Rinse & Reteach
High school students practicing real career-readiness skills — resumes, mock interviews, and portfolio building — across the Employability Skills unit.

Employability Skills Unit

A high school employability skills unit built from the classroom and the industry side — resume, cover letter, portfolio, interview prep, and more. See what's in it and why it's built this way.

At a Glance

Vision

This unit teaches employability skills the way a real job search works: each lesson produces something real that feeds directly into the next, so students leave with an honest body of work, not a stack of graded worksheets. It's built from both sides of the hiring process — real classroom teaching, plus a decade-plus in tech hiring and engineering management. Every standard students are held to here is one that was actually used or inspired by real resumes and run real interviews.

Topics Covered
Career & Industry ResearchResume Writing & Self-ReflectionInterview Skills & Professional CommunicationProfessional CorrespondenceDigital Portfolio & AI Literacy
Subjects
Computer ScienceCTAE (Career Technical and Agricultural Education)
Related Courses
Intro to Software TechComputer Science Principles
Pacing
Pacing: 3 weeks

Employability Skills Vocabulary

Employability SkillsHard SkillsSoft SkillsFeedbackCollaborationResearchCitationAI LiteracyProduct ManagerUX/UI DesignerSoftware EngineerQA TesterResumeAction VerbQuantifiable LanguageObjective StatementScannabilityContent and DesignPortfolioComponentMarkdownWebsite BuilderAI ChatbotPersonaInterviewRole SnapshotBossCandidateActive ListeningFollow-Up QuestionOutreach LetterCover LetterThank-You LetterSubject LinePlatform AdaptationEmployerEmployeeInternInternshipRespect for Diversity

Employability skills were new to me when I first started teaching them in Computer Science. I had taught math for eight years, during which we dove straight into the subject at the start of the year. But fortunately, I have tons of personal career experience with employability skills. I built this unit from both sides of my career. I taught high school for years before I ever left the classroom, then spent twelve years in software development and engineering management — writing job descriptions, sitting on hiring panels, reading pre-screened resumes, running real interviews. Then I came back to teach computer science, and I brought all of that with me. This unit is what happens when “who’s going to actually read this resume” isn’t a hypothetical for the teacher writing the lesson.

The throughline

Employability skills usually get taught as a pile of disconnected worksheets: one day on resumes, one day on interviews, done. I wanted this unit to build as an actual job search does — each lesson producing something that feeds the next one, so that by the end, a student has an honest, real body of work, not just a stack of graded handouts. All of these lessons and corresponding teacher guides are available for sale!

Here’s the arc:

  1. Who Actually Works in Tech (available now) — Before students can market themselves for a role, they need to understand what the roles even are. This lesson breaks down real tech job titles and what people in them actually do day-to-day, so “I want to work in tech” becomes something more specific.
  2. Resume Writing Workshop, Parts 1–4 (available now) — A four-part series: self-inventory, goal-setting, quantifying your experience, and finally building the resume itself. Built to work as one continuous series or as standalone lessons, depending on how much time you have.
  3. Mock Interview Guide: Boss & Candidate Role-Play (available now) — Students play both sides of an interview, which does more to reduce interview anxiety than any lecture I ever gave on eye contact and handshakes.
  4. Cover & Thank-You Letters (available now) — Two letters that bookend a job search: reaching out about a role and following up after one — both fully student-authored, never AI-generated
  5. Portfolio Website Lesson (available now) — For CS students especially: a simple, real place to point people. Not just “make a website” — a lesson in what belongs on it and why.

Who this is for

This unit works for all CTE courses: Business, accounting, healthcare, IT, and, of course, computer science, which is my subject. There is one lesson on the roles of a Software Product team that dives specifically into Computer Science content. But now, Computer Science expertise is required for resume writing, mock interviews, cover letters, thank-you letters, and web-based portfolios. These lessons are perfectly suited for anyone teaching career education courses.

What makes this different from the employability worksheets you’ve probably already got

Every lesson in this unit was piloted with real students, not written in a vacuum. And because I’ve been on the other side of the hiring table, the standards students are held to here aren’t invented — they’re the same ones I used to screen actual resumes and run actual interviews.

