What have History Graduates done with their degrees?: Tom

What have History Graduates done with their degrees?

Welcome to our new series of blog posts where we post about what recent students have done with their undergraduate degrees in History! We have worked with Dr Charlie Rozier, the History employability officer, to give you some insight into what you could do with your History degree!

You might be surprised!

1: What is your name?
Tom Ratcliffe

2: Where did you study, what year did you graduate?
Degree in History and Archaeology, at the University of Leicester – 2004 -2008

3: How did you feel about your career choices when you graduated? Did you know what career you wanted?
I always had a great passion for the heritage sector and visiting historic sites, and therefore I knew I wanted to be involved in consultancy / research in this sector when I came towards the end of my degree.

4: Describe your current job (including job title and organisation):
Tourism / Heritage Researcher for Qa Research (http://www.qaresearch.co.uk/)

Tom Ratcliffe

 5: Do you use the skills learned in your history degree at work? If so, how?
Writing in a clear and concise style
Drawing conclusions from evidence
Presentations in front of different audience types
Flexibility – ability to learn about a variety of subject matters
Ability to scan documents and take in information

Finally: Do you have any careers advice for history graduates?
History as a subject gives you a wide range of skills for future jobs. If you want to narrow these types of skills down it can often by useful to look into a Masters or some type of Postgraduate qualification. If you have a high level of interest in history it is often worth looking into Postgraduate studies in specifically History (for more information about the opportunities at Swansea, see: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/postgraduate/taught/artsandhumanities/)
The best advice can often be found from just speaking to people about their careers and how they started out and developed. It can take time to find a job and you want to make that you find the right one.

Thank you, Tom!

If you want to get more information about employability or some advice, please email Dr Charlie Rozer at c.c.rozier@swansea.ac.uk and follow him on twitter at @RozierHistorian