10 years ago, I was in between jobs and my old boss got me an interview at a large insurance company. I didn’t have much of insurance experience, so I did a deep dive of how insurance company could use big data technology.
For my first interview, this guy walked in with his coffee and breakfast. He said he only had 30 minutes because he had another meeting, even though we were scheduled for 1 hour. He stayed for the whole hour and plus some. I met 7 other people that day, but this guy told HR that he wanted me. I am still friends with him. We laugh about how he said he only had 30 minutes. He said he was surprised how much I knew about the business and presented use cases that he wasn’t even aware of.
I tell my kids never not be prepared for a meeting, and interviews are probably the most important meetings they would ever have.
Well I never have. And as I prepped my kids they knew about the company - divisions and products, current news, key names and financials and I prepped them via the STAR method to handle behavioral questions.
In my experience, companies want to know you prepared - but not fix the world.
But each person is different. And each can prep as they want.
Can you prep me and let me know what that is? I’m not familiar with it.
You can google STAR interview method. Lots of articles.
I’m glad I’ve been following this thread - my son has been contacted for a couple interviews, one being today.
He’s also reached out to the career center at his school again to fine tune his resume.
And they do it on your lawn, no less!
Sorry - I write an entire thing about STAR but it looks like it was pulled down. Maybe I disclosed too much.
You can google but for me and presumably my kids, it helps organize and stay on track.
You can create three or four scenarios - work challenge, time you disagreed with boss, time someone wasn’t pulling weight in a project - whatever it may be. And use these three or four scenarios to answer most any behavioral question.
So they don’t have to draw blanks - and the responses all follow situation, task, action, and result.
I wrote more about the person I’m helping but I guess too much. But I love and appreciate all the feedback.
She’s in a nature/bio diversity/conservation type track and had a few volunteer things but nothing of substance.
I gave her all your suggestions - added cities, State, county, national parks etc and recommended she reach back out to her academic department - they often get listings.
Thanks
I’m a believer in marketable job skills. Ultimately, what you study is what you’re going to support yourself with. If you want to study musical theater, for instance, at least consider something like law, a teaching certificate or a double major/minor in business. “But my dream is to be a Broadway star.” That’s fine, but if or until that happens, you need to do the adulting thing and bills gotta be paid. I believe there are many things a person can be satisfied doing as a career.
I studied Classics and my skill translating ancient Greek has not earned me a dime.
You have a very narrow view of education! And my first Fortune 50 corporate job-- I was hired by a SVP who was ALSO a Classics major.
Agreed! History majors are unlikely to end up in careers in which they are doing history, but very likely to end up in careers using the skills (reading, writing, analysis, research, etc.) they developed as history majors. Famous History Majors | AHA
I do think, right or wrong, the world has changed.
I’m not saying it’s one way or the other and yes, there’s a mid point- but it’s a much more quantitative world today - even the social sciences then when I got my history and journalism degree and was basically - unemployable (after failing in the world of TV after a 9 month contract) - so I took a sales job and fortunately had that sales acumen so I kicked but and got further schooling in business.
But I also think - I have a classics degree but I’m 50+ years old - means something different than I got a classics degree today.
Anyway, that’s my opinion - but it’s not all or none - there’s definitely folks in the humanities and social sciences that will succeed just like before - but maybe not as high a percentage as 30 or 40 years ago.
Why would you assume that a humanities major lacks quantitative skills? I have a kid with a humanities degree- was an early hire at a tech startup (which went public, kid has been out-earning the parents for almost a decade) who was one of those 800/800 SAT kids, strong spike in math, could have gone the engineering or CS route but fell in love with something else.
Folks on CC complain about companies which ask for SAT scores during the interview but that’s one way strong quant kids who studied literature, psychology, history, etc. get their foot in the door. 5 on BC Calc? strong SAT scores? Not that hard to prove you have the quant chops for many types of corporate roles.
On the grocery store/retail topic: I know an English major 2020 grad friend of my daughters who went back to work at our hometown grocery store. Summer 2020 I was in line behind a teacher who asked her what she wanted to do with her degree. Light bulb went off for me as we were looking for a legal secretary at my office. When it was my turn I asked her if she was interested and we hired her shortly after. So in a way, working at the grocery store did get her a career type job.
On the other hand, my older daughter did not want to return to Target after her internship. She was applying and interviewing a lot and felt like as soon as she started she would be quitting again. She scraped by on remote contract work instead. It took her about 9 months to get her job but she made it. I don’t know if having that piecemeal work in her field was more or less beneficial to her resume than Target. Target certainly would have been better for her bank account.
