Franklin & Marshall College

Career Services: Being and Doing

It's the most commonly asked question when you meet someone new: "So, what do you do?"

Although this may suffice for small talk, there is a similar question that speaks volumes about you. It is also at the core of your success after college: "Who do you want to be?"

Franklin & Marshall will give you an advantage over students from other colleges who keep the question waiting, rather than engaging it head on. Here, you will explore it just as you do other intellectual queries, by building a dialogue with faculty, staff and alumni who help you make discoveries.

At Career Services, dedicated coaches partner with you so you can achieve this insight and acquire the skills you need to produce tangible results. As early as the second semester of your first year, you can pinpoint that elusive "you are here" dot with tools like the Focus test.

Find an Internship

A liberal arts education like the one you will receive at Franklin & Marshall makes you an attractive candidate to potential employers. But they won't come looking for you. Career Services can help you secure relevant volunteer and internship positions, two excellent means of landing on a prospective employer's radar. And it's never too early to start.

Learn to Network

Career Services also will help you learn how to find people, not positions. You will be coached in how to make initial contacts and then nurture and build relationships. Then you'll do it over and over. Through this process, many Franklin & Marshall students have created their own internships and even permanent jobs.

Put Your Degree to Work

You want to major in philosophy. But you—or maybe your parents—are worried the degree won't land you a job.

As a liberal arts college, Franklin & Marshall offers more than 40 majors, and all of them can lead to desirable careers. Just think about the analytical skills you master as a student of philosophy. Would they not be an ideal underpinning for a career in law? What would you think if you knew a Franklin & Marshall chemistry major has served as Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, that a young alumna who majored in French is now a finance analyst at Morgan Stanley, or that a Government major is now chief operating officer for the Boston Red Sox?

You might rethink what counts as practical.