Major Exploration Series: Connecting Majors to Careers

Alaina Popp Author

04/11/2025 Added

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Discover career options for potential majors and get tips on choosing a major that will prepare you for careers you have in mind.

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[00:00:02.970]Alaina Popp: Okay, thank you guys all for coming today. So we are going to go over connecting majors to careers and some of the key ways to do that. Did all of you attend the first kind of...
[00:00:12.740]Alaina Popp: that in this series of workshops a couple weeks ago? No? Okay, that's okay.
[00:00:17.640]Alaina Popp: You're not going to be missing out on anything if you didn't. But if you want to see that one, they all kind of continue on with each other, you can always find that on the Explore Center website as well.
[00:00:29.450]Alaina Popp: Okay. First thing we're gonna do is we're gonna start out with a Kahoots quiz just to kind of get you guys all engaged. I know it's towards the end of the day we're probably a little tired, so we'll start out with kind of easy and fun.
[00:01:41.760]Alaina Popp: Maybe 2 more and then we'll get started.
[00:02:27.310]Alaina Popp: We're waiting on one more. Is anybody having a hard time getting set up?
[00:02:34.950]Alaina Popp: You don't want to do it?
[00:02:36.320]Alaina Popp: That's okay.
[00:02:44.570]Alaina Popp: [inaudible]
[00:02:51.770]Alaina Popp: So "To get a job in business, you need one of the following degrees:"
[00:03:15.340]Alaina Popp: Okay, 5 people got it right, awesome! Yep. so to get a degree or a job in business, you can have absolutely any major. It does not need to be business related in any way, shape or form.
[00:03:33.260]Alaina Popp: "True or false?"
[00:03:34.510]Alaina Popp: "If I major in psychology, I can only be a therapist."
[00:03:39.950]Alaina Popp: Awesome. Everybody got that one super fast. That's right, psychology is... a lot of different jobs that line up with it. And that's one of the ones that we're looking for today.
[00:03:54.250]Alaina Popp: "More than (how many) of the Fortune 500 CEOs have had non-business degrees.
[00:04:00.830]Alaina Popp: I know it's probably gonna be a guest for everybody. That's okay.
[00:04:07.240]Alaina Popp: Okay. So we got two people that got it right. It is 1/3rd of the Fortune 500 CEOs, that do not have a degree related to business.
[00:04:22.790]Alaina Popp: "If I'm interested in the healthcare field. I have to get a science degree."
[00:04:35.330]Alaina Popp: Okay, awesome. Almost everybody got that one right. That is false. Again, for any science
[00:04:39.330]Alaina Popp: or healthcare area, you can actually major in anything.
[00:04:43.780]Alaina Popp: Moving up there on the leaderboard.
[00:04:46.460]Alaina Popp: And last question, "(blank) can provide me with more job opportunities."
[00:05:05.880]Alaina Popp: Awesome. A few people got that one right. Yep. Transferable skills, they're one of the biggest things that you're actually going to earn out of your degree.
[00:05:14.500]Alaina Popp: Here's the leaderboard. Third place, we got Liberty.
[00:05:19.220]Alaina Popp: [inaudible]
[00:05:22.243]Alaina Popp: Then, Bekki.
[00:05:24.140]Alaina Popp: and then...
[00:05:26.880]Alaina Popp: all right. J was our number one for this one. Congratulations!
[00:05:36.600]Alaina Popp: So now that we've done that quiz,
[00:05:39.710]Alaina Popp: just couple of kind of discussions here, for you guys to participate in for a little bit. But what are some of the majors and careers that, when you think of like, they just instinctively go together?
[00:05:53.390]Alaina Popp: Probably like Biochem or Biology and Healthcare or Pre-Med. Okay.
[00:06:00.340]Alaina Popp: Anybody else agree with Emmy?
[00:06:07.200]Alaina Popp: Some of the other big ones may be an engineering degree, probably gonna end up in engineering with that one right?
[00:06:13.010]Alaina Popp: Yep. And then some other ones that people think about usually too is psychology.
[00:06:22.180]Alaina Popp: [inaudible]
[00:06:23.230]Alaina Popp: [inaudible]
[00:06:27.820]Alaina Popp: Yeah, so there are some that definitely, you hear that major and you think, "well, this is the only career that I can do with that," right? And that's one of the things we're going to talk about a little bit more today.
