Determining Your Skills - Continued

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The first step in responding to these questions is to honestly address what you love to do. What fascinates you? What do you find compelling and fulfilling? Once you've answered these questions, address what skills you can bring to the work place.

Your first response may be that after four years of college, your skills amount to doing close readings of King Lear and analyzing the socioeconomic implications of the Kennedy administration. However, according to Phyllis R. Stein, a career coach in the Boston area, liberal arts majors tend to have a lot of skills they don't even know they have. "It's not just that you took a Shakespeare class," Stein says. Instead, she explains, in that Shakespeare class you honed your researching skills, you learned to make coherent presentations, and you refined your ability to organize your thoughts in writing. 

Stein adds that liberal arts majors generally have excellent administrative and management skills. They write well, they can think critically, they can analyze problems, and they can communicate well with co-workers. Liberal arts majors can work simultaneously with big picture concepts, and with the small details that fit into these large visions. They are also, she says, adept at adapting to the vocabulary of different occupational fields. For example, the jargon of marketing, law, and accounting is such that different words in each field often have similar definitions. Liberal arts majors are good at achieving fluency in many different occupational languages, simply by virtue of spending their undergraduate careers using terminology specific to English, philosophy, and history. This versatility is helpful to liberal arts majors as they tailor their resumes and job applications to prospective employers.

Also, when you assess your skills, don't forget the skills you gained from doing volunteer and extra-curricular work.