The Tools You Need

These are our favorite resources we've gathered to incorporate into our work aimed at helping people with disabilities achieve their employment goals.

• Classroom Activities & Worksheets: Find a Job - Activities and worksheets about job searching and work-readiness information. From Minnesota Programs of Study.
• Work Maturity Skills Bingo - Bingo card has a free space and 24 words related to work maturity skills. Print or play online. Developed by Bingo Baker.
• Character Assessment - The stronger your character, the more attractive you are as a potential job candidate.
• How to Run a JOBZ Club Manual - Alaska's JOBZ Club is a partnership between state and local agencies to provide Work Readiness Skills (Soft Skills) that students with disabilities need to get and keep a good job.
• Real Career Effective Employability Skills - Lessons to help students learn the vital employability skills, attitudes, and behaviors they need to succeed in the today’s dynamic job market. Created by RealityWorks.
• Essential Skills to Getting a Job: What Young People with Disabilities Need to Know - from the Office of Disability and Employment Policy (ODEP)
• Habits of Work - A soft skills curriculum for use by itself or with extended learning opportunities, internships, and other work-related learning experiences. From Keene State College, NH.
• Workplace Skills Curriculum - This course emphasizes skills needed to successfully prepare young people for the work environment and shows relevance of academic classes to future career and educational goals. From the Utah Education Network.
• Dr. Kit – What Are Essential Skills? - Short videos designed to get youth thinking about your their behavior and how they can improve their essential skills.
• Essential Skills to Getting a Job: What Young People with Disabilities Need to Know - A summarized list of skills needed to get a job, including a resource listing of curriculum and materials that can be used by workforce preparation staff. From the office of Disability Employment Policy, US Department of Labor.
• Soft Skills - The National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability (NCWD) provides resources describing soft skills and guidance on how to develop these skills.
• Employment Readiness Checklist for Students with Disabilities Exiting High School - A self-assessment tool to determine the status of employment readiness and serve as a guide for further employment preparation. Developed by Florida's Project 10: Transition Education Network.
• Teaching Virginia’s Workplace Readiness Skills - Instructional modules for positive work ethic, diversity awareness, creativity and resourcefulness, reading and writing, critical-thinking and problem-solving, life-long learning, job-specific mathematics, and telecommunication. From the Virginia Department of Education.
• T-Folio’s Unit 4: Workplace Readiness Training - Assists youth create a résumé and elevator speech that will help them in applying and interviewing for jobs. From T-Folio in Washington state.
• Employability Skills Training - From Project E3: Social skills enable people to get along with others and create meaningful relationships in a community or in society. Employability skills training increases a person’s ability to work with others and function socially. It also teaches them how to adjust to workplace expectations, including written and unwritten rules and social norms.
• Life Skills Training - Casey Life Skills (CLS) is a free tool that takes a look at the behaviors and competencies youth need to achieve their long-term goals. It aims to set youth on their way toward developing healthy, productive lives.
• Skills to Pay the Bills - A curriculum developed by ODEP focused on teaching “soft” or workforce readiness skills to youth, including youth with disabilities.