Every time I hear a new grad tell me they lack “marketable skills” I just want to swipe them upside the head (a little rough, I know). But really-think bigger picture. It’s not whether a course gave you specific instructions or answers to questions (like knowing a math formula). Do you have good analytical, writing, and time management skills? Did you do research, where you had to be creative and find your own answers to things? Did you learn quickly? Were you really pushed to think critically about a subject and develop your own perspective? These are all very marketable skills, and can be applied to a broad range of jobs. Yes, even-did you show up to class on time and submit your papers on time each week? Did you like that, or was that painful? All these play a part in what’s the right job for you when you graduate, and I’m still amazed that grads don’t think this way.

You definitely will need to learn HR, especially employment laws. The most important part of HR (in my opinion) is the people skills. I have encountered many HR professionals in my 15 years that cannot stand helping employees in any fashion. I’ve been told that my knack for working with people is uncommon and it’s a shame that it’s not more common.

HR is all about (again, in my opinion) helping people feel good about where they work. The better you get at that, the better the company becomes. I’m a generalist but I excel at my people skills. It really does come from inside you. I’m not sure it can be learned, but it certainly is important! (in my opinion!)

My first job out of college was with an insurance company. They deliberately recruited liberal arts majors because they knew they could get a lot of really smart, good people cheap because other companies would overlook them.

There are lots of opportunities out there for smart, hard-working people. Good luck!

Signed,

The English major

The philosophy major needs to stop thinking that that that degree was a mistake and start looking at the benefits. Very few people have jobs that have anything to do with what they majored in in college. English and history are great examples too – there aren’t many jobs that require someone to analyze Moby Dick or the Middle Ages.

What employers do want are people who can think, speak and write. Any good liberal arts degree teaches those no matter what your major may be. Focus on those skills and good luck.

I also got a B.A. in Philosophy, and mostly in self defense I developed the elevator speech for why a Philosophy grad is good for almost any job.

I consider myself very employable with that degree, because almost every job I’ve found interesting has been looking for someone with a variation of this list: “critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, verbal and written communication skills, computer literacy and an ability to understand and communicate complicated ideas.”

They may phrase it differently, and there’s often specific things a particular job might require, but these are all fundamental skills. If you have those, you can get trained in the specifics, often faster than someone who doesn’t have that list above.

Your Philosophy degree should have given you those exact skills. As Evil pointed out, if you’ve written a paper picking apart someone else’s treatise, you’ve worked on your analysis and written communication skills. Philosophy courses also tend to be the most demanding as far as developing critical thinking skills. The ability to sort through long and complicated arguments is a basic survival skill for most philos students.

Yes, Evil is right, you need to start at the bottom, and there will be lots you need to learn in order to be good at your job. But learning how to think is fundamental to all the other learning you will do.

So think about what skills you do have that might be valuable to employers. Like critical thinking. Like being able to follow a convoluted employee handbook (after Kant, can this be any worse?) and understand it well enough to explain it to someone else.

You’ll have to contextualize it for whomever you’re speaking with, since most people don’t actually know what philosophy teaches. But you should have a substantial list of useful skills already. It’s just a matter of naming and claiming them.

Ok, I promise not to post another rant on your blog for at least a month Evil. 😀