Career Exploration FAQ

Come to the Liberal Arts Advisement & Careers Center in 1049 JFSB to meet with your academic advisor or your college career director. Your academic advisor can help you explore career options, choose relevant classes, and connect the dots between your coursework and career goals. Your career director can help you structure your job search, network, prepare application materials (e.g., resume, cover letter), and connect with employers. If you'd like to explore resources on your own, visit careers.byu.edu for everything from resume templates to career exploration and networking tools.

Many! English majors find meaningful work across the board--they're content writers, marketers, project managers, authors, technical writers, and human resources managers, to name only a few. Your degree is helping you learn to communicate, analyze and interpret data, and navigate cultures different from your own. These are skills nearly every employer is looking for. But that's only part of the equation; tangible work experience—internships, experiential learning activities, relevant part-time jobs—will make you a competitive candidate as you leave BYU. Use these experiences to test out an industry you're interested in or to fill in the gaps in your hard skills. Don't know what your career goals are? Set up a meeting with your academic advisor or career director! They can help you explore possibilities, see what English alumni are doing, and set goals for the direction you'd like to pursue.

Nope! Many great opportunities are available to graduates with bachelor's degrees. Of course, tangible work experience while in school—internships, experiential learning activities, relevant part-time jobs—will make you a much more competitive candidate.

Some career tracks do require or prefer a graduate degree—think lawyers or academic roles. The important thing is to be intentional with your time and resources. Are you choosing grad school because it's a step toward your goals, or are you choosing it because you're unsure what you want to do? Your academic advisor or career director can help you answer those questions.

The Liberal Arts Advisement Center (1049 JFSB) specializes in career readiness and your English major advisor (found here) can meet with you to discuss your narrative so that you can highlight the skills and competencies you have gained in your time here in BYU English.

The Humanities College at BYU aims to ensure each of their graduates leaves proficient in the three competencies of:

• Communication
• Information Literacy
• Cultural Navigation

Email your English advisor to schedule a meeting and discuss these in detail with regard to your specific circumstance.

The English+ requirement is a great way to start! Finding an internship or experience that aligns with a specific career path or skill you are interested in can be extremely beneficial to your candidacy. In addition, we have opportunities to do mentored research with professors as well as clubs and University publications that will enable you to gain experience and build your career portfolio. Many students also find the Career Corner articles in the Scoop and on our website as well as the career preparation articles on the LAAC website to be helpful as they prepare for the future.

We strongly encourage students to engage in career exploration and preparation long before graduation. The Liberal Arts Advisement and Career Center in 1049 JFSB is an extremely valuable resource for English majors. There, you can meet with your advisor, who offers help with the following:

• Career readiness and exploration
• Graduate school preparation
• Identifying and developing competencies

We also encourage you to consider browsing the information available on their website regarding career readiness and preparation. Be sure to create an account on Handshake to become acquainted with the companies seeking English majors like you, and don’t wait to create your resume until after graduation—the LAAC can help you with that as well.

As an English major, you have far more career options than most people realize! We recommend spending some time exploring the English at Work resources on the English department website. You’ll find dozens of English Alumni Stories about real students who are using their English skills in the workplace. Be sure to watch the English Alumni Panel videos to hear from previous English graduates about their experiences. You may also find the Career Corner articles to be helpful, as they feature similar questions from other English students.

When you’re ready to start making decisions about your future, be sure to meet with your English advisor at the Liberal Arts Advisement and Career Center in 1049 JFSB.

According to the American Library Association, information literacy is the ability to "recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information." 

Since that's a complicated definition, however, let's examine what that means for students seeking careers after graduation. When companies list the following as a job requirement or skill, it's information literacy they're looking for: 

• Making sense of good information for specific purposes and audiences
• Filtering out inaccurate and irrelevant material and discriminating for the most sound and substantive sources
• Employing rigorous research methods to understand diverse human experiences
• Designing research that addresses societal problems
• Solving real-world problems and evaluate outcomes using critical thinking and empirical research

To answer the second part of your question, yes, that absolutely applies to our students! In fact, many companies seeking the skills listed above specifically ask for English majors from BYU. To search those job opportunities, make sure to create a Handshake account through BYU. The College of Humanities curates this content so you can easily see what applies most to you.

Information literacy isn't the only skill you're gaining by studying the Humanities. To learn about this and other important competencies, click here.