<p>I will be graduating next year with a Philosophy degree at University of Toronto in Canada. When I first picked my major, I thought it was a good idea (I liked the logic games in Philosophy, so I decided to major in it. School counselors encouraged my decision, so being a naive 18 year old, I listened).</p>
<p>Well, now that I'm graduating next year and will have to begin the job search, I am completely REGRETTING my major. If I could go back in time, I'd have majored in Math or Engineering (I had the grades and ability; I just lacked the interest at the time). All of my cousins and relatives who have recently graduated with degrees in Finance, Math, and Engineering have been offered very good jobs and/or admission into prestigious Finance/Business master's programs.</p>
<p>With my Philosophy degree, what options are open to me? (Assuming I want to go into the workforce immediately after graduation.)
For those who recently (2007 and beyond) majored and graduated with a Liberal Arts degree (by that I mean Humanities and the Social Sciences -- e.g. English, Psychology, History, Philosophy, Criminology, Gender Studies, Spanish, Italian, Politcal Science, etc... NOT Mathematics or any of the natural sciences), where are you now?
Did you find a good-paying job immediately, or were you ****-poor for years and years and had to move back in with your parents, working a minimum wage job while going back to school part-time for some sort of professional certification?</p>
<p>Have you had any kind of internships or part time jobs that give you any skills you can use in job hunting? One of my kids has a liberal arts degree in a humanities subject (not Philosophy, but not any of the “more employable” majors, either). But she had some internship experience (3 summer internships, 1 full time semester internship during school that she got credit for, a part time internship during her senior year in her college town, and a good campus job in the Writing Center that also looked good on her resume). All of those played well in her job search and that helped her out. She ended up as a research associate for a company that does a lot of surveys and reports for consulting clients, and has been promoted to managing a group of research associates after her first year. She found her job through an alum from her college.</p>
<p>@intparent: Sorry, forgot to mention – yes I do have internship experience, but only ONE! My internship this summer was at a large Canadian bank, which is my first and only “real experience”. All my other job experiences have been as a cashier at a convenience store, or as a cashier/fry cook at fast-food joints inside malls. Hence my deep-seated anxiety about my ability to land a decent job upon graduation.</p>
<p>It’s not like I didn’t apply for more internships or better part-time jobs – I did, but since there were so many applications for each opening, I got ignored every single time.</p>
<p>By the way, may I ask you how your daughter found an alum to help her with her job search? Did she just send out cold emails/phone calls to random alums she discovered on LinkedIn or something?</p>
<p>When you say graduating “next year”, do you mean this coming spring? Or a year later? If it is a year later, then you have another summer for an internship, etc. If it is this year, your timeframe is shorter. And… as you probably have figured out, your resume was not ignored just because there were so many of them, but because they put all the econ, business, math, and engineering resumes in front of yours. </p>
<p>So… regardless of whether this is your last year, consider the following:
Can you get a better part time job now during the year? Something at a local bank or on campus that has a little more in the way of building “office skills” than cashier or cook?
Check with your career center, see if anyone is hiring for part-time internships now in the vicinity of your college. Or offering any unpaid internships part time.
Get help from the career center on your resume. Figure out what to highlight from your bank experience and your coursework that would help an employer. Also whether you can pull any skills from your cashier experiences (customer service experience, etc) to make that sounds better.
If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, create one. Connect with people you met at your internships (both employer people and other interns), any students you know who have graduated ahead of you at your university, and anyone else you know who might be able to help you find work. I have had a few of my kid’s college friends ask me for informational interviews to understand my career better, and I was happy to accept a LinkedIn connection with them afterwards. So think about doing that, too. You can use LinkedIn to search for jobs that meet your criteria, and also to keep in touch with and let people know when you are looking.
Any possibility of getting a job at the bank where you interned?<br>
Do you have time to add any coursework (statistics classes, for example) that makes you a bit more attractive in the job market? Or are there any minors or certificates that you are very close to qualified for that you could add to your degree?
If you don’t find a job right away, start thinking about whether you can find part-time or contract gigs (maybe teaching or tutoring?) that might use some of your skills and allow you to build skills toward a future job.</p>
<p>I graduated this spring with a degree in Arts & Humanities and another in anthropology. </p>
<p>I am currently a grad student in a top-3 MPH program. I was admitted to every program I applied to. </p>
<p>I was also offered 3 full time jobs my senior year. Two that paid OK and were in a position I really liked and one that paid well but was in a career I’d hate. I’d never applied for them, they were offered to me when my employers/former internship supervisors knew I was graduating.</p>
<p>@intparent: I am graduating this coming spring (May 2014). However, there has been a time-slot conflict in my course schedule for this year, which means I will probably have to take the 2 courses I cannot fit into my schedule, during the summer of 2014. Either way, I will not have time for another summer internship next year before I graduate. </p>
<p>And like you said, the priority given to STEM and Econ majors is at the root of the problem. Whenever I want to apply for a banking internship, or some other post which entails “office experience”, it is very often explicitly written that they are looking for Business/Finance/etc… majors. I guess these employers can be picky because they receive so many applications, and would prefer to save time and money on having to train a Lib Arts student. </p>
<p>I am currently looking for a part-time gig at the bank where I interned, but no part-time opening exists (I can only do part-time work because of full-time school). I have also sent applications to the campus jobs I found (there were only 2 advertised – both as a coordinator for student organizations). I suspect there is a lot of competition for these posts, and I haven’t heard back from anyone since I applied.