[00:06:37.049]Alaina Popp: What is a major and a career that seem like they wouldn't go together at all, and why?
[00:07:00.650]Alaina Popp: [Participant] I guess, like an English degree, and then an engineer.
[00:07:04.770]Alaina Popp: English degree and then an engineer. Yep, you're probably going to be missing out on some key math and science components of that right?
[00:07:11.330]Alaina Popp: Yeah.
[00:07:12.800]Alaina Popp: Anything else?
[00:07:19.712]Alaina Popp: Another one would be like we've had students that are Pre-Med that actually major in music. And they do make that work. There are ways to do that. So sometimes there's not always a clear path.
[00:07:28.900]Alaina Popp: Some people might think that with an English degree you can't have the skill of a company.
[00:07:33.730]Alaina Popp: But that's definitely one that it can work out.
[00:07:38.299]Alaina Popp: Why are majors and college degrees important to people and specifically to you?
[00:07:46.290]Alaina Popp: [Participant] Because it's kind of, I think
[00:07:49.060]Alaina Popp: people stress it a lot. It's a big decision, and it determines
[00:07:53.320]Alaina Popp: your future career so, but,
[00:07:56.680]Alaina Popp: so it's kind of like, oh, I'm deciding my future.
[00:08:00.560]Alaina Popp: Yep, it is. It feels like a really big decision. It feels like, whatever you major in, you have to get that job in right. Yep.
[00:08:06.990]Alaina Popp: Anybody else have any different reasons?
[00:08:13.320]Alaina Popp: [Participant] We're like guaranteed like a job like,
[00:08:16.660]Alaina Popp: in that field I guess
[00:08:18.230]Alaina Popp: we're like adults so that's why we're all go in that field to make
[00:08:22.020]Alaina Popp: some sort of money. Okay? So going to college getting that degree guarantees, some sort of employment.
[00:08:29.900]Alaina Popp: Yeah.
[00:08:32.419]Alaina Popp: Great. And then the last question, what's the most unusual career path you've ever heard of?
[00:08:43.549]Alaina Popp: Maybe friends, family, family friends, that you know.
[00:08:47.580]Alaina Popp: Do their majors all match with what they're doing with their job?
[00:08:52.380]Alaina Popp: Anybody that made a career change in their life?
[00:09:02.020]Alaina Popp: [Participant] Well, it's my aunt used to be a vet. But then she became like.
[00:09:06.420]Alaina Popp: or she started working in HR.
[00:09:08.550]Alaina Popp: Yeah, so that is a big change from going through vet school and being a vet and everything, and then going on to HR, yeah.
[00:09:15.970]Alaina Popp: My dad went to college for Chemical Engineering and then ended up owning a holistic health store, basically, two of them in Michigan.
[00:09:25.110]Alaina Popp: Don't exactly seem like they go hand in hand, but
[00:09:28.510]Alaina Popp: sometimes what you get your degree in isn't always what you're going to end up with your career in, but it can give you things that can still help.
[00:09:39.000]Alaina Popp: So,
[00:09:43.144]Alaina Popp: some of the majors that have fairly clear cut degree paths are listed up here. So, some we kind of talked about, like engineering, probably going to be an engineer, right?
[00:09:52.330]Alaina Popp: Accounting,
[00:09:53.750]Alaina Popp: usually you're gonna go into some sort of accounting somewhere.
[00:09:58.404]Alaina Popp: Architecture, finance, communication sciences and disorders,
[00:10:03.052]Alaina Popp: elementary education and veterinarian sciences. Those are the ones that you hear, you think of, and usually those are pretty much, you get a degree, get your certificate or master's degree, and then you go on.
[00:10:18.110]Alaina Popp: So there are also, though, majors that have more indirect career paths, the ones that aren't quite as straightforward.
[00:10:27.350]Alaina Popp: Some of those include, like the degrees under a business,
[00:10:31.420]Alaina Popp: agriculture and animal studies, journalism, science, math, liberal arts, and languages and fine arts.
