To ask what your high-paying jobs are?

[patienceandprudence]

My DD is in uni doing History. We’re working class through and through, and while she we were chatting about jobs she said that more than anything she’d like to earn a good amount. I’ve no idea what to suggest and DD only came up with a role in the Civil Service.

I always see people on here with high-paying jobs. What could she do with a History degree?

@galacticpixels
I know lots of people working in different roles in tech companies with humanities degrees. Even a lot of the software developers didn't study computer science in uni and instead did 1 or 2 year conversion courses.

can you recommend any conversion courses for tech or do you mean Masters?
Thanks

Law
Banking
Finance and investment
IT consulting
Accountancy
Some PR jobs pay pretty well.

Basically any job which supports the financial market will be pretty well paid at senior levels.

I would imagine this is less easy outside London (with the possible exceptions of Edinburgh and Manchester)

Doctors and dentists can get paid very well but it takes a while.

Civil service jobs are not well paid unless very senior.

IT. Not banking. 6 figure. No degree. No dullard but I've blagged a lot

VP/Director/Partner big tech consulting, no degree, ~20 years experience, outside London. 200k salary (400k package).

You either want to work as senior management+ in a Fortune 500 organisation, or in a professional services organisation that has them as clients (Legal, accounting, tech, BPO). Big 4 has been widely mentioned. Atos, Cap Gemini, Accenture, HPE/DXC, IBM, Cognizant, WiPro, TCS, etc.

Working your way up and staying in senior positions in and around the Fortune 500 is no holiday. You will need resilience, passion, incredible work ethic and more resilience. You'll also need to be pretty smart, confident, and relatively articulate.

I was lucky to time the market around tech being the new professional services industry, hence getting away without a degree. I'd struggle a lot now.

@CallyWW

What did she think would happen when she decided to do a degree in History? It should be illegal for universities to offer these types of degrees that provide zero actual job skills (other than a history teacher).

Are you taking the piss? This is literally a thread full of posts from people who’ve converted their history degrees into good jobs which are not history teaching.

@Greytminds

Moving into a consultancy / big four environment could be a well paid option that is more likely to take on generalist candidates. Worth exploring but very competitive. Also the NHS management trainee scheme is worth looking at.

I did English Lit as my main degree and I now work in programme management as a Director. My full time package is over £150k including benefits and I can work flexibly too. I really enjoy my job. Younger members of my team with only a few years work experience are already on £65-70k plus benefits.

Programme management within the NHS? What is a programme in this context? Thanks :)

@canyoutoleratethis

I was a career changer and also took 6 years out of work to be a SAHM. I took a temporary admin role in an NHS project management. office as I wanted to try out the NHS/project management (having had a tiny amount of previous PM experience). I was promoted within 4 months and had another promotion to a substantive role within the year, after I did a PM qualification. Then another, then another and then I changed organisation and into a more senior role. I have had another promotion in the year I have been here and another is on the cards. The whole process took 5 years for me, from £20k to £65k and I’m happy with that as I have also had a lot of flexibility and work life balance. Less so now.

The NHS graduate scheme seems to be a good spring board for many.

She is studying at a RG uni although I think it’s considered more top 20, rather than top 10. She is on track to get a first.

Sorry for the silly 6 figure question, I’ve never heard of anyone getting 6 figures from a regular job in my area— then again my area isn’t the sort of place you do that

Oh, and I'm in the arse end of nowhere. Not working in the Big Smoke. Not even Little Smoke

Another for law (can get 6 figures outside of London at senior level)
Or agree PR/comms

Get a good degree and then any good grad scheme (civil service, NHS, management consultancy, telecoms, retail, digital industries etc). That is likely to lead to a high paid job within 10 years (£50k ++).
I wouldn’t suggest medicine or law - we have to get past these being the go-to high paid careers. They’re also brutal hours / family wise, and often your hourly pay is crap given the number of hours worked!

Let's be clear then. The majority of people on six figures, although nowadays I think a sum beyond the normal is probably £150k plus; more like £200k, do not do regular jobs. They are highly qualified, highly trained and tend to have an innate understanding of their business. When DH was a very high earner he was out of the house before 7am, home after 9.30pm and there could be months when he barely participated in family life. My 20s/early30s were similar although I burnt myself out (pre family)

We are both 60+ now. Paradoxically he has gone on a gentler trajectory although not without peaks and my career (as the dc grew went back on an upward trajectory. We have both spent 4/5 hours working this pm and will both render between 48 and 50+ hours next week, albeit not the silly hours of yore.

I think it would be helpful if your dd could define what it is she wants from life. I had no degree when I started work at 20ish (but you could do that 40 years ago); DH is Oxbridge and went to the Bar.

I think tech/digital focused roles are the ones that are going to be able to command big salaries in the near future. There are far fewer people qualified in these areas than there are jobs, and the need for these types of jobs is increasing massively, so candidates can basically ask for what they want. It’s all supply and demand really in the labour market.
She could look into digital engineering, e-commerce and IT architecture.
This is not the work I do but we’ve been trying to recruit for these roles and there are just so few candidates that they all have multiple employers fighting over them.

