As you progress through college, keep track of the skills you are acquiring. As you prepare your resume, you will want to couch these skills in language that employers can recognize. It’s unlikely that anyone will hire you because you can interpret a poem by Emily Dickinson, but they will hire you if you’ve mastered the transferable skills involved in interpreting that poem.
Skills that English majors can often offer employers:
Communication
Influencing and persuading
Assessing needs of an audience
Presenting alternative viewpoints
Clarifying ideas
Making oral presentations
Shaping general ideas into specific points and programs
Research
Designing/directing projects
Organizing ideas/information
Developing hypotheses
Solving problems
Using information resources
Comparing interpretations
Critical Thinking and Analysis
Summarizing ideas
Comparing information
Using theoretical approaches
Developing critical evaluations
Thinking independently
Synthesizing ideas/themes
Applying close reading and interpretation
Mastering technical jargon
Writing
Abstracting information
Interpreting data
Editing
Writing concisely
Writing creatively
Drafting documents
Other
Working independently
Working as part of a team
Adapted from Major Options by Nicholas Basta (Stonesong Press, 1991)