[00:10:38.676]Alaina Popp: Out of these majors, do you guys.... what kind of disadvantages do you see with any of these
[00:10:44.390]Alaina Popp: majors leading into different careers?
[00:10:52.270]Alaina Popp: [Participant] I would say there's more ways with business.
[00:10:59.620]Alaina Popp: Okay. So agriculture may not open as many doors as a business degree? Okay.
[00:11:05.690]Alaina Popp: That is, you can end up in
[00:11:08.320]Alaina Popp: in time
[00:11:10.450]Alaina Popp: Now, just to counter that,
[00:11:12.110]Alaina Popp: if everybody thinks that and everybody has a business degree and the whole career field is saturated with students with business degrees
[00:11:19.220]Alaina Popp: trying to get in there, is that business degree making you more competitive or less?
[00:11:25.100]Alaina Popp: Is it really an advantage now?
[00:11:28.110]Alaina Popp: [inaudible]
[00:11:30.920]Alaina Popp: [Participant] Yes.
[00:11:33.730]Alaina Popp: So you think it's competitive?
[00:11:35.860]Alaina Popp: It can be if you sell yourself well.
[00:11:43.880]Alaina Popp: But that's an advantage that you can find across any of these majors.
[00:11:48.563]Alaina Popp: So maybe you want to go into business and you wanna do something business related here in Nebraska, right?
[00:11:54.310]Alaina Popp: One in seven jobs in Nebraska are related to agriculture.
[00:11:58.440]Alaina Popp: So, an agriculture degree could still actually be a benefit to you in the business environment, depending on what companies you're looking to work for.
[00:12:07.160]Alaina Popp: Those are some of the unique ways that you can connect the different things that may not stand out. You can turn that what seems like a disadvantage into an advantage of a degree.
[00:12:18.340]Alaina Popp: [Participant] Some degrees are more technical and very in depth, and if you're not wanting to do like, pursue a career that's
[00:12:26.630]Alaina Popp: super in depth, it might be like, oh, I did all this work
[00:12:31.600]Alaina Popp: to not. I don't know that way they'll still use this degree.
[00:12:35.130]Alaina Popp: Yeah, no, that's a good one.
[00:12:37.120]Alaina Popp: [Participant] Very pigeonholed, for
[00:12:40.910]Alaina Popp: if you're not going to get a career.
[00:12:42.420]Alaina Popp: Yes, some of them do have you a little bit more pigeonholed, like biology. If you don't go on to something in healthcare, what other doors does that open? Right?
[00:12:53.566]Alaina Popp: As a backup, for that is probably something like research
[00:12:58.120]Alaina Popp: Oh.
[00:12:59.040]Alaina Popp: Something like that.
[00:13:01.830]Alaina Popp: But with all of these, despite having some where it's kind of clear cut, some where it looks more competitive or not. All of them have different advantages and disadvantages that you're bringing to the career field, no matter what career you're wanting to go into.
[00:13:19.890]Alaina Popp: So one major that we're going to look at kind of today because I think it's a good example is our communication studies major that we have here at UNL.
[00:13:27.335]Alaina Popp: This is one that a lot of students see and they kind of pass it by because it really general, right? And they think, what am I gonna do with that other than like
[00:13:36.740]Alaina Popp: And I don't want to be a [inaudible]
[00:13:38.390]Alaina Popp: Well, there's a bunch of different areas that you can actually get a career in through communication studies. So you could go into PR/advertising media, that kind of stuff. You could also go into business.
[00:13:51.805]Alaina Popp: Nonprofit work, government or law, or even higher education, and then through that we can emphasize some of the different fields that you could do within those general career fields.
[00:14:02.930]Alaina Popp: With communication studies, one thing that does give an advantage is, think about any job post you have ever seen. All of them have, they want strong communication skills.
[00:14:12.480]Alaina Popp: So this is one of those majors that is going to give you a slew of transferable skills that are going to make you competitive and more marketable down the road, no matter what career you pick. So if you start out thinking that you want to do something in business, you get there. You hate sitting on a desk 8 hours day, and you decide you want to pivot and do something else.
[00:14:30.130]Alaina Popp: That's one of those degrees where you take those transferable skills and it fits all of those different areas.
