Accurate representation of graduate outcomes is critical to upholding institutional integrity. All involved in employment reporting must continuously identify ways to strengthen their system for tracking, collecting, and verifying employment data. When documentation is both a quality and a compliance matter, staff must understand the verification program as a whole, the role they play in continuously improving it, and how to use professional principles and best practices in documentation. This course is designed to encourage participants to critically analyze their own employment reporting practices while sharing ideas and best practices that can help lead to the highest level of data integrity.

Module 1: The Importance of Employment Reporting

• Examine the importance of employment reporting from various stakeholder perspectives
• Articulate the influence graduate employment reporting has on higher education policy, national economic development, and accreditation integrity
• Describe multiple benefits of employment reporting for an institution
• Identify factors that have contributed to governments’ approaching higher education policy as an investment strategy
• Examine multiple perspectives that shape the definition of gainful employment

Module 2: Employment Verification Program Components

• Identify terms necessary to define for an employment verification program
• Recognize variables important to consider to strengthen the definition of “placement”
• Describe the benefits and challenges of various data collection methods
• Examine employment rate calculation methods used by various regulatory agencies
• Identify potential partnerships that may strengthen an employment verification program

Module 3: Employment Verification Program Implementation

• Use benefit-focused communication with stakeholders to convey why employment data is collected
• Identify opportunities to manage student expectations and establish student accountability for placement assistance
• Implement a workflow and use best practices in records management
• Identify considerations for compliance monitoring
• Identify common documentation mistakes and interventions to reduce errors

Module 4: Best Practices in Documentation

• Explain the benefits of using case notes to document student interactions
• Use professional principles of documentation when recording case notes
• Use best practices when fixing errors, and making edits to hardcopy student case notes
• Use a case note model for documenting student interactions consistently
• Write strong job descriptions when submitting employment information for verification that clearly indicate graduate’s use of skills from program of study