The following guest post was provided by Josh Weiss-Roessler, a freelance writer and co-owner of Weiss-Roessler Writing who wishes he had someone giving him career advice in high school and college… or at least that he had been listening. Along with his wife, one-year-old son, and two tiny-but-intimidating dogs, he lives and works in Austin, Texas.
If you do a quick search for something like “best college majors,” you’re likely to find a host of articles which select a few fields of study as the ways to go for good jobs, while blasting other majors for essentially being a pointless waste of time.
Hopefully you’re a savvy enough person to realize that articles such as those are far more rhetoric than reason. Which is not to say that you shouldn’t go into one of the two dozen types of engineering variations or focus on IT – if those areas interest you, have at it! But it’s time that someone spoke up for those of us who want to major in English, Communications, or even History.
Pick a major and you’re bound to find someone with that degree making a six-figure income. The difference isn’t that you can’t get a good job no matter what you study, but that the path to a good-paying job that you enjoy is likely to be more straightforward for some majors.
So, how do you figure out what jobs are possible for people with specific majors? And once you’ve learned that information, where can you study up on that profession and figure out how to look for those positions?
Money is most definitely an object. As much as we’d like to pretend it doesn’t matter, all of us care about money. And it’s a good thing we do, because it’s pretty necessary to survive in our world! Sites like Payscale.com are valuable because they not only can give you a pretty realistic idea of what you’ll earn in specific jobs and industries, but also help you confirm that you’re actually making what you’re worth based on what other people with that title are earning in your area.
Visit your career center. I can – sadly – count how many times I visited my college’s career center on one hand, but if you’re willing to spend some time there, the people in the office can be quite helpful. More than an online search, talking to a real, live person at your career center can clue you in to the businesses that your university has connections to and help you see how your degree can be used in outside-the-box ways. Many career counselors will even have some interesting suggestions for you, because they’ve been through this before with soon-to-be grads in your major just like you.
Look for both breadth and depth. One site that does a pretty good job of putting it all together is CareerQA. Not only can you click on individual careers and get an overview for what the profession is like – including an estimate of your salary and how fast jobs are being added – it’s possible to ask questions about specific careers and tie in jobs to majors. And, of course, you can search for jobs in your area by entering your location.
Of course, figuring out what the “best” career is involves a lot more than just looking at the salary and determining your likelihood of getting a job. You need to make sure that you enjoy both the work and the lifestyle involved. You have to compare it with other potential industries and options and really think about what’s right for you. None of that is easy, though, so being able to arm yourself with facts and figures as well as those gut feelings is an important part of the process.