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B.S. in Sociology; What now? UPDATED 5/9/11 - The Hunt for a Job!
HadjiQuest
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have a semester left before I complete a Bachelor's of Science in Sociology. About two years ago, I was lurking H/A here and I saw a number of people who recommended Sociology degrees over psychology or political science, saying they were better "multi-purpose" degrees.
At the time I was seriously considering either Psych or Political Science, so with that in mind I changed to a major in sociology with a minor in journalism.
As far as graduate school goes, it's something I'm interested in, but I need at least a year before I can take out any loans and whatnot. My parents paid for my undergrad through a combination of scholarships and a college fund that's now tapped. I have no loans so far (luckily), but they refuse to cosign anything for me.
So, I'll likely be entering the job market come late spring. I want to know what kind of positions I should be looking into, and what kind of work I can expect to find.
A lot of people have been dumping on me for having a "useless" degree, but I'm not concerned with finding a job in my "field." I know that many employers are looking for any type of B.S./B.A. degree, but I just don't know what those positions are and what they entail.
Can anyone help? Does anyone here have a major or minor in soc, with some employment stories they'd like to tell?
At the time I was seriously considering either Psych or Political Science, so with that in mind I changed to a major in sociology with a minor in journalism.
As far as graduate school goes, it's something I'm interested in, but I need at least a year before I can take out any loans and whatnot. My parents paid for my undergrad through a combination of scholarships and a college fund that's now tapped. I have no loans so far (luckily), but they refuse to cosign anything for me.
So, I'll likely be entering the job market come late spring. I want to know what kind of positions I should be looking into, and what kind of work I can expect to find.
A lot of people have been dumping on me for having a "useless" degree, but I'm not concerned with finding a job in my "field." I know that many employers are looking for any type of B.S./B.A. degree, but I just don't know what those positions are and what they entail.
Can anyone help? Does anyone here have a major or minor in soc, with some employment stories they'd like to tell?
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She was slightly hampered because she wanted to live in a particular city (Philly) because that's where her boyfriend-now-fiance was going. The most common position willing to accept a psych degree was a human resources-type position, or positions involving data entry/administrative assistants/secretarial work/etc; however, the downside was that they either required an HR degree (apparently those exist... I never knew) or they required 5 years of experience in HR. So she ended up taking a 6-month internship with absolute shit pay, but it gave her the opportunity to get HR experience plus once the internship was up, they gave her the full-time version of her job, which included benefits and better pay. So now she's set - but things were pretty shaky there for a while.
Other than HR, she also looked into CIA/FBI work - they have counterintelligence positions for psych majors, and they had one job that took psych/socio majors and had them basically doing propaganda work on enemies to lower their morale. Stuff like that. So that's a possibility.
Lastly, though it might be too late or getting very close to it, you could possibly do Teach for America. You might want to at least apply and consider it as a backup - that was my sister's backup.
Good luck!
Think you could get into a funded program?
Take the year off, and then get your loans for grad school. Since you're debt free at this point, I wouldn't worry about it.
Probably a master's first, then maybe a PhD.
A funded program? Probably not.
This is true if you actually want to work in the field of sociology or psychology, or COM of course. If you just want an entry level position that uses degrees as a barrier to entry, that's pretty much what a Liberal Arts degree is designed for.
You could also consider teaching English in Asia. I'd especially look at working in China where there's simply going to be so much growth over the next ten years. If you can pick up decent Chinese and learn the culture it would make you very attractive to American companies looking to expand.
LOL, what a useless degree...
OK, so you know exactly what your degree means. That's great, we can skip all the disillusionment common in Bachelors of the Liberal Sciences.
First thing you've got to do is create a resume. It is important to get this done AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. You should be on break. Start putting your life story in resume form. Clubs, awards, GPA (Department GPA if that's higher
Start checking out Careerbuilder for jobs in your area. Try the keyword "Entry Level". Avoid life insurance sales. It's soul crushing.
Check out the career center at your university and see if there are any on campus job fairs.
