Delve into key questions about your career options using humanities methods like qualitative research and interpretative analysis.
Written by Rachel Bernard, Inside Higher Ed
Many students come to their career advising appointments with just one question: What do Ph.D. (or master’s) students who earned a degree in my field go on to do professionally if they don’t become a professor? For humanities students in particular, this question cuts to the core of anxieties about the ways in which both the fragility of the academic humanities and perceptions about the impracticality of humanities degrees will affect their own career prospects.
But, putting anxieties aside, this question really is just a research question that can serve as the starting point for productive career exploration using methods that humanities students have mastered in graduate school. Whereas scientists might approach a career search using experimental research methods, a humanistic approach is just as effective. Moreover, framing career exploration as a humanities research project helps demystify and familiarize the often daunting and perplexing task of envisioning potential professional futures. If you are a graduate student in the humanities, or a mentor to such students, the research process outlined below should look comfortingly familiar.
- Articulate your research questions.
Research projects usually begin with one big question, which only becomes answerable when broken down into many smaller questions. There are a few big questions that usually come up in career exploration, in addition to the one at the beginning of this piece: “How does one become a [fill in the blank]?” “How does one break into [fill-in-the-blank industry]?” “Am I a fit for roles in [fill in the blank]?”
These big questions, which seem overwhelming to answer, lead to a series of smaller questions, which can be answered through qualitative research, interpretive analysis and self-reflection.
Self-reflection questions:
- What are my interests, skills and values, and how do these factors align with different types of work and workplace cultures?
- What have I enjoyed doing and in what environments do I thrive? What types of tasks, projects and environments would be best for me to avoid?
Macro questions about employment trends and career outcomes:
- What are the career outcomes for people in my field and adjacent fields?
- What is the career outlook for the industries I am interested in?
- Are there emergent roles or sectors I should consider?
Questions about particular roles and industries:
- What are examples of job titles in [fill-in-the-blank] field?
- What are the qualifications for these positions?
- Are there particular degrees or certifications necessary or helpful to enter this field?
- What skills are most valued by hiring managers in this field?
- What is the work environment like across different organizations?
- If my background is nontraditional, are there organizations that have a reputation for being more open-minded about hiring people with nontraditional backgrounds, or even people with Ph.D.s in particular?
- What are the hiring cycles like in this industry or at this company? Do these cycles align with my timeline?
- Identify and track your sources.
Once you have come up with an initial set of questions, you need to identify sources to find answers. As a historian, I think in terms of primary, secondary and tertiary sources. Equally important as finding sources is coming up with a data management system to organize your notes and findings.
For the self-reflection questions, you are your own primary source, but it can be helpful to use career assessments like ImaginePhD; pen-and-paper exercises with prompts about your skills, interests and values; and even journaling to help you reflect on your goals, desires and priorities.
Other primary sources in the context of career exploration include job descriptions, company websites, raw employment data and firsthand informational interviews with people who work in your sectors of interest. To find job descriptions, go directly to the “careers” or “employment” pages of company websites; use databases and aggregators like LinkedIn, Indeed or Idealist; and use industry-specific databases, which you can find through web searches or professional associations. Remember that you are in the research and information-gathering phase of career exploration: You are not going to apply to these jobs, but rather analyze and interpret the language in the job descriptions (more on that in the next step).
In terms of raw data, the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Earned Doctorates is the gold standard for Ph.D. career outcomes, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics has extensive employment and wage data.
Informational interviews, or coffee chats, are invaluable sources of information for career exploration. As an anthropology Ph.D. holder who now works as a writer and editor in the nonprofit sector shared with me recently, these chats with professionals in her fields of interest felt very similar to the kinds of interviews she did for her ethnographic research. This Inside Higher Ed piece explains the process perfectly.
Just as you cannot complete a research project in the humanities without reading what other scholars have written about your topic, it is also important to read a variety of sources about humanities Ph.D. career pathways to understand the landscape. These sources range from studies conducted by higher education organizations like the Council of Graduate Schools and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (specifically its Humanities Indicators project); to research and analysis coming out of scholarly societies like the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association; to the many books, articles and blog posts on the topic.
- Read and analyze the evidence, amass more sources as necessary, and iterate.
As a humanities scholar, you probably will have already begun this step while you are gathering evidence, and this is part of the process where your qualitative analysis skills really shine—it’s time to do what you do best!
Read the sources you have gathered—job descriptions, reports, your notes from informational interviews, articles, etc.—critically, looking for patterns and contradictions, just as you would close-read texts in your own research. Ask questions of your source material, rather than cherry-picking evidence that aligns with your assumptions. Investigate authorship, look for bias and make sure to find balanced perspectives in the secondary literature. Reformulate and ask new questions, and gather more sources as you go.
And, as hard as it can be with your own future in question, try to be objective as you read and analyze the evidence. Acknowledge the emotions you might be feeling, but try not to let them get in the way of the fact-based answers to your research questions.
- Draw conclusions and move on to the next steps in the job-search process.
One big difference between this career-exploration project and research for an article, dissertation or book is the end product. In this case, the end goal is deciding on a handful of industries and job titles that you want to pursue so that you can move on to the next steps of the job-search process—deeper networking in your sectors of interest, possible further training and skill development, and, finally, translating your experience as a humanities scholar for hiring managers in other industries through your job application materials.
As you can see, thoughtful career exploration is a process that should be taken seriously and is most fruitful and rewarding when you devote sufficient time and mental energy. The great news is that just as your humanities research skills will bolster your career exploration, they will also help you in the rest of these steps in the job search process.
