It wasn’t until the last semester of my senior year in college when I realized it. At the time, I was a student worker for the admissions office and was attending an event for prospective students. And it was at that event when the speaker said something that rocked my world.
“Most undergrads don’t get jobs in their major.”
In retrospect, that information might have been a little more useful to me a few semesters earlier.
But I digress. As I look back, I’m pretty sure I spent too much time thinking about what I was going to major in and not enough time thinking about what I was going to do with it. When choosing a major, you pretty much have two choices–major in something you like such as history and don’t worry about job implications (definitely not what your parents want to hear if they’re helping you foot the bill) or major in something that has a clear career path right out of undergrad such as engineering, accounting, nursing, or computer science.
You can definitely get job offers with a history or philosophy major, you just probably won’t see them plastered all over campus. And that’s okay. It just means you’re probably going to have to work a little bit harder to identify opportunities of interest and to craft a story that links your major to each specific opening.
Don’t wait until a month before graduation to figure out possible career paths. Think about what attracted you to a particular major and how that interest might correlate to different careers.
Don’t limit yourself to jobs based on your major. Most companies want to hire candidates who have the intellectual horsepower to hit the ground running. So that means they’re going to be less interested in what you majored in and more interested your grades, leadership roles, and related internship experience.
I think part of the problem is the obligation that people feel to move straight on to university. It’s a big decision, when most people at 17/18 don’t really know what they want to study. I know I didn’t and now years later am doing things I didn’t know I could do as a job/career.
In addition, at people at this age do not really have a good understanding of the outside world. Their perception of the world will likely be different from reality. It’s a bit of a flaw in the system, isn’t it?
There is so much pressure and expectation to continue to do more and more studying. Unemployable often seems to mean the same as not having a degree.
It just feels wrong.
That’s very true Rosie. Unless you’ve done a particular job before, there’s really no way to know for sure whether it’s something you’d want to do full time after graduation. That’s why it’s important to secure multiple internships while you’re in school. They can not only help you drill down on a major, but they could also help you get your foot in the door with your dream company.
Great advice! I majored in psychology but am working as a content management for a nonprofit! I use the concepts and theories I learned in my psych classes every day, though, so I know that my education was valuable even though I don’t have a job in my major.
Thanks, Erika. Psych classes can definitely be useful no matter what the job. The same holds true with any and all writing courses.