What do you want to do for work?
I haven't really thought too much about it. Presumably something in an office setting that has career potential, but that I could also walk away from in a couple years if I choose to head to graduate school. What Cygnus said about Temp Agencies seemed like pretty solid advice for my situation, but I am still very open to other ideas.
I doubt it matters, but I also have two-year degrees in Liberal Arts (which is obviously superseded by the Soc degree) and Informations Systems.
Do you want to teach? Do you want to be a receptionist? Do you want to be a corporate writer? etc.
Start thinking, hard. And there is no career that you can't walk away from if you want to go back to school. Well, other than being enlisted in the armed forces.
Until then, I am really unfamiliar with the variety of inner-office work, so I'd just like to find myself in that setting to learn more about the different positions.
Also, generally, you need a Phd or to be working on one to teach in my experience. A Masters is just a step to a Phd in many cases.
Take it from someone who graduated with a liberal sciences degree but managed to work their way into an unrelated field they were interested in.
1) How much statistics did you do along the way? Some Sociologists love it, some avoid it like the plague. If you've got a solid background with stats it should open up a lot for you.
2) You shouldn't need a cosigner for Federal Student Loans.
3) Take the GRE. If you want to go to grad school in the near future you'll need it. If you do amazingly well on it theres a good chance some school will fund you.
1. Some, but never by hand. We used SPSS/PASW every step of the way, and weren't taught to do any stats by hand. So I don't know how useful that would be. I also took an intro-to-stats math class a few years ago, and we did very little of the math by hand in there as well; it was all calculator programs.
2. I believe that the Federal Student Loan amounts are dependent on my parents' finances. I can't be considered separately until I am either 24 or 25 (can't remember which), and I will turn 23 about a month after graduation.
3. This is really good advice. I had planned on this earlier, but forgotten about it recently. I will definitely try to take the GRE this semester.
As I mentioned earlier, I have an Associates Degree in IT. Is this likely to be useful at all, any more than my BS or maybe in addition to it? Before I decided to go four-year, I was starting to get IT certs as well. A+ and some of the lower Microsoft Windows and Networking certs were well within my grasp; Security + seemed doable but would take a little bit of studying to refresh myself.
Being a graduate student severs your financial aid from your parent's finances. At least it did in 2002 when I did it at 22.
You could also do social work.
I don't know why anyone would want to, but it's an option.
Some updates:
-I have a grad school in mind, but they're not taking new students into the program until Fall 2012, so I have over a year to kill.
-I have absolutely no idea how to find a white collar job, or the kind of jobs and paths to jobs I should be looking at with a general Social Science or Liberal Arts B.S. Degree.
-I would like to find a job near my grad school of choice, and move out there this upcoming fall, so I can be long settled in when their grad program opens up again. But I have very little in savings, and I don't know how to do that sort of long-distance job hunting. How do I go down there for interviews and start working if I have nowhere to crash? What are my options?
-What can I do for internships? Temping? Where do I start looking to find those opportunities?
I'm pretty freaked out. This is the first year of my life where I don't have anything planned out and I don't know what to do. My only past work experience is all in general retail. As I mentioned earlier, I also have a two-year Associate degree in Information Systems. Should I be putting that to use instead of my Soc degree? I have no formal experience.
That's about it so far. I'm completely clueless. I wouldn't even know where to begin looking on my own for work (aside from Craigslist, where many jobs seem to be pyramid schemes). For me, my big issue now is trying to find a job not up here at school, or at home, but somewhere entirely different where I have no friends, family or connections, and when I have no real savings.
Re: Internships
Re: Temp Agencies
Re: How to find Work & Experience out of College
Re: Where to look
Re: Job Hunting
Re: Cover Letter/Resume
Absolutely look for a temp agency then. You'll usually find solid places and it'll be a job that you leave after 5 PM which is always great when you don't care about it.
Ahh, this is a question I meant to ask flat-out when I bumped the thread:
Where, if anywhere, should I be looking and posting my resume to online? Specifically stuff for minor IT and more general liberal arts or social science jobs?
