Editorial Board:
Editor:
George H. Conklin,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Board:
Bob Davis
 North Carolina
 Agricultural and
 Technical State
 University

Richard Dixon,
 UNC-Wilmington

Ken Land,
 Duke University

Miles Simpson,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Ron Wimberley,
 N.C. State University

Robert Wortham,
 North Carolina
 Central University

® 
Volume 4, Number 1
Spring 2006

What to Tell Your Majors: 
Getting a Job After College

by

Jan Rienerth
Appalachian State University
 
 

Introduction

    One of the things I’ve learned during my thirty years directing a sociology internship program is that many of our majors are not sure of what to do with their degree.  As a matter of fact, they may not even be sure what career areas to explore.

    Sociology majors are often asked by their parents and peers:  What are you going to do with a sociology degree?  If you have heard this question from your students, the information included in this article will make it easier for you to help them.

    The opportunities open to sociology majors are multiple and diverse, although, discovering them may require our students to “think outside the box.” They may not find what they are looking for in newspaper want ads or even on the Internet. That is not because the jobs aren’t there, but because they don’t “see” them. There are very few jobs that specifically list “sociology” as the required educational background.  Students are more likely to see the more generic statement that a “human services degree” is required.  So, where do our student’s start? 

    They start by learning and exploring the career planning process. This process includes three steps. The first step in the process is self assessment, the second is skill assessment and the third is career exploration. Self assessment asks students to evaluate their unique personal and work values. Skill assessment directs them to define the general and work related skills they have acquired through their educational, work and volunteer experiences. The last step of career exploration, asks students to explore career areas and, hopefully, match them to their skills. Students can then see whether they are compatible or whether they need to gain or improve certain skill areas before they are marketable.

    To help direct students through this process I teach a course entitled: Applied Sociology. This is not a “traditional” applied sociology course, but rather a combination of career planning, sociology of work and internship preparation. Over the years, I have learned that our students are taught “about” sociology, but not how to “do” sociology. They don’t understand the skills they have acquired and thus, the value of their degree in the job market. While some of our majors will go on to graduate school, many will immediately enter the labor force. We need to help them “see” sociology in the work world around them.

    For the self assessment section of this class, I use the NC Career Resources Network. It can be found at www.ncsoicc.org . 

    Once on this site, click on Career Planning, then on Self-Assessment and finally on Self-Assessment Exercises, or scroll down to them. There you will find a variety of tools that will be useful in the process of self-assessment. The one that I use is the second last one on Holland profiles. In this exercise, students are asked to identify if they have a particular characteristic, if they can do a certain activity or if they like to do a certain thing. These options are grouped under the headings of: realistic, investigative, social conventional, enterprising and artistic. The rationale for this exercise is that people who work in the same environment often have similar interests and/or abilities. After calculating their score under each theme, students select their top three. The resulting categories/themes provide them with a profile of their personality and interests. In the last step of this exercise, students can click on Career Briefs to read more about a specific career area. 

     I also take the students to an on-campus resource whose website address is  www.peercareer.appstate.edu. Peer Career is a free, walk-in service providing paraprofessional career counseling and career and educational information. To find some of their resources click on Mission, Career Counseling and Worksheets. While all of the examples are valuable, I use the one entitled Work Values. This exercise helps students explore what they like, and don’t like, about the work environment.  You can also go to the Reference Guide to Holland’s Typology to find the jobs which agree most with the different theme areas. Peer Career also has an extensive library of books on career areas and computers, which use unique job search engines. Similar on-campus resources are available on many college campuses.

    Many sociology majors are not clear about the skills they are acquiring while they are earning their degree. One of the resources I feel does a good job of listing these skills comes from the Career Center at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Their website is
 www.uncwil.edu/stuaff/career/majors.sociology.htm

    On this site, you will find invaluable information to help your students understand their degree related skills and the career areas which are open to people with those skills. As you scroll down you will uncover Related Career Titles, Major Skills and Websites. Under Websites, you will also find more career planning information.

    Sociology majors have developed skills which can be applied to a number of career areas. Since sociology deals with the study of human behavior in groups, it is relevant to many people-related careers. While there is no job that wouldn’t benefit from the sociological perspective, most employers don’t realize this. They often confuse sociology with social work, or may not even understand the nature of the discipline. Thus, sociology majors need to learn how to sell themselves. They need to be able to convince an employer that they have the skills necessary for a particular job.

    In addition, our majors need to be able to translate their coursework into job skills.  In general, they have acquired skills in two areas; those which are job transferable and those which are job specific. Job transferable skills can be utilized in various careers; while job specific skills are necessary for a specific career area. Examples of transferable skills learned by sociology majors are: written and oral communication, problem-solving and critical thinking. Job specific skills held by our graduates include: specific research methodologies and/or statistical programs.

