4 Tips for Making the Most of Liberal Arts Degrees

Liberal arts grads may have a harder time securing a job after graduation, but it can be done.

October 28, 2011 RSS Feed Print

Type "liberal arts degrees are," into Google, and the search engine suggests you finish the line with "worthless" or "useless." And how should a liberal arts student respond to that charge? As their friends with degrees in STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and math—see their courses on lists of "hottest majors," liberal arts students face different lists and a harsher job market.

According to a report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) in November 2010, "liberal arts graduates receive fewer offers, less compelling offers, and at dramatically lower compensation levels."

The report cites one reason employers may be having a hard time finding and hiring liberal arts graduates: new "technological approaches to identifying and evaluating candidates."

The report adds, "The skills that these graduates bring to the table may well be very important for the employer but are more difficult to define and identify in a short-hand, data base-driven process."

[Avoid these common college résumé mistakes.]

But that challenge doesn't mean a student who loves philosophy should major in engineering because it may be a degree that more easily lands jobs.

"If you major in something you don't enjoy, you're not going to excel at it," explains Lesley Mitler, president of Priority Candidates Inc., which helps college students and recent graduates land their first jobs.

Here are four ways liberal arts students can ease the job search:

1. Know your strengths: Sarah Romeo graduated with an English degree from Fordham University in New York, and she's now an art assistant at the Penguin Group publishing company.

"I've found that my writing skills have really helped my negotiating skills as well. And I've saved the company a lot of money in arts and image purchasing because I know how to reason my way out of a paper bag," she says.

Romeo also thinks her liberal arts education has helped her think on her feet.

[Explore the rankings of National Liberal Arts Colleges.]

"I know people at my job who will spend a long time trying to figure out what they need to say, whether it's in a meeting or in an E-mail. And I feel like I save a lot of time because I can eloquently say it and come up with plenty of ideas on the fly," she says.

2. Supplement your courses: Mitler, at Priority Candidates, thinks internships can be particularly valuable if taken in a field unrelated to the student's major. A liberal arts major, for example, could intern at a finance company.

[Learn why non-summer internships are a better fit for some students.]

"That real world experience will positively impact your ability to get a job post-graduation, because you're developing particular skills in a field or different fields, even if that's not what you're studying at school," she says.

Mitler also suggests that students take a few specialized classes outside their major and beyond the required electives. Liberal arts students who are interested in finance, for example, could test out courses in mathematics and economics. That way, Mitler says, they'll have a few rudimentary skills that may qualify them for an entry-level finance job without having majored in the subject.

"They're called entry-level jobs because they're entry level," she says.

So even if finance majors may have a learning curve on liberal arts students, the latter has a greater number of "softer" skills—such as critical thinking, reasoning, and communicating—that make them a desirable long-term hire, Mitler explains.

Tags:: internships,; colleges,; education,; interviews,; salaries,; careers

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There are too many college graduates, and too many with liberal arts degrees, for the advice in this article to have any relevance at all.
Find out which majors are being hired and more importantly which ones AREN'T being hired before declaring a major.
Take the path of least resistance.

Anonymous of GA 5:42AM April 17, 2013

maybe its not really the fault of the degree but rather the lack of opportuinity.
Congrats to Sarah Romeo who found a job with Penguin with a BA in English, but what to do the other 100s of English majors, Journalism majors, Communication majors who applied to the same position do?
Lord knows how many times I have (with my BA in English) applied to Penguin, Norton, Scholastic, Pearson and other various Publishing firms-it must be awsome when you get that job or internship but how do you defend the liberal arts when you don't get that internship, that entry level work. Maybe Norton only had 5 intern spots open and 200 English majors applied- sorry other 195 English people...
And yes there are unemployed nurses and accountants as well but I can't help but think that I'd rather be unemployed with a Accounting degree than something in liberal arts.

Sean of NJ 1:28PM September 05, 2012

It's quite possible that not enough liberal arts grads have worked with numbers prior to graduation.
Having experience in finance, sales, accounting, etc. may be just the "work history" proof that liberal arts students can do well with quantitative skills, even though it is well known that they can read well, write well, think critically and do research.
Employes won't know they have those skills in advance, so if someone perhaps interns in a way that demonstrates they have some basic quantitative skills, it should balance out a resume nicely.
Business math doesn't have to mean excellence at advanced statistical analysis, just that there's some experience working with numbers, as finance or managerial accounting grads already demonstrate, based on coursework alone.
If studying writing intensive subjects, perhaps be sure to work with numbers outside of classes, and then demonstrate that skill by putting it on the resume. They can't tell you have those skills unless those skills are shown, somehow.
Also, some of the business majors lack critical thinking skills. One went into the workplace and failed to be able to do simple things, such as merely say "good morning" to staff on a regular basis, failed to be able to set a simple vacation responder (people were calling and leaving messages on voicemail, not knowing the person was out of the office!), and turned off applicants in job interviews by informing them had they picked a different major, there was advancement potential (that person ended up getting a new boss who had majored in a liberal arts discipline as an undergrad, yet they clearly advance, higher than the business major interviewer!).
If businesses want long-term critical thinkers, they can train a liberal arts grad in business procedures, but they cannot easily train the non-liberal arts major to think critically. It's a skill that needs to be developed through a liberal arts curriculum, not through bean-counting classes such as how to organize an accounting ledger (we all understand the double entry accounting method, even if majored in English or Political Science). Business majors aren't necessarily creative and innovative thinkers, but liberal arts majors can certainly learn basic accounting easily.

A non business major of IL 9:33PM November 06, 2011