[00:14:38.620]Alaina Popp: Different majors can also lead to the exact same career. So if your end goal is to do something in editing or publishing, you don't have to just go into journalism. You could do English, but you could also do other ones like history, criminal justice, science majors, anthropology, all of that
[00:14:57.010]Alaina Popp: can lead to career within editing and publishing.
[00:15:02.910]Alaina Popp: So it's one of the things to think of. It's not always going to be that straight cut
[00:15:06.880]Alaina Popp: line to it. Sometimes what your major is does lead straight to one.
[00:15:13.860]Alaina Popp: And seemingly,
[00:15:15.780]Alaina Popp: sometimes majors, it can lead to seemingly unrelated careers. So only about 30% of college graduates currently work in a role that is specifically related to their major. That's a pretty low percentage with less than half of college graduates are working in something that lies up to their major specifically.
[00:15:33.630]Alaina Popp: So, a lot of times you'll get your degree or people get their degree. They'll go on to that related field. But then they have a change in their goals or in their skills, or they realize they have a new passion, something they'd like to do more and then they go on to a new field.
[00:15:50.454]Alaina Popp: You can find success with pretty much any degree. These are some of the top CEOs for major companies that hopefully, you guys are all familiar with
[00:15:59.113]Alaina Popp: and the degrees that they have. So the CEO of Youtube has a dual degree in history and literature
[00:16:06.610]Alaina Popp: and they work for the streaming services.
[00:16:11.490]Alaina Popp: Chipotle CEO has an art history degree.
[00:16:15.320]Alaina Popp: Really don't think they're using that very much in what they're doing right now with Chipotle, right?
[00:16:21.620]Alaina Popp: So it's not always going to be that clear cut path. How all of these people got there is they graduated, they got have their degree. They did a job. And then they took the skills that they learned from their degree and their jobs, and they marketed themselves based off of those transferable skills rather than the specific degree that they got.
[00:16:41.430]Alaina Popp: All of this is basically long story short to say, your major does not define the career, you can pick the major you like and still get a good career with it. It's all about focusing on those other aspects.
[00:16:56.060]Alaina Popp: So that's how this works, use those transferable skills. The other one is, at least one of my least favorite things in the world to do: networking.
[00:17:04.250]Alaina Popp: As much as it is awful and painful sometimes, if you're not a very outgoing and just talk to anybody type of person. It is beneficial, and it can definitely help you make connections and find opportunities outside of the field that you're maybe currently working in.
[00:17:18.784]Alaina Popp: You can also look into continued learning. So if you really want something in business. But you also really want to major in English, you can major in English, and go on then to get your MBA if you want afterwards, and be even more marketable within the business community.
[00:17:33.670]Alaina Popp: And then industry changes as well.
[00:17:36.800]Alaina Popp: Can anyone think of any career areas that you've heard that are changing, or that you think might change within the next couple of years?
[00:17:49.040]Alaina Popp: [Participant] Like the tech industry. Yes, tech industry. Yep. And a lot of that
[00:17:54.600]Alaina Popp: is really due to the changes with AI and everything. Right?
[00:18:01.630]Alaina Popp: What about education?
[00:18:03.290]Alaina Popp: You guys went through a pandemic.
[00:18:04.900]Alaina Popp: You went from one style of education to another. You think that maybe has been impacted by technology and and all the other things? That's a field that I would say is probably changing a bit.
[00:18:14.640]Alaina Popp: Make more classes online, more online degree programs, too.
[00:18:19.580]Alaina Popp: So those type of changes, whether they're in the industry due to things like advancement in technology or because there's a global pandemic that we all went through. Those are things that you're going to see as well. And that's why, again, those transferable skills and networking that continued learning are all going to be beneficial.
[00:18:39.380]Alaina Popp: So we're going to go more in depth into each of these here. But these are some resources that you guys can use through UNL to kind of help you explore majors, careers, make connections, and all of that. The UNL major catalog is always great.
[00:18:55.290]Alaina Popp: Maybe also the Holland Code Assessment, O*Net, and what can I do with this major?
