Hi there, I’m Emily! 👋 Welcome to Hired Humanities, a biweekly newsletter devoted to helping humanities students build careers on their own terms.
A special welcome to those of you who are new subscribers! I suspect many of you came on my friend Ida’s recommendation, and I’m so glad that you’ve found this little corner of the Internet. You can learn more about me and the “why” behind Hired Humanities here.
When I was an undergraduate in the late 2000s, I was repeatedly told that all the qualitative research I was doing as a Classics major would bestow me with the ability to think critically— the greatest, most employable of all skills. That type of language continues to appear on various university-run career and department websites, and I’m willing to bet that many of you are still hearing that refrain. But despite the buzz, “critical thinking” is rarely listed as a job requirement and employers aren’t usually interested in hearing about your research on ekphrasis in Renaissance Latin. Simply reciting your research and claiming you have critical thinking skills isn’t enough to get you a job.
Does that mean these skills aren’t valued or valuable? No, not at all. The World Economic Forum recently placed critical thinking among the top ten skills required for thriving in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and I’ve experienced how a qualitative research background can help you excel quickly in your career. The issue is the way in which humanities students are taught to think and talk about their skill set.
Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash
What are employers looking for?
The established way of talking about the skills and experience a humanities education offers fails because it ignores the way hiring decisions are made. Whenever a company hires a new employee, it’s making a major financial and time investment. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates the average cost of a poor hiring decision is up to 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings, which includes impact on morale, productivity, and time spent onboarding and training. In order to hire you, recruiters and hiring managers must feel confident you’re a good investment, that you’ll be a successful contributor to the company’s mission.
Looking at previous achievements is one of the most obvious ways for employers to evaluate a candidate’s potential success in a role, but we’re not teaching humanities students how to connect their skills to concrete outcomes. Whereas academia celebrates critical thinking for its own sake, industry views it as a means to an end. Critical thinking is valuable to companies because it can help them meet their goals, solve problems, save time and money, and innovate. If you can’t show employers that you’ve applied critical thinking to accomplish these objectives, why would they take a chance on you?
Thinking holistically about your experience
It’s totally understandable if you’re thinking, “Emily, my research isn’t about saving time or money— how can I possibly make my skills marketable?!”, but I promise it’s possible to show employers how you can help them achieve their goals. It all starts with examining your academic experience more holistically.
Take your most recent research project. What steps did you take to complete it? If you could only come up with “wrote a lot,” then you’re not... um...thinking critically enough. (Sorry, couldn’t resist!) Here are some examples inspired by my last research paper:
Evaluated the project scope and requirements
Came up with an interesting and unique idea
Secured buy-in for my idea from my advisor
Managed and organized my notes and citations
Prioritized effectively to meet a submission deadline
This list doesn’t look that different from what I do to execute projects in my current role— just swap “proposal” for “idea” and “stakeholder” for “advisor”— because academic work is like many other jobs: an exercise in leveraging critical thinking to solve problems and accomplish goals. Unfortunately, we’re so focused on writing and scholarship that we miss this point and overlook the other valuable ways we apply our critical thinking skills. When we take a step back and look at the totality of our experience, we can start to make more tangible connections between our academic experience and what employers are looking for.
A few questions to reframe your experience
Below you’ll find three questions to help you reframe the way you think and talk about your academic experience. You can also apply these questions to non-academic work to clarify your examples and show how you’ve delivered value.
1) Are there aspects of my experience I haven’t considered?
As we discussed above, it’s easy to overlook aspects of your work that could hold a lot of value for employers. Be sure to take stock of everything you’ve been doing so you don’t miss out on solid talking points.
2) What problems have I solved?
A great way to identify concrete examples of how you’ve applied critical thinking is to ask yourself what challenges you’ve overcome. Did you build a database and learn how to write a SQL query to write your thesis? When your students were struggling to learn the aorist tense, did you update your lesson plans to review key points they may have missed? Keep in mind that challenges come in all sizes, so don’t be afraid to look for examples in unexpected places.
3) Where have I exceeded goals and targets?
This is a great question for identifying concrete metrics to call out on your resume. Did you complete a research project under budget? Have you been extremely successful in applying to grants? Just be sure to include numbers only if they make an impact; otherwise, default to describing what you’ve accomplished with words.
A parting note
Thanks for tuning in this week! Please don't hesitate to drop a line if you have questions or feedback. And, if you think someone else in your life would love to receive this newsletter in their inbox, feel free to spread the word.
As ever,
Emily
Reading List
A few of my favorite links
🏅 If you struggle with procrastination, NPR’s Life Kit has some great advice on how to kick it to the curb.
❓ Adam Grant has wonderful tips on how to reason with unreasonable people.
💔 This heartbreaking essay on love and loss from the New Yorker has stuck with me over the past week.