I’ve Studied Liberal Arts, but Unable to Obtain a Job. What Should I Do?: 6 Tips to Getting Employed with a Liberal Arts Education

If you’ve studied in the humanities or have a liberal arts degree, like me, then this post is for you!

If you majored in degrees such as history, English, political science, anthropology, music, geography, art history, or like me, communication studies, how can you take a degree and obtain a job in this competitive job market? This question has become increasingly more difficult to answer when liberal arts graduates are becoming unemployed, underemployed, or less well compensated than our competitors who majored in computer science, engineering, and business.

However, do not despair! According to liberalartspower.org:

If you couple your liberal arts education with the following tips, you will be well on your way to success. I also encourage you to visit the page previously mentioned. It has valuable resources and information you can use.

Here is some concrete advice for liberal arts graduates:

1. Know Your Skills and What You Want to Do. Be sure you can communicate what strengths you have and have an idea of what you want to do. Be ready to connect the strengths you acquired in school to a skill that employers will value. For example, if you enjoyed studying complex and intricate macroeconomic issues, consider working in market research or product development. I know many of you don’t exactly know what you want to do yet and I will address this in a later post. To get you started, I would recommend checking out Now What?: The Young Person’s Guide to Choosing the Perfect Career by Nicholas Lore and Roadmap: The Get-It-Together Guide for Figuring Out What to Do with Your Life by Roadtrip Nation, Brian McAllister, Mike Marriner, and Nathan Gebhard. (I plan to produce two videos reviewing both books respectively once I’m finished reading both of them).

2. Become Skilled in Tomorrow’s Disciplines. According to Alec Ross, Hilary Clinton’s senior advisor, you should “commit to gaining a foothold in the fields that will propel tomorrow’s economy,” as well as big data, analytics, genomics, cyber, and robotics. Step outside your comfort zone and pursue courses outside a traditional liberal arts focus. When interviewing potential employees, Alec states, “I like it when a comp. lit. major tells me that he took an intro to programming class because both comp. lit. and programming are rooted in ‘language’ and its structures.” If you add work in tech and engineering disciplines with your humanities studies, you’ll find yourself on the same level with graduates from more professional programs. And if you do this while taking advantage of your broad liberal arts education, you may even be ahead of the game. Currently, I’m taking a free programming class on Coursera.org taught by a programming professor from the University of Michigan. If a comm. studies major can do it, I have no doubt you can too! You may want to try taking free classes on Coursera.org or take classes at your local community college. Even go back to school and obtain a minor or concentration in tech and engineering disciplines if you have the financial resources.

3. Meet with Career Services and Alumni Relations. Odds are, your career services and alumni relations offices are tirelessly working to help connect students with internships and entry-level jobs. Enroll in programs aimed at helping recent grads and alumni succeed in their job search. Chat with the career center about the types of jobs and companies that interest you, and then follow any leads they provide you. College career services and alumni relations offices are doing the best they can to support your success- both because they actually do care about you and as a matter of their own survival. Your school’s career services office needs examples they can produce when trying to talk about their success rate. Why not make yourself one of those success stories?

4. Be Creative about Getting Your Foot in the Door. Networking is a crucial key to your success, but it is particularly important for liberal arts students. This is because liberal arts students graduate with limited credentials that employers can rely on when making hiring decisions. Whenever a position at big companies such as Ebay, NBC, The Huffington Post, or NPR is open that’s appropriate for a liberal arts major, these companies receive thousands of applications. For this reason, it is important to take advantage of any connections you have to find someone who can introduce you to someone else at the company. According to Laura Chambers who runs Ebay’s program for new employees, “Finding a way to leverage any connections will ensure you get noticed among the crowd.” This is where Linkedin should come as a useful resource. The next blog I’ll post will be solely on Linkedin and how to use it to your advantage.    

5. Think Globally. Consider working outside the traditional business hubs of the United States or Western Europe. According to Alec Ross, “Today’s frontier economies are tomorrow’s developing economies and today’s developing economies are tomorrow’s developed economies.” Try to position yourself for the long term if you’re willing to take a risk in a frontier economy while your pals are having a blast in New York City, San Francisco, and London.

6. Consider Sales. If you’re persuasive and enjoy surrounding yourself with people, your liberal arts education can help you become a strong performer in sales. Jay Walker, the founder of Priceline.com states, “Sales is the best job in the world if you like people, can communicate and synthesize well, and are skilled at solving other people’s problems. The fact is nothing happens in the world without sales. Give me any field, and I’ll show you how, without sales, there is no forward momentum. Even scientists have to sell to get their funding. There is never a recession in sales.”

 

These tips were borrowed from The Career Playbook: Essential Advice for Today’s Aspiring Young Professionals by James M. Citrin where you can find a plethora of more helpful tips and tricks to landing a job. I plan to produce a video reviewing this useful book.

Please leave any other tips or questions you may have in the comments section, so other readers can be informed. Plus, please share with your friends on Facebook and Twitter!