Liberal Arts Majors Need These 8 Skills To Get Ahead
Daniel Goodman / Business Insider
Liberal arts majors are not a dying breed. Not yet, anyway.
Already armed with the "soft skills" that top employers are beginning to demand, these graduates can double their chances of getting a job after school by incorporating one of eight specific technical skills into their tool kits, according to Matthew Sigelman, CEO of Burning Glass, a labor-market analytics firm.
The combination of soft skills, including effective communication, clear writing, and critical thinking, and in-demand technical skills helps grads stand out to employers in today's technological age.
The complementary technical skills are marketing, sales, business, social media, graphic design, data analysis, computer programming, and IT networking.
According to Burning Glass, nearly 955,000 jobs are currently available nationwide to liberal arts majors without any further training or skills. The company published a new report that says that learning just one of those eight technical skills would enable liberal arts graduates to compete for an additional 862,000 jobs.
"These newly available positions fall into occupations such as marketing specialist, operations analyst, and computer programmer, and offer an approximately $6,000 annual salary premium over jobs traditionally open to liberal arts graduates," the report says.
Aside from enhancing liberal arts majors' competitiveness, these specific eight skills were identified because they " could be acquired through a reasonable amount of training, coursework, or internships," Sigelman tells Business Insider.
Below is a chart from the report detailing the eight skill sets, along with total job postings and average salary:
More From Business Insider
