5 Common Careers for English Graduates

You’ve slaved your way through an English literature or language degree. Now, you’re either one of the lucky few who’ve fallen straight from university into the dream job, or one of the majority, stranded in an ocean of temp jobs and unemployment.

Either way, you might be wondering which direction your career will go in. Even the dream job can take a turn for the not-so-dream. As an English graduate, your options are as diverse as your vocabulary. Whether it’s to make you feel smug in your professional security or give you some guidance as to where to look, here’s a list of five of the most common English graduate jobs.

Marketing Assistant

Marketing and advertising is one of the most popular sectors for graduates. It requires little training compared to sectors like law, accountancy and banking. The learning curve of marketing is steep but happens quickly, making graduates a good fit for entry-level roles, or even more senior roles like Marketing Manager, Account Manager and Social Media Manager. The role a graduate will go into depends on their experience, which means that the sooner you start getting work experience, the better.

PR Assistant

PR, like marketing and advertising, is an industry full of roles which need writers. And good ones, at that. That’s why English grads are perfect for PR.

If you haven’t graduated from your English degree yet, now’s a really good time to wipe from your mind the idea that you are destined to be an artist. You are destined to survive and artistry comes next. Your degree will load you up with transferrable skills; project and time management, interpersonal skills, and written English. You will have to use all of these as a PR Assistant, PR Agent or PR Manager. If you want to write a novel on the side – be the world’s guest.

Recruiter

Sometimes it seems like there are more recruiters than any other kind of person on earth. Recruitment offers financial and lifestyle stability and security in spades – far more so than more creative industries like media or publishing. Creative industries often see you desperately competing for even the lowest-paid work (kindly called “committing to your art”).

This has its merits, but so does the alternative – using the transferable skills you’ve acquired from your degree to put you in an excellent admin role which allows you enough disposable income and free time to focus on your social life or hobbies.

Teacher

Teachers are underpaid but badly needed. However, like writing and acting, teaching has a certain romance to it. After all, without teachers, there are no writers or actors. Teachers create our future, and with numerous government cuts to education, good teachers are more necessary than ever.

Whether you teach at primary or secondary level, or even go into higher education as an academic or lecturer, teaching is a common and vital English graduate job. You might need to take a course or two after graduating to qualify as a teacher but it is well worth it.

Content Creator

Content Creator is a role which could exist within marketing, advertising, publishing, PR, the media or pretty much any other industry. The world needs writers in their many different forms. The industries of construction and engineering need technical writers – a difficult role which requires a high level of understanding of the subject matter.

Magazines, blogs and newspapers in digital and print format need regular contributors, be they freelance or staff. Social media agencies, marketing agencies, and all businesses need copywriters to create product descriptions and promotional copy. These are highly sought-after writing roles but there are lots of them about, especially in internship form, and more and more graduates are snapping them up.

Cristina studied English Literature and Hispanic Studies at Queen Mary University of London and now works as a writer and photographer. Catch her on Twitter, LinkedIn and her website.

Inspiring Interns is a graduate recruitment agency which specialises in sourcing candidates for internship jobs and giving out graduate careers advice. To hire graduates or browse graduate jobs London, visit our website.