Also, what's the best way to find a thorough list of temp agencies in the area, and how will I know which ones are the best choices?
In the past I have found Martin Yate's Knock Em Dead and the ever present What Color is Your Parachute valuable in these areas.
For example, I used to be awful at interviews, I got super nervous, didn't know how to answer tricky questions, and Knock Em Dead really helped get over that.
Do not rely solely on job posting sites of any kind, as many, many, jobs are never advertised. Network your ass off, tell everyone you know that you are looking for work, what kind of work, etc. Talk to your family, their friends, your friends, their families, professors, every one you can think of. People like to hire they people they know, or have some connection to, not matter how tenuous, so make that work for you.
Job hunting can be soul grinding, so be prepared.
And lastly, you have a job right now, it is called "Looking for a job that pays" and you should be spending 40 hours a week on it.
I'm a wee bit tired, so I'll go into great detail on both of those tomorrow, but where are you looking for work?
In terms of location?
Two areas: Kalamazoo, Michigan and the greater metropolitan Detroit area.
Networking is the most difficult for me. My part of the family is entirely separated from our extended family, and my parents have no real day-to-day friends or friendly neighbors or anything. I am the first person of all of the people I talk to frequently to graduate with a four-year degree, and I have had nearly zero contact with any of their families, so I get no help from that. The professors I keep in touch with are all adjuncts from out of state who have no connections or work experiences outside of Academia. I have almost no networking potential, and I know that is going to make things harder for me.
Pah! Did you graduate from a four-year college? (Yes.) Does your university have an alumni database? (Almost certainly yes.) Then you have massive networking potential!
Search for alumni, both recent or not, who graduated with B.S.'s in Sociology. Search for alumni who currently live in the city you're planning on moving to and working in. (Kalamazoo, Detroit) Search for alumni who are working the in the sorts of jobs you'd like to be in 2, 5, 10 years from now. Search for alumni with similar background and/or interests. If your university doesn't allow you to search by such specific parameters, then Facebook does, so get crackin'!
Networking is about getting out of your comfort zone and grasping onto the most tenuous of connections for information and opportunities. Did they go to the same university as you? Did they go to the same high school as you? Work/intern/volunteer at the same organizations? Go to the same church/synagogue/whatever as you? Live in the neighborhood where you grew up? Pass you on the street and give you their business card? Then shoot them an e-mail and ask them for an informational interview!
It doesn't matter if your parents have no "day-to-day" friends. If they have ANY acquaintances that do anything even remotely similar to what you do or want to do -- even people who they see once a year, at that -- ask your parents for the contact info. Similarly, unless your family has some seriously negative history and contacting your relatives would reopen some nasty emotional wounds or something, then drop them a line too. "I haven't talked to them in years" shouldn't be an excuse; "I haven't seen them since I was 3 years old" shouldn't be an excuse; "I've never met them in my life" shouldn't be an excuse. You have a connection by blood, and that's plenty connection enough, so talk to them if you can.
Now granted, not even 1 out of 100 of these connections will land you a job in all likelihood. But people are often happy to shoot you an e-mail giving you career advice, and some might meet you for coffee and introduce you to some of their friends or co-workers. If you're lucky, some might be able to get you on their company's "internal recruitment" list; if a position opens up, you'll be among the first to know. If you're REALLY lucky, a few might even point you to an open position and help you get it.
A lot of this might seem pointless and a waste of time, but it's really not. If you cultivate the right relationships it can really pay off in dividends. Let's say you meet, through Facebook, an alumnus who arranges a coffee meet-up with his friend who works at the company of your dreams, who gets you on the internal recruitment list at the company of your dreams, which 3 months later results in an e-mail saying "We have an entry-level position opening up, it'll go public in three days but you can apply through our website now." At that point you could ask the friend of the alumnus for advice on crafting the perfect application, name-drop said friend in your cover letter, AND get your application in a full three days before everyone. That's a big, big advantage which will often get you an interview at the very least.