I would argue that many kids who don’t end up in STEM or a quant business major like finance or accounting - and that end up in a social science or humanities type major - do so because they didn’t either have the acumen or interest in being in CS or engineering or other "mathy’ things.
I’m an example…and while my son followed mom and is an engineer, my daughter followed me. She wants nothing to do with #s.
In the past, one could get away with that. Today, in the real world, one can’t.
Now, the education today has added a quantitative level that didn’t exist 30 years ago - or even 25 years ago when I got my MBA in another fluff major - marketing.
But today, even the fluff majors have added a level of quantitativeness - they needed to so that students can have some level of numerical acumen.
I would say your kid is the exception, not the rule.
There are still tons of kids everywhere that don’t have that quantitative acumen and they pick that major because they can get through it. I could never get through engineering or chemistry or CS or you name it. But history I could. Sociology, anthropology, poli sci, etc. - yes, I could.
I think that rings true today.
Someone posted a statistic the other day about underemployment (not unemployment) by major - and I think that shows that this is the case.
You might not appreciate @coolguy40 bluntness and again, I do think there’s his perspective, your perspective, and probably a reality somewhere in between.
But I personally think it leans closer to his perspective than yours - in today’s world but not necessarily the world of 30, 40 years ago.
Agree 100%. When I graduated in the 80’s with a poli sci degree, I am pretty confident I could have gotten an IB or consulting type analyst job if I had wanted to go in that direction vs law school given my grades and where I went to school, without much in the way of quant rigorous classes. No way that would have happened today. Poli sci yes, but I would need to back that up with some quant driven classes, either math, data science, economics, comp sci. And, it is not just jobs in finance or consulting. So many main street jobs now require some level of sophistication when it comes to understanding data, whether snaps shots or trends over time. I still think training in History/Classics, you name it, that pushes people to think critically and to clearly and succinctly communicate, is a great place to come from, but you now also need to show that you are comfortable with numbers/data.
The problem is that people also need the sort of critical thinking that is taught in humanities courses like English Lit or History.
One of the biggest fallacies among people who consider themselves to be “quant people” is that “facts/data speak for themselves”. They don’t.
Humans are not computers who receive unbiased data from the outside and analyze it based on logical rules. The data that we receive is not only filtered as a result of the limitations of our physical data receptors, including lack of some, but also the fact that our data analysis centers will filter out data based on past experience, biological limitations, and based on “software” programming by other humans. Most of the “experience” on which we base our analysis of data is not our own experiences but experience that we built in our imaginations, based on what we heard or read.
Humanities is all about that process of learning from experience that is not our own personal experience. Without the supposed “fluff” fields, we cannot evaluate the experiences of others and evaluate them critically.
To add to that, there are careers where you can get your foot in the door by simply doing a minor, or taking a couple classes. If one doesn’t have the quantitative aptitude (I certainly didn’t) IT employers can hire you if there’s proficiency in a language. A teaching certification will accept any major, and can be done post-graduation. A humanities degree with excellent grades and a good LSAT score can easily translate into a legal career. The job market is surprisingly flexible, but it demands at least some proficient knowledge of something marketable like business or technology.
While I get and appreciate that, and you are right - there’s lots of data - but who can interpet it and tell the story - and I see people bomb at that daily.
The flipside though is - the world has evolved, is evolving, and with AI, may evolve even more.
I don’t think any of us can truly predict the future.
But I do think those in the non STEM or business like fields have a tougher time. For one, they have to apply for the jobs that say any major or low paid jobs like government jobs vs. the ones seeing very defined majors.
The paths are just not as defined - but again, that’s where my kid will be because her aptitude is in service and that’s where I am - because my aptitude is in sales and making $hit happen.
My son gets giddy about things I don’t even know what they mean - and hence he’s an engineer.
Exactly this. There’s this book called “The Defining Decade” by Meg Jay (a therapist who mostly works with people in their twenties), and she talks about how recent college grads waste their twenties. One prominent example she gave was college grads working service jobs (grocery store, barista, waitress) after college — a giant waste of time when young adults need to be building their resume with relevant work experience instead. Those first few years post-college are crucial in establishing a career or getting relevant work experience for grad school.
I disagree. Study after study shows that employers are looking for the “soft skills” that students build in majors like history, classics, literature, etc., which are adaptable in different professions. This is the case even in fields like business and consulting. Not everyone can (or should) go into quant-centric fields. And if they do, they will find themselves in over-crowded job markets, which already seems to be happening in comp sci. Computer Science Students Face a Shrinking Big Tech Job Market - The New York Times And in many professions, graduate school is the place to develop applied skills after having built a broad foundation in college.