Liberal Arts Careers
Not that long ago, a liberal arts degree might not have been viewed as the best option for finding gainful employment after college. In fact, some employers viewed graduates of liberal arts programs as jacks of all trades and masters of none.
But that’s no longer the case.
Everywhere you look, employers are hiring liberal arts graduates because of their broad knowledge and skills . Your degree program can prepare you for jobs in education, health, engineering, computer science, and many more.
Below is a list of 15 of the best careers you might consider with a liberal arts degree.
Human Resources Specialist
As a human resources specialist, your job is to help manage your organization’s employees. You might be involved in recruiting and training new employees, providing development opportunities, and handling performance analyses.
Additionally, human resources specialists are often responsible for ensuring an organization complies with pertinent policies, regulations, and laws. HR professionals typically mediate conflicts within an organization, such as between two employees. Moreover, human resources personnel typically oversee employee discipline and termination procedures.
HR professionals are responsible for payroll, too. You will manage payments to employees, administer benefits, and work with employees to set up retirement accounts.
In other words, as an HR specialist, you will strive to make the work environment positive and supportive. You will ensure employees have what they need to learn and grow and help the organization achieve its short-term and long-term goals.
Copywriter
If you are adept at communicating with the written word, you might consider using your liberal arts training to start a career as a copywriter.
Copywriters are responsible for the written content used by businesses to promote their products or services. For example, you might partner with an up-and-coming home decor brand to write content for their website, create social media posts, and draft content for print and online advertisements.
Being a copywriter isn’t just writing words on a page, though. You must be an effective team player because you will work closely with colleagues in advertising, marketing, graphic design, and other related departments. As a team, you will craft the brand’s voice, identify the brand’s target audience, and create cohesive, meaningful communications to pique customers’ interest.
Editor
An editor is the final link in the chain of creating written content. Editors critically evaluate copy to ensure it’s clear, relevant, and on point. This process is much more than proofreading and fixing things like spelling and grammatical errors. Instead, being an editor means crafting an effective, well-organized message that serves its intended purpose.
Moreover, editors are fact-checkers. For example, as an editor for a newspaper or a digital publication, it falls on you to ensure the facts presented in an article are legitimate. Likewise, it’s your job to make suggestions to writers that enhance the organization and flow of the content.
Being an editor also means having an eye for consistency. Editorial guidelines help with this – writers are provided with guidance for formatting, styling, voice, and so forth, but editors need to enforce these guidelines to maintain consistency from one publication to the next. If polishing others’ writing sounds exciting, this is the job for you!
Sales Representative
One of the most important skills you need as a sales representative is to communicate effectively. Fortunately, as a liberal arts graduate, you should have ample training in this field!
Sales representatives are the tip of the spear for a business or organization in driving revenue. As a sales representative, you will be in direct contact with potential clients or customers, and it’s your job to persuade them to buy whatever it is you’re selling.
Some sales representatives work in person, speaking directly to potential customers. Others work remotely, making sales calls or meeting with potential clients via Zoom, e-mail, or even text. Whatever the setting, being a sales representative is hard work. However, it can also be lucrative.
For example, most sales representative positions come with financial incentives for performance. If you meet or exceed your sales quota, you could be in line for a higher level of commission or perhaps a sales bonus. Money isn’t everything, but if you’re looking for a high-paying liberal arts-related career, this is a good choice!
Project Manager
As a project manager, your primary duty is to oversee how different teams, departments, or organizations work with one another. You will coordinate communications between each entity, develop timelines for completing projects, and define goals to ensure the project runs smoothly.
Additionally, project managers often manage the budget for complex projects. For example, you will meet with various stakeholders during the planning phase of a project to help determine the overall budget and how it’s allocated to different entities. You will also keep tabs on how money is used throughout the project to ensure each team or department doesn’t exceed their allocation of funding.
Project managers are taskmasters, too. It will be your job to do frequent check-ins to ensure individual workers and teams are on track to meet their assigned deadlines. You will help solve problems as they arrive, assist with adapting project plans as needed, and, ultimately, help deliver the completed project to the client in a timely fashion.
Public Relations Specialist
Public relations is all about image. As a specialist in this field, you will use your education and training in communications, marketing, and business to devise strategies for businesses and organizations to ensure their image is a good one.
You will do this through various means. For example, you might work for a manufacturing company and develop a press release to announce that the business is expanding and providing additional jobs for the community. As another example, you might help plan an event with the media to cover a charity event sponsored by your employer.
But public relations isn’t just a career in the corporate world. Individuals often employ PR specialists to help them craft a positive image. A good example of this is working with a celebrity who needs to improve their image. You might arrange for the celebrity to sit for several interviews with prominent magazines to mitigate negative publicity and focus on the positive work they are doing in the community.
This career is all about being strategic. You have to know what to say, how to say it, and when to say it. More importantly, you must also understand when the best option is to not say anything at all!
Translator
If your liberal arts specialty involves significant work in a foreign language, you might consider a career as a translator. This career involves converting content from one language to another. But your job isn’t to simply change words.
Instead, translators must have an understanding of the social and cultural implications of both languages to ensure the translation is accurate and appropriate. What’s more, while translating spoken words is perhaps the most well-known work in this field, translators are needed to convert all sorts of written documents to another language.
For example, you might be hired by a global marketing company to translate their materials from English to Urdu. As another example, you might be hired by a website development company to translate a Dutch website to French. Many translators also work to convert audio recordings from one language to another.