For context, I did a grad scheme and earned £23k ish whilst doing it. I now earn £85k ish (13 years after graduating). I was earning £65k ish within 6 years of graduating.

@CallyWW, as everyone else has said, that's a foolish way to look at a degree. History is a degree that requires serious skills of analysis, writing, and persuasion. These are skills that are actively sought by employers. University isn't merely about vocational degrees, which tend to train you deeply but narrowly for a single profession. What a good history degree shows is that you can think and you can work.

In fact, most senior executives I know actively look for people with skills-based degrees rather than anything vocational. As a dear friend (senior executive, upper six figures, terribly successful, degree in English) said to me, "I can teach them anything they need to know about my company in six months. And I don't want to train them out of bad habits and business speak that they've learned at uni. What I want is someone I can trust to think." She likes adaptable, curious, deep thinkers who can approach new problems and evolve. History's perfect for that. She'd rather hire a history student than a general business student any day of the week.

Plus, the most elite unis don't have vocational degrees. Meaning that high-paying firms are already used to taking students with degrees in history, English, languages, philosophy, etc.

@Nancydrawn - Oxford and Cambridge don't have medicine, veterinary medicine, law, etc., then

@TheKeatingFive

Academia and university lecturing? She’d make 50k as a senior lecturer…no idea how competitive history jobs are and she’d need to do further study after her degree.

Holy crap please don’t. Academia in the humanities is total dumpster fire territory these days. There are no jobs. It’s soul destroying.

Yes. I work in academia, a world leading university, have been lucky enough to have all my degrees paid for by grants, and I still had to move home aged thirty because I couldn’t afford rent. I only started earning above 21K at the age of 33. I’ve gone from precarious ‘prestigious’ fellowship to precarious fellowship, paid peanuts. I feel extremely privileged in some respects and I love my subject, but I am on this thread to try and find out how on Earth I can get a job where I feel valued and secure. Sorry.

Well, they both have law and medicine. But Oxford doesn't have veterinary medicine, unless things have changed.

And while they both have things that are more clearly technical, like engineering or computer science, they don't have accounting, or general business (Cambridge does have land management), or finance, or marketing, or fashion, or real estate, or nursing, or pharmacy.

All of which can be good and necessary degrees--and I am not disparaging them. But my point is that employers are already used to taking someone who has a degree in, say, theology or music or philosophy and having them become producers or lawyers or consultants or managers or whatever. The point is that they're comfortable with non-vocational, and even non-professional, degrees.

Has she has had a look at the Bright Network?
www.brightnetwork.co.uk/

No shame in wanting to be financially comfortable- actually so important to honour your values for a happy life and if abundance is one of them then by all means honour it without guilt.

I think a graduate programme at any big company (big 4, also Management consulting, big brand names, big advertising conglomerates etc) would be worth looking for - good info on the Bright Network. And can your daughter’s university help?

You mentioned “outside of London” - is that her preference or yours? When I advise new grads my advice is always for them to define success on their own terms - hone in on their values, think about what they would do if money were no object (where would they live? What would their days be like etc) and to seek opportunities that give them some of that, rather than rushing to something they feel they “should” do.it might be worth her understanding why she wants to earn a high wage to check how high in the priority list that truly is. Very high paying graduate roles (Goldman Sachs etc) demand 100 hour weeks regularly. Is it that high on the list?

Finally, and this isn’t a popular opinion:
Social capital matters.
Some firms are great at hiring people from diverse backgrounds but the reality is that most big companies are stuffed full of affluent middles who come from long lines of affluent middles and are looking for “people like us”. Can her uni help with internships?And networking - can they help her set up informational interviews with people in different careers? Or best yet, can they even setting her up with mentors etc? A mentor would be invaluable when it comes to building social capital.

Another great resource:
designingyour.life/

Good luck to your daughter!

If she wants to be on 100k within 5 or so years of graduating

Software engineer / certain tech jobs
Lawyer (city law @ magic circle or US firm)
Investment banking (front office pays most)
Consultancy @ Bain, BCG, McKinsey
Private equity / venture capital firm
Hedge fund
Actuary

Others may disagree but London commands highest salaries by a long way & largest companies etc.

Whatever she decided, make sure she works or does something useful with her holidays. Anything to pick up basic life and work-place skills.

Too many students spend their summers dossing around at mum and dads expense. I see them all the time in my job. They have nothing on their cv. Not even a paper round

If she wants to get on a decent grad scheme, she will need some good skills and experiences to discuss at the interview.

Lots of recommendations for city law. It is well paid, but not in the same league as investment banking. DH is a partner in a silver circle firm. He earns well, but if he’d gone into investments he’d have retired five years ago ( and be following his true passions of growing heritage Apple trees and writing short stories). Luckily, he learned to invest in his spare time, so we’ve done okay and he doesn’t work long hours. We are always amazed how many of his colleagues struggle to stay afloat on their drawings alone.

It’s easier to build a career in London. Changing company reasonably frequently can really help with salary jumps. London just has more jobs and more opportunities. So worth her thinking about spending some time in London to build experience and salary quickly, then moving wherever she wants.

Accountancy. 10 years in I’m on just over £60k, earning potential of £250k upwards in next 10 years, have colleagues with degrees in all sorts of subjects.