Teaching Careers: A 404 Syllabus
All of the post-World War II disciplines in the University are asking the same question: How do we help our students find work?
This semester, I am teaching MCS404, our department’s course for transforming internships into the materials for job interviews and (hopefully) a career. This occurs in the context of the incredible statistic that people will change jobs around 11 times and careers between 4 and 7 times.
While the typical reasoning of the humanities and humanistic social sciences has been that we train students “broadly” to meet the generalized needs of a service-based workforce, hiring managers have been telling us for a long time that our students are hurt by a lack of specialization.
This course walks MCS students through identifying and expressing the thing that makes them media specialists in an initial career in media and communication industries. While they may change career paths 4 to 7 things, the skills learned here will help them identify specialization and express it broadly — rather than vice versa. In the process, they will also learn where they are lacking in required skills for the communication/media industries.
To do so, students will develop personalized, self-branded cover letters and resumes, they will learn to make a specialized and directed job pitch, answer questions on the fly, and develop a professional voice as a writer. This last skill is key, according to many of the business owners, hiring managers, HR representatives I’ve spoken with: employees of all sectors need to demonstrate that they can write.
This section of “Professional Life in MCS” will consist of the job materials and advice that I’m providing students. I welcome any of you professionals out there to chime in where you agree, disagree, have some experience, or want to make an important point. My experiences are limited to my own (as a media analytics consultant, UX researcher, and now an academic) and the advice I receive from friends. I hope you’ll add your voice to the mix.
