With the wide array of majors and opportunities that HumEc provides, honing interests and skills into a specific career can be a challenging task. This week, I gained alumni insight from Julie Hung, a Human Development and Family Studies major. After graduating from Cornell in 1998, she pursued a career in finance, and today she has shared her experience applying her HumEc education to her career journey.
“The benefits of being in Human Ecology is the broad skills you develop from the coursework that prepares you for different career paths. I went into Cornell as a freshman pre-med but then graduated with a job at JPMorgan. The courses I took as a Human Ecology student allowed me to develop analytical, communication, project management skills. I was able to go from reading scientific studies and breaking down what the numbers were telling me to being able to write pages explaining why something happened and extrapolating what could happen in the future. The financial world requires you to be comfortable with numbers and being able to tell a story, make inferences and be forward thinking based on the information you have on hand so investors can make decisions. And Human Ecology prepares you well for that. In addition, these skills are transferable between disciplines because doctors and lawyers need to do the same thing. That’s the great thing about a Human Ecology degree.”
When asked about what advice she would give to students navigating their career paths, Ms. Hung said:
“Network. Talk to anyone and everyone to get an idea of what is out there. I’ll give you finance as an example. Most companies that come onto campus are the big ones- Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup. And usually the big departments like Investment Banking, Sales and trading. Think about what you are interested in (numbers, fast paced environment, quiet environment, writing etc) and start to network with people (Human Ecology alumni network is a great place to start!) and talk to people about what they do, what skills do they use, what do they like or don’t like etc. There are a ton of companies that don’t go into campus but they still look for recruits. One way to find out open positions is to network. Build a profile on LinkedIn. Connect to alums and reach out that way. Look at our experiences, our resumes to see what skills we use at work.”