The most difficult part of my career counseling work is advising recent college graduates who were not well-educated by their colleges about the current realities of the job market.
I will put film majors, multi-media majors, and pretty much every major steeped in creativity in with liberal arts majors.
These are my brethren, as I’ll explain. I have some hope. The paradox of the AI revolution: despite AI being squarely in the tech space, computer science majors are thus far the ones being hurt the most, at least as a come down from their near guaranteed jobs. There are also a variety of pundits suggesting that liberal arts majors will benefit the most.
I am myself a product of a liberal arts education. The education was excellent. From a life-enhancing perspective, I benefited enormously. For my unusual career path — lawyer turned education entrepreneur — it was also outstanding preparation. Much of my work involves explaining and communicating abstract ideas, something liberal arts training develops exceptionally well.
When I was an undergraduate, however, my situation differed from that of many students today.
I knew I would be attending law school after graduation. I did not have to worry about finding a job immediately. It was also 1989, and the labor market operated very differently than it does today.
Recently, I met with a thoughtful and pleasant young woman who had graduated with a degree literally titled “Liberal Arts,” with a concentration in philosophy.
The college she attended was so obscure that even someone steeped in higher education — as I am through my work running The Learning Consultants — had never heard of it. Her GPA was under 3.0. She had no internships and no work experience connected to a marketable skill.
She told me she wanted to find a “meaningful job” in Connecticut.
By this, she meant a position that would launch a career. She wanted to avoid what she saw as dead-end white-collar work. She also had both a distaste for — and a personality ill-suited to — sales.
As I listened, it occurred to me that no adult had ever given her realistic career guidance.
So I tried to be both honest and gentle.
The reality is that jobs for graduates in STEM fields — science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — are plentiful. Health-care careers alone account for an enormous portion of this demand. Financial and data-driven careers also continue to expand.
Business majors also tend to find opportunities through marketing, sales, operations, or management tracks.
I should add an important qualifier: students of any major can often succeed if they graduate with meaningful internships or work experience in a particular field.
Absent that, however, employers — particularly in the private sector — often seek what NFL general managers call “the best available athlete.”
For recent graduates, this typically means candidates with a combination of:
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a prestigious college
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a very high GPA
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strong extracurricular leadership
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notable achievements
The Harvard English major with a 4.0 GPA who led a large student organization and was a Rhodes Scholar finalist might sit near the top of that category.
The very nice young woman sitting across from me was not at the bottom of the hiring pool. But realistically, she was starting from a difficult position.
Fortunately, she demonstrated one of the classic strengths of a liberal arts education: she was a quick study.
Within the first meeting, we began developing a practical job search strategy — one that would leverage her communication abilities while helping her build the professional experience she had not acquired during college.
Career direction rarely appears automatically after graduation.
Sometimes it has to be built deliberately, step by step.