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’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.
Hey, readers! How’s your month going so far?
In January, a friend invited me and two other panelists to speak at a career talk that his department was hosting for undergraduate and graduate students. I ended up creating an informal presentation for the event to help gather my thoughts and make sure I didn’t run over my allotted time. While it certainly wasn’t a masterpiece, it did seem to help the audience wrap their heads around my very squiggly career path, and it definitely kept me from rambling too long. Here’s my favorite slide from the deck:
I like this slide so much because it’s a true distillation of the biggest learnings of my 5+ years-long alt-academic journey. It’s simple, direct, and gets right to the heart of the experiences I’ve lived out in my career and written about on Hired Humanities.
Start early. Know your strengths and values. Connect the dots explicitly. Don’t be afraid of entry-level positions. You can build your own path.
Given all the new faces around here, I thought I’d recap these five lessons and talk through the salient points of each. OG subscribers might remember that I’ve touched on these subjects previously in various ways, but I have new thoughts to share that I hope you find helpful.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
Start early
The earlier you start preparing yourself for the non-academic job market, the easier it will be to transition out of academia. Full stop.
I’m extremely grateful to my past self for prioritizing my career development while I was still in school. I truly believe that it would have taken me much longer to find a job if I hadn’t served in departmental coordinator positions and took on a part-time marketing internship, and one of my few regrets is that I didn’t start exploring career options sooner. But when speaking with students, I often hear how impossible it feels to make time for career development. The stigma against non-academic careers remains strong, and it’s really, really hard to carve out dedicated time when you’ve got exams to prepare for, articles to read, and a thesis to write.
Though I still strongly recommend engaging in some type of “practical” job experience, you can start small by approaching your academic work through the lens of career development. My recent issue about building your career toolkit takes a closer look at this concept, but TL;DR: seek out opportunities to develop skills like communication and project management through your research projects.
Know your strengths and values
The adage “do what you love and you’ll never work another day in your life” is, quite frankly, trash.
Okay, I know that was harsh. But this type of rhetoric winds me up because it allows organizations, especially universities, to exploit their employees. (See this previous issue where I discuss Anne Helen Petersen’s take on the academic hope labor complex for more on this point.) I also dislike it because I’ve seen it hold many talented people hostage to their academic careers. When your intellectual passion is your North Star, it makes seeing a life beyond the academy nearly impossible. What else can be fulfilling besides reading and writing and thinking about your area of specialization?
It turns out that your strengths and values are often better career guides than passion. While passion for a field of study leads to a single destination, your strengths and values open up a myriad of possible career paths because they are adaptable and applicable in many contexts. What’s more, understanding what you excel at and how you want to work can help identify roles that suit your skillset and the life you want to lead. And that, I’d argue, is how you actually build a fulfilling and sustainable career.
Connect the dots explicitly
Nearly any career pivot is challenging, but we academics don’t do ourselves any favors when we force hiring managers to decode scholarly jargon on our freakishly long resumes.
When you’re applying for non-academic jobs, you should do the work for potential employers and connect the dots explicitly between your academic work and the job at hand. That means showing how you can provide value to the organization and keeping your application materials short and sweet.
Additionally, it helps to have your career pivot narrative at the ready when you start interviewing. Preparing a succinct story of how you went from your academic work to applying to a non-academic job does wonders for mitigating pre-interview stress and keeps you on track during the conversation. I don’t know about you, but when I’m nervous, I ramble. A lot. And let me tell you, no one else wants to listen to you talk about metapoetics for 10 minutes besides your dissertation advisor.
Don’t be afraid of entry-level positions
Securing your first non-academic job can take a long time. It took me roughly 6 months of searching to find my first full-time role after I left grad school, and that’s pretty quick given conversations I’ve had with others who have transitioned out of academia.
One of the reasons I think I was able to secure a job at that pace was that I applied to entry-level positions. I’ll admit that I beat myself up over it for a while. I felt like I failed because I was back at square one after spending so long in graduate school. But realistically, I wasn’t qualified for more advanced roles in public relations and entry-level jobs offered the jumpstart I needed to get going.
That’s all to say that you shouldn’t be afraid of applying to entry-level positions. Know that you haven’t failed if your first job after academia doesn’t come with a director title. Understand that you aren’t going to be in that position forever; it’s simply the beginning of a new chapter.
You can build your own path
If you had asked me to draw what I thought my alt-academic career trajectory would look when I first left grad school, I would have drawn you a straight line. I thought it was going to work like academia where you get a job, publish a lot, get tenure, and keep advancing up the pre-defined rungs of the ladder.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’ve worked in several fields and held multiple roles at the same companies. I’ve experienced some incredible highs and exhausting lows. I’ve learned new skills and leaned on old ones. My career looks totally unlike what I expected it to, but I wouldn’t change anything about it.
And you know what else? My path probably looks different from yours and will continue to be different from yours. There’s no formula for success because success is relative. Don’t feel pressured to go into a specific career because you know someone who did it; do it because it’s a career that suits you. Each of us can— and should— build our own path.
A parting note
Thanks for tuning in this week! Please don't hesitate to drop me 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.
Be well,
Emily
Reading List
A few of my favorite links
✅ It turns out that clear writing does matter for academics.
⏳ This cartoon gave me a much-needed laugh last week.
👀 An interesting take on the future of remote work.