It seems the only part-time jobs that can accommodate my full-time schedule are random minimum-wage gigs at fast-food or retail stores. </p>
<p>I’ve also revised my resume, and had it evaluated by my banking internship supervisor and my school’s career center. It seems to be good to go, and I don’t think I can improve it any further.</p>
<p>The LinkedIn idea is one that I’ve always thought about, but I’d feel embarrassed creating my own account since there’s not much of substance to put on there (seriously).</p>
<p>I also cannot take any Statistics/Math/Business courses because I did not take any of the necessary prerequisites (that, and my timetable this year does not have room for courses outside my major). </p>
<p>At the moment, I am thinking about providing tutoring services (for English). I most certainly do not want to be a teacher, but like you said, it’ll help build more applicable skills rather than cashier or fry cook. I am very lost and hoping for the best right now.</p>
<p>@romanigypsyeyes: May I ask what a “MPH” graduate program is? Thing is, I do not intend to go the graduate school route, because I do not want to be a professor in Philosophy (the competition for tenured professorships in the Humanities is REALLY bad). So I’m not going to be applying for graduate school (and even if I wanted to, I highly doubt I will be admitted to any of them). Like I said, I want to go into the workforce immediately after I graduate.</p>
<p>My supervisor (from my banking internship this summer) has told me that he’ll do what he can to look for a full-time position for me after I graduate. However, he is not certain there will be any positions available, and if there isn’t, I’m doomed! I wouldn’t know where to go from there.
But then again, even if he does manage to find a full-time position for me, it will be relatively low-paying (I know because of the wage I was paid during the internship – which will likely be kept at the same rate after I graduate).
I live in a very expensive city, so $35,000-$37,000 (which was my annualized internship salary) does not go far at all when I have to pay for my own rent, car, health and dental insurance, groceries, etc… I would barely be able to live on my own and save up at the same time.</p>
<p>Master of Public Health (MPH). It’s a professional degree and was a logical step for me- it’s not for everyone. </p>
<p>You’re not doomed. You’re being dramatic. </p>
<p>The most important thing is to be flexible. If you’re willing to relocate, you WILL find a job. </p>
<p>If you DO go the graduate school route, you do not have to be a professor. I don’t know where you got that idea. Philosophy majors are one of the more employable majors out of the humanities majors because strong reading and writing skills are critical in many fields.</p>
<p>Okay, get over this right now. Everyone knows that new graduates have hardly anything to put on. It is a way to establish connections not just for this year, but that might be helpful 5 years down the road. People move companies and it is easy to lose touch, but it is very, very powerful to still have that connection through LinkedIn. In a couple of years you won’t just have contacts at the bank where you interned, but also at any company where people left the bank and went to work. I think college students have this block about LinkedIn – maybe they equate it with a “social” network (gotta be “friends” with people), and it is not – it is professional network. Also, anyone who has used it for very long knows that while you may not be a very helpful connection to them this year, in five years it might be a different story. And finally, many jobs are posted through LinkedIn. So you can find jobs to apply for (generally higher quality jobs that at a website like Monster, IMHO). So do not procrastinate on this, get going on it now. You can set up a free account.</p>
<p>Also, keep checking with the career center on local part time internship opportunities. They don’t necessarily go on a semester calendar depending on what is needed. And I don’t know where campus jobs are posted for your college, but if you can set up an automated feed to get new ones emailed to you when they are posted, that is especially good.</p>
<p>@romanigypsyeyes: I guess I was a little dramatic there. I am willing to relocate, so I hope more opportunities (decent ones that can sustain me living on my own) will come my way in other regions if I cannot find anything in my city. Sorry for the “post-graduate program = professor” faulty equivalence; I had only been thinking of Philosophy master’s programs specifically (which are only valuable if you’re planning to become a professor in it).
I hadn’t thought about “professional” master’s programs in other fields. I shall definitely look into those as an option to gain relevant experience.</p>
<p>@intparent: I agree 120% with everything you said. Creating a LinkedIn account will be necessary for the future, so I should just create mine now. The sooner the better. (I was really just hesitant because of my own insecurities when viewing other peoples’ established profiles.) Very good point that my supervisors and co-workers may change companies and leave me in the dark about their contact info – I agree that LinkedIn is the best way to ensure permanent contact with them. </p>
<p>And I didn’t know that job postings were listed on LinkedIn; thanks for the info. I shall create my account tomorrow.</p>
<p>I will also speak to the staff at my university’s career center for information and automated feeds on local part-time internships and jobs. Last time I went there, I only checked and perused the bulletin board and flyer table (because there’s hardly any personnel there), but this time I’ll know better than to do that. I’ll make it a point to speak directly to a knowledgeable staff member there who can direct me to resources.
(During the previous times I tried to speak with a staff member there, they were clueless about the current internships/jobs, and tried to refer me away to some other person who was absent at the time. Eventually this circular game just exhausted me, and I gave up on the career center. I won’t let them get away with it this time around, however).</p>
<p>Here are some anecdotal data points for you:</p>
<p>S1–college class of 2007–double major in middle eastern studies and linguistics–</p>
<p>First job out of college worked in DC for a non-profit near and dear to his heart, with a salary enough for him to be independent and off the family payroll. Employer paid for him to receive an MBA from a top 10 business school, with a concentration in non-profit management. He now works in administration of a nonprofit in his area in Boston and loves his job.</p>
<p>S2–college class of 2011</p>
<p>Double majored in political science and philosophy, with minors in public policy and religious studies.</p>
<p>Went to one of the top rated MPP programs directly out of undergrad–one of a small minority in his class; most of the MPP students had career experience under their belts. Had some fabulous internships in grad school, graduated this May. </p>
<p>Is currently employed doing what he always wanted to do–he is doing policy development and advocacy in DC. </p>
<p>A word about LinkedIn–S3 (new college grad) got his job from an employer finding HIM through his LinkedIn account–he had help from his university career office in crafting his LInkedIn presence and it paid off almost immediately.</p>