If you approach your career with a defensive question like "What can I do with an English major?," you may be limiting your choices. Better questions are: "What skills, talents, insights, and abilities do I have?" and "What kinds of jobs do they suggest?" In today's employment market, when job titles and responsibilities shift so constantly, English majors have an advantage. This is because they are used to analyzing situations critically and communicating the results of their scrutiny effectively. The Winthrop Center for Career and Civic Engagement (known to most of us as Career Services) provides a handy guide to how you might think about translating your skills into a career.
The obvious career choices for English majors may seem to be teaching, becoming a writer, or attending law or graduate school, but graduates excel in many other areas due to their various valuable skills. These include:
According to a 2018 Report by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, both hiring managers and business executives state that the job skills they most value when hiring are: "oral communication, critical thinking, ethical judgment, working effectively in teams, written communication, and real-world application of skills and knowledge." All of our majors focus extensively on mastering these prized skills.
Our own Winthrop University English major alumni have rewarding careers in many different fields, including:
The kinds of text analysis, writing, and thinking English majors specialize in enhance their creativity, their understanding of human motivation, and their ability to present clear and logical arguments, both in writing and orally. To enhance this versatility, we have specifically designed the English major at Winthrop to be a flexible degree that prepares students for various career opportunities.
According to the 2019 US Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, the professional fields that English majors typically enter, including corporate communications, technical writing, and content editing, are projected to grow at a faster-than-average pace through 2026. A January 2019 search for "communications" jobs in the metro Charlotte area on Indeed.com resulted in 11,552 full-time positions that rely on strong writing and oral communication skills. In addition, high school English teachers remain in high demand in the region, a fact reflected in our 100% job placement rate for our English secondary education majors.