachers and peers, contribute to group projects, meet deadlines, work through challenges, and learn to take responsibility for their work. These experiences matter. But career-connected learning gives students another important opportunity: the chance to apply those skills in situations shaped by workplace expectations.
That distinction is increasingly relevant as schools prepare students not only to understand what employability skills are, but also to use them.
Indiana’s current definition of work-based learning reflects this approach. Work-based learning includes sustained interaction with industry professionals in real or simulated workplace settings, with experiences designed to develop knowledge, skills, and competencies through authentic work. The state’s guidance also emphasizes meaningful tasks, industry feedback, and opportunities for students to adapt to professional expectations.
So, what does that look like for students?
Communication: More Than Knowing What to Say
Communication is already part of a student’s school day. Students ask questions, give presentations, participate in discussions, and write for different assignments.
In a workplace, however, communication takes on a different context.
A student may need to listen carefully to instructions from a supervisor, ask for clarification when something is unclear, explain an idea to a coworker, respond to feedback, or adjust how they communicate depending on who they are speaking with.
The National Association of Colleges and Employers defines communication as effectively exchanging information, ideas, facts, and perspectives with people inside and outside an organization. Its 2026 employer research also identifies communication as one of the career readiness competencies employers consider most important for new graduates.
Employer-connected experiences give students opportunities to see what effective communication looks like in context. A conversation with an industry professional, a workplace project, or an internship can require students to move beyond simply knowing how to communicate and begin deciding how, when, and with whom to communicate effectively.
Teamwork: When Other People Depend on Your Contribution
Group projects give students valuable opportunities to collaborate. Workplace teamwork adds another layer: individual contributions can affect someone else’s ability to complete their work.
Students may need to divide responsibilities, communicate progress, respond when plans change, accept feedback, and contribute toward an outcome shared by the entire team.
NACE describes teamwork as building and maintaining collaborative relationships to work toward common goals while recognizing shared responsibilities. Employers participating in its 2026 research also ranked teamwork among the most important career readiness competencies for new graduates.
This is one reason authentic and simulated workplace experiences can be useful. Indiana’s work-based learning guidance includes experiences ranging from workplace simulations and school-based enterprises to internships, apprenticeships, and industry-developed team challenges. Each creates different opportunities for students to understand how their individual responsibilities fit into a larger goal.
Problem-Solving: When the Answer Is Not in the Instructions
Students solve problems at school every day. But many workplace problems are less structured.
A piece of equipment may not work as expected. A customer may have a question the student has never heard before. A project may encounter a new constraint. A team may need to find another way to complete a task.
In these situations, problem-solving can mean identifying what is happening, gathering relevant information, asking the right questions, considering possible solutions, and knowing when to ask for help.
Indiana’s WBL framework provides a particularly clear example through industry-developed team challenges . In these experiences, an employer presents students with a real-life problem the company has solved or is working to solve. Students develop a solution, and industry professionals evaluate their work.
Experiences like these give students something a predetermined classroom exercise cannot always provide: the opportunity to work through uncertainty while considering real-world expectations and constraints.
Professionalism: Learning the Expectations You Cannot Always See
Professionalism can be one of the hardest employability skills to understand without context.
It includes more than dressing appropriately or arriving on time. NACE describes professionalism in terms of understanding and demonstrating effective work habits and acting in the interest of the workplace and larger community.
For a student, that might mean arriving prepared, following through on a responsibility, communicating when a problem occurs, receiving feedback constructively, managing time, or recognizing that expectations can differ between workplaces.
Indiana’s WBL guidance makes this idea especially concrete. It describes authentic work experience as including interaction, supervision, or mentorship with industry professionals that helps students adapt to workplace expectations and the unwritten rules of professional conduct.
Some workplace expectations are easier to understand once students have an opportunity to experience them.
Practice Turns Skills Into Experience
There is growing research examining the connection between work-based learning and skill development. A 2025 systematic review of 36 studies found communication and teamwork among the soft skills most frequently identified in work-based learning research. The authors also cautioned that research in this area remains limited, particularly when examining how specific skills develop. The review focused primarily on higher education, so its findings should not automatically be generalized to every K-12 experience.
Still, the broader idea is useful: employability skills benefit from opportunities to be practiced in context.
For K-12 schools, that does not mean replacing what happens in the classroom. It means creating connections between classroom learning and situations where students can apply what they know.
Career-connected experiences can take many forms and offer different levels of exposure and responsibility. Employer-led activities can introduce students to workplace expectations. Skills bootcamps can create focused opportunities to practice particular competencies. Workplace experiences and more sustained work-based learning can ask students to apply those skills through authentic tasks, feedback, mentorship, and responsibility.
Through Career+ Pathways™ , students can participate in these kinds of career-connected experiences while exploring industries and learning from employers. Not every experience serves the same purpose or meets Indiana’s formal definition of work-based learning, but each can play a role in helping students connect what they are learning with how skills are used beyond the classroom.
From Knowing to Doing
Students do not need to wait until their first full-time job to begin understanding workplace expectations.
When schools and employers create opportunities for students to communicate with professionals, contribute to a team, work through authentic problems, receive feedback, and take responsibility for meaningful tasks, employability skills become more than concepts.
Students get the chance to use them.
And that experience can help them enter their next workplace with something valuable: not simply the ability to name their skills, but examples of what using those skills actually looks like.
Bio
Nisa Gül is a Social Media Manager and Virtual Assistant at Skyepack, where she supports content creation, blog writing, and digital engagement for the Career+ Pathways™ program. She works closely with the team to transform ideas into polished, audience-ready pieces. Outside of work, she enjoys designing, painting, and spending time with friends in cozy, creative settings.
