Career Planning: Social Media, Social Entrepreneurship & Liberal Arts Degrees

Career planning with a liberal arts or humanities degree can be a challenge, especially in a service-oriented and competitive economy that requires training in a concrete skill. While engineers and science majors have streamlined and linear career directions, liberal arts grads experience an added challenge of establishing a professional direction. By nature, liberal arts students have an inclination towards a number of skills and fields. While certain technical skills are yet-to-be-developed, a liberal arts grad's critical thinking, leadership, and communication skills are unrivaled.

Without a doubt, the current economic climate has left liberal arts grads hurting. Recently, Mount Holyoke College released an article discussing the challenges that liberal arts grads encounter. According to this article, big firms prefer to recruit at large, public universities where the student populations are diverse. In general, recruiters perceive large universities as "one-stop-shops" for candidates. With a down economy, competition for jobs is even more competitive than it already was, as many people are competing for positions that are few and far between. Without a doubt, this economic puts liberal arts grads at a disadvantage since they may have trouble identifying target jobs and streamlining their career paths into a direction that they can navigate.

Liberal arts grads: do not worry. All hope is not lost, and with the right strategy, you will be able to find a job in a thriving industry. Beyond finding a job in an established industry, you can create a responsible career in an emerging one.

Think of how many hours per day you spend reading blogs, shopping online, hanging out on Facebook, and following Tweets. Even if you don't devote chunks of times to these activities, they are ingrained into your every day, whether you are checking your cell phone or taking a quick break from paper-writing.

Believe it or not, there is a growing and evolving industry behind social media, and it's all about how businesses communicate with personal social networks. It's consumer driven, and because the industry is new, you have the power to think like a social entrepreneur and to innovate, whether you are seeking to promote honest advertising policies or opportunities for open dialogue between businesses and customers.

Social media blurs the lines between honest work and stereotypes of "big business," and the field enables liberal arts grads to utilize some of their best communication, creative, and presentation skills. As a social media analyst or marketer, you're responsible for communicating with all kinds of people, and in this department, your well-rounded educational background will serve you well.

As an emerging industry, social media has the potential to be so much more than Facebook pokes or senseless tweets. The field truly revolutionizes communication, and the entrepreneurial nature of the industry is extremely inviting for liberal arts grads who may not have a clear idea of how to apply their talents.

Not to mention, there's money in Social Media, and advertisers are planning to ramp up their analytics and PR budgets. There is room for a liberal arts grad to step in as a social entrepreneur, thrive, do good work, and revolutionize the business into a responsible industry.

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