By Erin Wai
Three graduates of Carleton University’s Bachelor of Humanities program returned to campus last fall to talk to current students about opportunities in the tech industry post-graduation.
The event was hosted on November 19, 2020, at the College of the Humanities lecture hall, with students in attendance both in-person and online via livestream.
The panelists were Amanda Hadi (BHum '10), a senior talent scout at Shopify, and Ian Hartlen (BHum '10), a senior operations specialist at Shopify. The panel was moderated by Douglas Soltys (BHum '17), the founder and editor-in-chief of BetaKit. The three said they hoped to empower current students to embrace the exceptional skills the Bachelor of Humanities program teaches them.
“Recognizing that you are something now, rather than focusing on what you need to become to be accepted in society, is a strong message that I would want to underscore,” said Soltys. “We want you all to feel like you can pursue anything you want because you’ve had the education and training to literally go and do anything.”
The Bachelor of Humanities (Great Books) program is a holistic four-year liberal arts degree in which students study primary texts in their entirety – chronologically, from ancient to modern society – and explore literature, philosophy, history, art, music, political theory, and religion to understand the evolution of thought and culture.
Soltys explained the skills that the Bachelor of Humanities teaches are foundational and easily transferrable. Among the skills all three panelists highlighted are writing, strong research and reading comprehension, communication, critical thinking, and the ability to pick up new concepts quickly.
The Bachelor of Humanities at Carleton is a small program that fosters a tight-knit community among its students and faculty. According to the panelists, that community-oriented aspect of the program gives its students natural opportunities to network and connect with their professors and with their peers.
“The most valuable part about this program is that it attracts these weird, interesting people,” said Hadi. “The friends you make and the connections you make in the College are super important.”
For example, Hadi said she has stayed friends with her classmates over the past 10 years and they have all helped each other find jobs and further their careers.
“I think the point of liberal arts is that it is explicitly not about job training – and that’s actually the beauty of it,” explained Soltys. “I think we’re saying that becoming a human in this program, and a well-read one does actually make you an interesting person in the job market and you can use those skills to go and do things that you might want to.”
Hartlen agreed that having a unique path through the liberal arts to his career in tech is in part what helped him achieve the success he has found.
“I try to lead with the fact that I have a philosophy degree,” said Hartlen, who combined his B.Hum with an Honours in Philosophy. “Being well-read and having a bit of a different background and a different perspective makes you an interesting candidate for people.”
As the job market is changing, especially in the tech field, humanities programs give graduates the ability to adapt with that evolution. According to Hartlen, companies “will need people who can put context around what they do technically to communicate that to the rest of the world and everyone here in this room (i.e., humanities students) is capable of doing that.”
Soltys advises that “where you want to be is pushing the emerging conversation around STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math), because companies in Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere are realizing that they’ve maybe over-indexed in specific skill sets, and the people they need to manage their teams of engineers are those with soft skills and training from the arts.”
All three alumni echoed the advice that a career path is not a straightforward line, but rather an accumulation of skills from one job to another. A humanities program teaches students to be adaptable, to learn well and engage with what they are learning, and those skills are transferable to any job.
“The pressure that I think society puts on students – from your high school teachers, your parents, whatever – to be something when you graduate is […] something you should let go of to experience different career paths and different potentials,” said Dr. Shawna Dolansky, interim College of the Humanities Director and organizer of the event.
“I lead my life and I let my interests and passions lead me where they will – and right now, that’s a role in a technology company,” said Hadi. “They hired me knowing I have transferable skills, that I didn’t do the job before I do now, but they knew I could be taught and trained how to do it and they wanted to invest in that.”
With the potential for multiple career paths, the panelists advised students to embrace the discomfort of not being trained for a specific job and not knowing exactly where life will lead you after graduation.
“Prepare yourself for a little bit of uncertainty and be kind to yourself – like Shawna said, you don’t have to have it figured out,” said Hartlen.
“You’ve gotten a better education than most people in Canada or elsewhere,” said Soltys. “Part of that realization that we’ve all had, in sitting in a professional setting, is realizing that just being in discussion groups and discussing ideas based upon difficult readings that you’ve done, has put you miles ahead of everyone else in that room who’s hopefully just trying to do their job.”
Learn more about the Bachelor of Humanities "Great Books" program in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.