At this time of year at LSE it can sometimes appear as if everyone wants to work in Finance. Just take a look around campus and you’ll see most of the major finance organisations promoting their graduate schemes and advertising their jobs on Careerhub. However the reality is that most students who graduate from LSE won’t go on to work in Finance. Indeed the career options open to you as an LSE graduate are much wider and more numerous than you might currently imagine.

Get researching

If you take a look at the employment sectors section of our website you’ll see we’ve grouped the most common career areas for LSE students together with detailed information on how to get into them. Sectors range from international development, think tanks, healthcare, teaching and much more. In many cases you won’t need a particular degree to enter them – employers are often more interested in the skills you can bring from your work experience, education and extra-curricular activities.

Check out alumni career paths

Another way of broadening your options is to look at our Graduate Destinations website. You can research where past students from your course have gone on to work and also read case study profiles where alums from your course talk about their experiences at LSE and their subsequent career.

Explore your options and interests

We also recommend spending some time on our online interactive career guide – Career Builder. This has been developed especially with LSE students in mind. It will take you through all the key aspects of career planning in an interesting, interactive way and encourage you to think about what’s important to you as well as identifying what skills you have that employers will be interested in.

It’s easy to be swept up in the frantic-ness of Michaelmas Term. Maybe you have friends who are all applying to finance and consulting firms and you find yourself under pressure to do the same. If you can step aside from this and take a calm look at what it is that really interests you (not what interests your peers), you’ll be in a much better place to develop a career in which you not only do well but also enjoy!

Come and talk to us

Our careers consultants are here for all LSE students – whether you know what you want to do or not. Book a one-to-one careers discussion and go from there!