Rosa
What kinds of jobs are completely nondiscriminatory in terms of gender and ethnicity?
I am #Undecided and I need help deciding which major I want to pursue. I don't know which job I want to pursue yet, but I do desire a job that would hire a person based on merit- not because of my looks or to fill a diversity quota.
2 answers
Nathan O'Neill
Nathan’s Answer
I think you need to look at it a little differently. When you go for an interview, be prepared, be enthusiastic and be happy. It is good that a company has invited you for an interview so they may not care about gender or ethnicity. Choose a major that you are interested in and then it won't feel like hard work. Then when you go to find a job, it will be easy to be enthusiastic in an interview. It is impossible to say which jobs are discriminatory or not but if someone doesn't want to hire someone because of race or gender then I don't think you want to work for a company like that anyway. Best of luck in the future and I hope I answered your question
Gloria Ortiz
Gloria’s Answer
It is okay to be concerned that you might be hired or not hired for your looks or a quota. There are laws in place, at least for diversity elements. There are some biases that you cannot control. All you can do is your best. I would say that if you were not chosen because of one of those factors, you are better off not working there. If you have been chosen for one of those reasons, then you have to do your best to be good at your job to show that you have a right to be there that has nothing to do with either thing. I have experienced being a quota hire, or at least it was spoken to me that way. That same person, upon learning that I was leaving for another job, tried to convince me to stay. Why? Not to fill a quota anymore. I had proven to be one of the most valuable people who worked for him. He even offered me more money. My new job was more of what I wanted to do, so I left.
Since you are just starting your college experience, you should not feel a lot of pressure to decide on a major just yet. Most of your major work is done during your junior and senior year. I would suggest that you work hard on the general courses that you need to take at your university – English, History, Math, etc. I would also recommend that you challenge yourself with the elective courses that you take. If you do not really know what you want to major in, you should start to look in places where you have never looked. Take the elective that you don’t even know what it is. That will expose you to new experiences that may catch your attention. Or you may find that something you don’t think would be a good major is actually what you want to do. You should not be afraid of majors where you are not quite sure what you will do with it as a job. I ended up graduating with what is the equivalent of a Liberal Arts degree at a lot of universities. And what do I do? I am an Instructional Designer.
Gloria