    In addition to the skills they acquire during their coursework, students need to uncover the skills they have gained from work and volunteer experiences. In these environments they may have learned organizational, time-management and leadership skills. To measure the strength of their skills, I use Exercises 3 and 4 from the Career Success Workbook (Whitaker 1992). In Exercise 3 students rate themselves on 76 skills and in Exercise 4 they group them into nine skill areas. These categories include communication, critical thinking, research and investigation, personal and career development, information management, management and administrative, human relations and interpersonal, valuing and design and planning.  For each category there is a rating scale of A (very high proficiency), B (commendable skills), C (satisfactory), D (weak skill) or E (no skill).   This allows students to identify the skills areas in which they are strongest and/or the weakest. Finally, I have the students make a bar chart of their results.

    Once students identify their skills and have categorized them, they can also prioritize them. What skills do they have now, what skills do they want to use now and what skills do they feel they still need to work on? Making a plan to improve their weak skill areas directs the students to possible future coursework or training.

    Additional resources on skill assessment and career exploration can be purchased from the American Sociological Association  www.asanet.org  On the Homepage, click on Teaching Sociology, then Teaching and Academic Resources and finally on Career Resources to find the list. 

    To help students find out information about a career area I use an internet resource called Job Star. It is located at 
 http://jobstar.org/tools/career/specif-car.cfm
On this website you will find a listing of specific careers. I developed the following exercise for students to discover specific information about various career areas often employing sociology majors. 

             The Job Star Exercise 

                 1. Go to website above. 
                 2. Click on Sociology and then Careers in Sociology 
                 3.  Select a job of interest and answer the 
                    following questions: 
                      a. Needed skills:
                          ________________________
                          ________________________

                      b. Main duties:
                          ________________________
                          ________________________

                      c. Salary  range:
                          ________________________
                          ________________________

               4.  Click on another area of career interest and find
                the same information: 
                                  Education 
                                  Law 
                                  Law Enforcement 
                                  Health: Gerontology 

                      a. Needed skills:
                          ________________________
                          ________________________

                       b. Main duties:
                          ________________________
                          ________________________
 
                        c. Salary range:
                            _______________________
                            _______________________

    After students have identified and prioritized their skills, the next step is to search for available jobs where these skills are required. An excellent university resource for a job search is found at
 http://careers.cua.edu/explore/sociologyresources.htm
On this website you will find general career information, specific sociology career information and a listing of job search engines such as: Monster, CareerBuilder and America’s Job Bank. Also, if you click on, Jobs for Sociologists, you will go to the Jacksonville State University website.

    Again, sociology majors need to be open to and apply for any job where their skills can be utilized and not just for jobs that require a sociology or human service degree. They need to think about jobs in Human Resources, Advertising, Historical Preservation and as an Admissions Counselor, to mention only a few career areas our majors often overlook. 

     Applying for a job requires a resume and a cover letter. This is an area that is particularly important for sociology majors. As mentioned earlier, since many employers are not familiar with the skills held by our majors, the students need to use their resumes and cover letters to make these skills known. Thus, I suggest, our graduates use a combination resume format. This means that while a chronological resume is recommended for college graduates, adding their duties completed and skills learned under each job category will help an employer better evaluate the students for specific jobs. 

     There are many Internet resources which can help with the resume/cover letter process. The three that I use are the class textbook, NC JobLink and NC Career Resources Network. The class textbook is Great Jobs for Sociology Majors. The handout I give them for using the other two resources is as follows: 

       1. Search the NC Career Resources Network 
          www.ncsoicc.org.
            a. Click on Job Search 
            b. Go to resume, cover letter, job
              interview checklist and networking 

       2. Search NC JobLink 
          http://jobstar.org/tools/career/spec-car.cfm.
            a. Click on Individual 
            b. Click on Job 
            c. Click on NC Navigator 
            d. Click on Job Career Navigator 
            e. Click on JobStar then:
               What is resume, What is right resume, Cover Letters

      There may also be resources closer to home, at your college or university career development center. An example can be found at  www.careers.appstate.edu 
Once on this website, click on Students.  On this page you will find links for help with resumes, cover letters, networking and much more.

       Today’s students are graduating into a work world much different from that of 10 or 20 years ago. Whereas in the past people often stayed with the same employer for many years, today’s workers move much more frequently. Technology is also increasing faster than it did in the past and many jobs are changing or being outsourced. Companies are also often looking for ways to cut costs, making it likely that our majors will have to balance salary with benefit considerations. Finally, as our population becomes more heterogeneous, it will require a work force with a greater knowledge of other cultures and other languages. Such knowledge is one of the unique features of a sociology degree.

    Thus, adapting to these changes should be much easier for our majors. In addition to their sociological perspective, however, they will need to know their skills and be able to “sell” themselves to an employer.  While many students may feel more comfortable with a degree related to a specific career area, such as high school teaching, I feel that the students with the more general B.A. or B.S. in Sociology have the skills and the flexibility to be able to continually adapt to the ever changing work world.

Lambert, S. 2003. Great Jobs for Sociology Majors. 2nd Ed. San Francisco, California: VGM Career Books.

Whitaker, U. G. 1992. Career Success Workbook. San Francisco, California: The Learning Center.
 

 Return to Sociology Today Spring 2006 .

©2006 by the North Carolina Sociological Association