Maybe you are a person trying to figure out what to do after college, or someone looking to make a career change. When I was looking for advice as a history major about to graduate, I couldn’t find many resources on people who had left social sciences behind for a business career. The people I attempted to reach out to were likely too busy in their day-to-day jobs to help or possibly thought I was a sophisticated scammer (I recently looked back and was appalled at the emails I wrote). Now that I am settled into the business world, I want to ensure anyone else who might be in the same position that I once was has a resource.
I plan on doing a series about how to break into business from a variety of backgrounds and offering tips, advice, and stories on how to make the switch. If you have any questions or requests, feel free to leave them in the comments below and I will respond or create an article dedicated to the topic.
One of the ways I wished to have been helped was through real stories and examples. For this, you need to understand that each story is unique. However, there is a common underlying theme that makes the person successful. People who successfully break into business are those who don’t wait for but instead seek opportunities. They leave their comfort zone, push themselves to learn, and use the skills they have developed to stand out. With that being said, here is my story.
The fall semester of senior year was my favorite semester of undergrad. I was a classical studies and history dual major taking courses that challenged me to think about the world in new ways. At the same time, I was expanding my friend group and meeting people who majored in engineering, sciences, business, and of course other social science majors.
When I met new people, the inevitable question of my major would come up. Most people would be shocked. They would ask what I was going to do afterward, and I’d tell them I had no clue. Their question only exacerbated my fears about the future.
My family was not made of money so continuing history or classical studies would require a lot of work to make sure I was proficient enough to get a scholarship or, worst case scenario, I would have to take out loans to get an advanced degree in something that had limited prospects afterward.
At first, I thought my only other option was to go into a field that might offer more stability, such as political science or law, a common recommendation from most history departments. However, there was (and is still) a serious glut in both fields that would require a degree from an expensive top school or connections to get a good job. I had neither money nor connections.
Eventually, I found myself working with a career counselor to see my options. She helped identify an upcoming career fair and worked with me to show me the different employers that would be there, what they do, and the possible job openings they would have. She then helped me spruce up my resume for the career fair and went over strategies to show that my skills from history were transferrable to those jobs.
My career counselor also recommended that I choose a few key employers that I was interested in and research what they do. I had two in mind. The first was Teach for America, I always liked showcasing my papers, thoughts, and findings from the readings, so maybe teaching was the best option for me? The other employer was a data consulting company called Mu Sigma. I had a roommate at the time who was a business school major and he was interested in analytics. Through him, I realized there were many parallels between analytics and history.
The day came for the career fair, and I dressed up in my best Macy’s discounted dress shirt and went to the career fair with my roommate. The first place we went together was to Mu Sigma. The person I talked to was a graduate of our college (SUNY Binghamton) in Neuroscience. We had a good conversation about how the company trained in all aspects of analytics, which is why he joined the company, and why I might be interested. I was intrigued and thought it would be a better option for me than Teach for America (I still applied for both, it is always a safe bet to have a few options).
I was invited for dinner with several other candidates afterward. We were told when we applied we would be given referrals. They told us the job would take us to India for several months of training before being assigned an onsite client in the US. We would learn all the skills needed to work, but we would not know which industry or skills we would need until we found out who our client was.
After the application and subsequent interviews, I was accepted for the position. I left a month after graduation. The company brought in a cohort each month. We were trained in a variety of skills that would be necessary for a career in business and analytics. Perhaps, the most important skills they trained us for were in sales and consulting. The second most were around data and analytics. We had pitch competitions to help hone in on sales and consulting needs and we learned advanced Excel, SQL, R, and even basic statistics for the data and analytics. To me, my most surprising ability was how fast I was able to pick these skills up.
I was at the company with people who were business majors, engineers, and science majors, many of whom had used these tools previously. Yet, I was able to keep up and exceed with certain tools and skills because of my background in history. Sales is, in a sense, convincing. I used it in every history class. When you write a research paper, you are convincing the professor that you have a novel thesis proven with facts. Creating pitches was understanding the business problem and researching solutions then presenting it. It was not so different from the research and presentations I had to perform as a history major.
With the tools, Excel, SQL, and R, I learned Latin and French (basic levels at least). The essence of these tools was communicating with a computer for it to perform a function that would give me some sort of insight or result. Typically, the commands are to organize and visualize data in a certain way to test a hypothesis on why it might look that way. Not at all different from synthesizing several different sources into a research paper, just more visual and with numbers instead of words. It was a culmination of all of the skills I had learned while in school with numbers instead of words. In presenting the results or solutions, I found the same satisfaction that I had when I was discussing readings, learnings, and hypotheses for history.
I cannot say that all of this came easily, another language is after all a lot to learn. First, you need to understand the syntax, build a vocabulary, and practice, practice, practice. I spent a lot of my time studying, learning, and researching. After researching and writing several long papers, I never doubted that I could do it.
Perhaps the most difficult part of going from social sciences to business is the justification that you need to make. People will look at your background and see history, psychology, sociology, or political science and assume that you are worth less than someone with a more technical degree and require more training than others. In your early career, the training might be true, but all of the social science majors I know who went into business worked incredibly hard to ensure they could thrive in the corporate world.
While we might begin underpaid, we have a secret ingredient that will allow us to climb the corporate ladder. We have an innate curiosity. I have met many developers, engineers, project managers, etc. who do not think outside of the box. They are comfortable doing things a certain way (not to say all are this way, I have met many technical people who do think outside of the box, and often, they have a social sciences background). I was curious about all aspects of business, from wanting to understand the foundations and logic of certain industries, to understanding the psychology of the design, and even hypothesizing and testing ways to improve methodologies. Ultimately, this has led me to marketing analytics.
The journey is ongoing, some days are amazing, and other days, not so much. At the end of the day, I have no regrets about going into business analytics. It has afforded me opportunities that might not have otherwise existed.
For the next topic, I will go over the skills that help social science majors stand out in business. Personally, the social sciences instilled in me a healthy skepticism, curiosity, determination, attention to detail, time management, and patience that have helped in my career so far. After that, I think that I will discuss different jobs and roles that would be well-suited for the social sciences.