Navigating Career Conversations for the Humanities and Social Sciences

1. Navigating Career Conversations for the Humanities and Social Sciences

2. Goals • Discuss where students are and how we can help • Explore common misconceptions • Provide activity ideas to guide career conversations • Share some of the UW resources available

3. Where students are • The concept of career is a source of anxiety • Think picking a major sets students on career path • Struggle to identify skills, strengths, and interests • Hear external messaging that their major is useless

4. How can we help? • Dive in to career conversations • Help students make values based decisions • Integrate career myth busting into discussions about major • Teach strategies and build confidence

5. Myth #1: I don’t have any marketable skills • Many students don’t know how to talk about their skills and strengths • A major concern by employers that students don’t know how to translate skills to a job description

6. Activity 1: Skills brainstorm • What skills do your students have as Humanities and Social Sciences students? • Brainstorm a list with a partner • Share out

7. What skills do employers seek? • According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers: • Critical thinking • Communication • Collaboration • Leadership • Professionalism

8. Activity 2: Skills storytelling • Look at the list of skills employers seek • Tell your partner about an experience where you demonstrated one of those skills • Work • Volunteer • Student activities • Classes • Should be a complete story: Task, actions taken, and the result of the work

9. Myth #2: My major defines my future • Significant source of anxiety • Too limiting • Overwhelmed by too many options • Goal to help students think more broadly • Connect experiences • Identify what they enjoy • Identify what are they good at

10. Activity 3: What do you enjoy? • Brainstorm a list of all the things you are good at • Add to the list the things you love to read about, talk about, or do • If I spoke with a past professor, what would they tell me about you? • If I spoke with your friends, what would they tell me about you?

11. Activity 3: What do you enjoy? • Building confidence • Combine skills and strengths list to help expand options • People find job satisfaction in many ways • Day to day work activities • Mission or values of a company • Working with likeminded people • Reframe career in a positive way

12. Myth #3: There are very few jobs for people with my major • In student minds: • Law, Society, and Justice major = Lawyer • English major = Editor • Spanish major = Translator • Need to disrupt this idea and help students think more creatively • Seeing the winding paths of alumni with the same major can help

13. Activity 3: Alumni LinkedIn Tool • Discover companies that hire recent graduates • Learn about the many pathways possible with a major • Work backwards: How did an alumni build their way towards a career path that sounds interesting? • Set up career conversations with alumni to learn more, build a network, and eventually find jobs

14. UW Resources • Advisers and career coaches • Mentorship programs • Small group career coaching • Career Launch • Internships • Workshops • Drop-ins

15. Questions?