No matter the format you work with, your job as a translator is to ensure effective communication between individuals, organizations, businesses, and even nations. With increasing globalization, this career is likely to be in high demand in the coming years.
Legal Assistant
Attorneys often work with a variety of professionals to help them prepare for cases and other legal proceedings. As a legal assistant, you can be an integral part of that process by assisting with everything from conducting legal research to helping draft legal documents.
Legal assistants often handle day-to-day tasks in attorney’s offices as well. For example, you might be responsible for maintaining case files, setting appointments with clients, and filing paperwork like motions, briefs, or pleadings. You are likely to be in charge of other daily duties like delivering documents, corresponding with clients and other stakeholders, and attending court proceedings, too.
Legal assistants cannot provide legal advice. They can’t represent clients in court, either. However, with a background in the liberal arts, you can use your problem-solving skills, communication skills, and analytical skills to make positive contributions to a client’s case.
Business Analyst
Business analysts are primarily responsible for making improvements to a business or organization’s operations. For example, you might focus on improving the efficiency of how a business operates, thereby reducing costs and minimizing the time between when a customer places an order and when they get the item they ordered.
To complete tasks like this, you will gather and analyze a lot of data. You might create models to explore how current operations can be changed and how those changes impact the business’s profits. You might also work with technology professionals to implement new systems that ensure quality assurance, improved communication, and informed decision-making.
Event Coordinator
Event coordinators are responsible for planning and organizing events for individuals, businesses, and organizations. These events can run the gamut from a small wedding to the inauguration of a new president.
As an event coordinator, your primary goal is to ensure the event goes off without a hitch. To ensure all aspects of the event run smoothly, you will collaborate with the client, service providers, vendors, and representatives from the venue. You will also be responsible for creating and managing timelines and ensuring all stakeholders adhere to the timeline, too.
Event coordinators must have excellent communication skills, project management skills, and conflict resolution skills. You will need to be able to work independently and as a member of a team, too. You must also have the ability to mediate conflicts.
Graphic Designer
A graphic designer is responsible for creating visual communications. These communications – which range from business logos to websites to illustrations for social media – are used by individuals, businesses, and organizations to enhance marketing messages.
For example, you might be hired to create a logo for a new bakery for their marketing materials, a pamphlet for a real estate agent selling a property nearby, or a layout for a quarterly newsletter for a non-profit organization.
In each case, it’s your job to identify core values or principles and create eye-catching designs that effectively communicate your client’s desired message. You will do this by working directly with clients, brand managers, writers, editors, and other stakeholders.
Real Estate Agent
A liberal arts education can also prepare you to become a real estate agent. While additional training and licenses are required, the skills you gain in a liberal arts program can set you up for success in this field. You must be an effective communicator, have the ability to work with many different types of people, and you must possess top-notch organizational and problem-solving skills.
Many real estate agents help buyers and sellers achieve their real estate goals. However, some agents specialize and work with either buyers or sellers. There are other opportunities to specialize, too. For example, you might work specifically in residential real estate, whereas other agents might specialize in commercial real estate.
As a real estate agent, you will have many more responsibilities than showing people homes and attending closings. Instead, you will handle negotiations, arrange inspections, and work with lenders for financing, all the while overseeing marketing for properties, managing employees, and developing resources for your clients. It is tireless work but highly rewarding, too!
Social Media Manager
These days, social media is a driving force for everything from business marketing to effecting social change. As a social media manager, it will be up to you to brainstorm ideas and develop content that boosts your client’s profile, be it a multinational business, a non-profit organization, or an individual.
Social media managers are also responsible for monitoring current trends on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. You will analyze these trends to adjust social media marketing strategies and improve the performance of your posts. You will have help, too – social media managers often work with a large team, which might include the client, graphic designers, sales writers, photographers, and more.
Additionally, social media managers are often responsible for cultivating partnerships with others. For example, you might manage the social media accounts for a water brand. To expand brand awareness, you might reach out to social media influencers to propose a partnership in which they promote your brand of water on their social media channels.
Teacher
If you wish to teach in a public school setting, you must be certified by the state in which you teach. This requires additional training and schooling beyond a traditional liberal arts degree. However, some private schools, parochial schools, and charter schools don’t require teachers to be certified, which makes this an ideal career path for you as a liberal arts graduate.
A liberal arts education is especially helpful for preparing you to be an elementary-level teacher. Many elementary teachers are responsible for lessons in all core subjects, like language arts, math, science, and social studies. Traditional liberal arts programs require coursework in all of these fields (and many more), so you can use your knowledge to create meaningful learning activities for your students.
In addition to creating lesson plans, your job as a teacher will include collaborating with other professionals, working with parents to enhance their child’s education, and maintaining thorough records of each student’s progress. Being a teacher is a challenge, but it is perhaps the most rewarding career on this list!
Logistician
A logistician is a supply chain professional who oversees the logistical operations for a business or organization. As a logistician, you will draw heavily on your liberal arts training to plan and implement strategies for moving goods from Point A to Point B in the most efficient manner possible.
But being a logistician isn’t just about maximizing efficiency. Instead, you will work to reduce costs by collaborating with stakeholders, including suppliers, transportation providers, and clients. Data analysis is a critical component of this part of the job – and all parts of the job, really!
Problem-solving skills are a must for this position. You will lean heavily on your skills to analyze situations and adapt to issues ranging from transit breakdowns to inclement weather to staffing issues. In other words, your work will ensure that the business world keeps turning, even in the face of significant obstacles.