If you graduated with a BA degree, particularly in something creative or arts-related, landing a grad job can get very competitive.
That is, if you still want to use your creativity directly in your day-to-day work.
With ever-increasing demand for STEM graduates, it’s easy to feel you should’ve ditched your paintbrush and your essay-writing to do Maths. Or Software Development. After all, technology is the future – right? Well, yes, but maybe not in the way you're thinking.
We’ve got some good news if critical thinking and coming up with new concepts are your thing: creativity may well be the most in-demand skill of the future.
And, while you’re waiting for that time to come, you can check out this list of 7 employers who are currently looking to hire creative grads right now.
Mark Cuban, a billionaire investor, sports team owner and TV personality due to his role on Shark Tank (think Dragon’s Den, but super American) says if you’re creative – your job prospects are promising. You just might have to wait a few years.
In a recent interview with Cory Johnson at Bloomberg TV, Cuban was asked about all things Tech and the Donald Trump presidency, which led him to make some interesting predictions about the future of employment.
Credit: Screenshot via bloomberg.com
“The nature of work is changing, the nature of employment is going to change,” he said.
Discussing advancements being made in Tech specifically, Cuban added, “the amount of change we’re going to see over the next five years, ten years, will dwarf everything that’s happened over the last thirty.”
Due to the introduction of artificial intelligence and machine learning, Cuban believes we’re heading towards “the automation of automation.” Meaning, software will write itself.
“And so, the people who were writing software – particularly at the lower end, unless you’re doing these advanced things – they’re gone… it’s just math,” he told Johnson.
In a future that sees machines themselves doing the work of programmers, Cuban says getting into software development at entry-level – though it’s a very attractive route right now – won’t set you up so well: “What looked like a great job graduating from college today may not be a great job graduating from college five years or ten years from now”.
Cuban says the future looks great for “English, Philosophy, Foreign Language majors”.
"Maybe not now, they’re going to starve for a while," he continued. "I personally think there’s going to be a greater demand in ten years for liberal arts majors than there are for programming majors and maybe even engineering.
"When the data’s all being spit out for you – you need a different perspective in order to have a different view of the data”.
He thinks that companies will increasingly be looking to recruit the kind of individual “who’s more of a freer thinker”.
In the next five to ten years, Cuban’s bets are on a shift in employment in favour of those who may be struggling at the moment. So, as Johnson remarked in response to Cuban's comments: “English majors of the world should celebrate”.
If you can think creatively and independently – those are certainly skills to hold onto, nurture and market yourself on, especially if things go the way Cuban predicts. A pretty exciting prospect for those of us with BA degrees.
You can watch Bloomberg's interview with Mark Cuban in full here.