[00:19:03.600]Alaina Popp: So in the catalog there's a couple of different ways to look through it. When you first get in there you can look by college and then click on the different majors for the college. Once you click on majors, it'll take you to that first image up there, it says major/areas of study
[00:19:18.267]Alaina Popp: and then you can filter by colleges, or if you keep scrolling down, you can filter by your interest areas. You can filter by your Holland code, all of that kind of stuff as well.
[00:19:29.193]Alaina Popp: When you go to a major that you're looking at, this one is advertising and public relations an example. You can look under the career development tab to see the different transferable skills, the recent jobs that some of our graduates have gotten, and then also internships or professional school that they chose to go on to as well. So you can kind of see what others have done in the past with the degree that you're looking at, and what opportunities might be out there for you.
[00:19:56.347]Alaina Popp: Another good one is, what can I do with this major? This is probably one of my favorite resources. It has pretty much all of the majors that we offer here at UNL.
[00:20:05.580]Alaina Popp: So if you want to look through it first, to like, if you want to do psychology, you go under social sciences and then click psychology. And then it would tell you all about the different career opportunities there. It breaks it down by different areas. So it was for psychology. It might say, like education, human services,
[00:20:25.100]Alaina Popp: business, government things like that. Then you click on it. And within there it'll tell you all the different things within government that you can do with the psychology major.
[00:20:34.090]Alaina Popp: So it's just kind of a different way to look at the different opportunities there for you with that specific major in mind.
[00:20:42.290]Alaina Popp: Holland codes is a big one that we use here at the university. It is linked into our undergraduate catalog as a way to sort. There is a quick assessment that you can do. It's just ten minutes long. But basically it kind of gives you your top three areas out of these that you fall into, based on the questions that you answer. And then you can kind of use those top three areas of your personality to look at the different majors or careers that may align with that.
[00:21:08.850]Alaina Popp: The one tip I do have, if you take this like, I said, it's only ten minutes, it's really easy. But just make sure you're answering the questions, thinking of what do I want to do eights hours a day for the rest of my life? All of us have passions. All of us have hobbies, but sometimes we want to keep those hobbies as hobbies and not make a career out of them. So just try to remember that when you're doing it.
[00:21:32.400]Alaina Popp: And then O*NET OnLine, this one is probably the most popular among students, because when you put in the career that you were looking at, you can see an accurate representation of the salaries that you're going to be getting in different States, from the starting to the average to the high end as well. But beyond that it'll also tell you from people that work in that job, the different things that they're doing on a daily basis, the different skills that they're using on a daily basis, the level of education that you need. It gives you all of that information.
[00:22:02.204]Alaina Popp: So that it can kind of help you figure out like the transferable skills again. And then also, like, oh, they have to use like they got to do a lot of data entry at that job. I don't like data entry. I don't like sitting at a computer. Maybe I'll look at something related to this, but different. So you can kind of an idea.
[00:22:21.400]Alaina Popp: And the last resource that we have available is our major exploration wheel. You can find this on the Explore Center website and on there when you click on each of the things, whether it's assess, investigate any of those. It will give you a slew of different resources that you can do. That's where you can find the Holland code, O*NET, but there's also a bunch more on there as well. There's another more detailed test called Focus 2. If you have two hours to spend doing an assessment
[00:22:45.340]Alaina Popp: you can do that one. But it's just another way to kind of take it a little bit further, and then it also goes into a little bit more where it's talking about experimenting, like things you can do to try it, try it out in a low pressure, low contact way, and then helping you make that final decision as well.
[00:23:03.090]Alaina Popp: That is my spiel. Does anybody have any questions?
[00:23:08.470]Alaina Popp: No?
[00:23:11.380]Alaina Popp: Okay.
[00:23:12.890]Alaina Popp: If you do have questions, you can always stop by the Explore Center as well.
[00:23:17.620]Alaina Popp: And the last thing I'm going to ask is, if you guys don't mind. Just follow us on Instagram that way you can stay up to date. We're going to have another workshop like this in November, so it'll be posted on there. But we always post any workshops, opportunities, events, all of that on on our Instagram right now. So it's the best way to stay up to date.
[00:23:36.170]Alaina Popp: Thank you guys all for coming.
[00:23:38.750]Alaina Popp: Thank you.
[00:23:43.110]Alaina Popp: .

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Major Exploration Series: Connecting Majors to Careers

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