Where to find each piece

Every lesson has its own post on this site, going deeper into how I teach it, plus the ready-to-use classroom resource on Teachers Pay Teachers if you’d rather not build it from scratch. [PLACEHOLDER: add TpT store link once live.]

More lessons in this unit are still being written — [PLACEHOLDER: subscribe CTA, reuse existing “Subscribe – Don’t Miss a Post” block from anotherdevsolution.com] if you want to know when they go up.

Lesson Plans in the Employability Skills Unit

Software product team working together as a group; showing the importance of teamwork
Lesson Plan

Who Actually Works in Tech

A high school lesson in which students research real tech job titles- Product Manager, UX/UI Designer, Full-Stack Engineer, QA Engineer- using verified, cited sources rather than guesses.

High school student revising resume notes, showing the drafting and revision process
Lesson Plan

Resume Writing Workshop

A 4-part high school resume writing series — from raw brain dump to a graded first draft — built to be taught as a standalone unit or paired with a CS/career readiness class.

Two students in a paired mock interview, one taking notes as interviewer while the other answers as candidate
Lesson Plan

Mock Interview Guide

A high school mock interview lesson where every student plays both interviewer and candidate — paired role-play, real research, and a reflection grounded in what actually happened.

High school student handwriting a personal outreach (or cover) letter, emphasizing student-authored writing over AI-generated text
Lesson Plan

Cover Letter Thank You Letter

A high school lesson on writing a professional outreach (cover) letter and thank-you letter — student-authored, not AI-generated, addressed to a fictional practice contact.

High school student sketch of a personal portfolio website, turning resume content into a homepage
Lesson Plan

Personal Portfolio Website: From Resume to Homepage

A high school lesson that turns a finished resume into a real personal website — two full paths, no-code website builder or AI-guided HTML, student's choice. primary-keyword-idea: portfolio website lesson high school

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are employability skills important
They help students make connectins that their behavior, character and integrety will always matter no matter what job they have
How should I set rules for my classroom?
Frame rules as expectations and have students collaborate with you to define them. Continue to revisit them throughout the school year
Do the lessons in this unit need to be taught in order?
Mostly, yes, for the core chain. The Resume Writing Workshop's four parts build directly on one another and should remain in order. Mock Interview Guide and Portfolio Website both require a completed resume as input, so they come after it — though it doesn't have to be the exact resume built in this unit. Software Product Team Roles can serve as a starting point or be used on their own, and Cover & Thank-You Letters are written to work standalone as well, even though they pair well with the Mock Interview Guide's practice interviewer for continuity.
Do I need to buy every resource in this unit, or can I use just one?
Each resource works as its own standalone purchase except where a real dependency exists. Both the Mock Interview Guide and the Portfolio Website require a completed resume, which most naturally comes from the Resume Writing Workshop series, though a resume students already have works as well. Software Product Team Roles and Cover & Thank-You Letters have no prerequisites and can be taught independently.
How much class time does the whole unit take?
Roughly 12-14 class periods total, or about 2.5-3 weeks at one period a day. Software Product Team Roles runs 2-3 periods, the Resume Writing Workshop series runs 4 periods across its parts, and Mock Interview Guide, Cover & Thank-You Letters, and Portfolio Website each run 2-3 periods.
Is this unit only for computer science classrooms?
No — most of it is written to work in any career-readiness setting. The Mock Interview Guide and Cover & Thank-You Letters are both explicitly designed to work in school counseling career units, Advisory/homeroom, or general CTE Career Readiness courses, not just CS classrooms. Software Product Team Roles and Portfolio Website lean more CS-flavored, but don't require a CS-specific course to teach.
What grade levels is this unit designed for?
The unit spans grades 9-12 overall. Mock Interview Guide and Cover & Thank-You Letters are built primarily for grades 9-10 (adaptable through 12), while Portfolio Website is best placed once students have a finished resume — commonly 10th grade or later in the sequence.
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