Your degree does not have to determine the career you enter. Many graduate jobs are open to applicants from a wide range of academic backgrounds, and employers may care more about the skills, evidence and motivation you bring than whether your course title matches the role.
Changing direction can still require more thought than applying for work closely related to your degree. You need to understand whether the career has specific entry requirements, identify which parts of your existing experience are useful and explain clearly why you want to move into a different field. The right route may be a direct-entry graduate job, an internship, an apprenticeship or additional training. The important thing is to work out what the career genuinely requires before assuming that you need another qualification.
Changing direction after university is one of several ways to shape a career. Explore our Alternative Routes to Graduate Careers guide.
Start by checking whether your degree subject actually matters
Some graduate careers require a particular academic background, but many do not. Job adverts may ask for a degree without specifying the subject. Others may accept graduates from several disciplines or state that applicants from any academic background are welcome.
Read the requirements carefully rather than assuming that a role is closed to you because your degree appears unrelated. Check whether the employer asks for a specific degree subject, a particular technical skill, professional accreditation, certain school qualifications or relevant work experience. In other cases, the requirement may simply be a degree at a stated classification. A history graduate applying for a commercial role may already meet the academic requirement if the employer accepts any discipline. An English graduate interested in marketing, recruitment or consulting may also be able to apply directly where the employer is primarily looking for communication, analysis and judgement. The important distinction is between a career that prefers relevant knowledge and one that requires a formal qualification or technical foundation.
Identify careers that accept graduates from different subjects
When researching careers, do not search only for jobs connected to your degree. Look at graduate schemes, direct-entry vacancies and entry-level roles across industries that interest you. Employers may use titles such as analyst, assistant, associate, coordinator, executive, trainee or consultant rather than including the word “graduate”.
Read several vacancies in the same field and look for patterns. If employers repeatedly ask for any degree alongside skills such as communication, organisation, research or numerical reasoning, your subject may be less important than you thought.
It can also help to look at the backgrounds of people already working in the field. You may find that employees entered from a wide range of academic disciplines. Focus on the work itself rather than only the job title. Ask whether you would enjoy the day-to-day responsibilities and whether your existing strengths match the way the role operates.
Understand your transferable skills
A degree develops more than subject knowledge. Depending on your course, you may have researched complex information, written reports, analysed data, presented arguments, managed long projects, worked in groups or used specialist software. These skills may transfer directly into a different career.
A humanities degree may have strengthened your research, written communication, critical thinking and ability to handle large amounts of information. A science or engineering degree may have developed your numerical reasoning, accuracy, problem-solving and confidence with data. A creative degree may have given you experience of responding to briefs, presenting ideas, managing projects and improving work through feedback. Do not simply label yourself as having transferable skills. Employers need to see what you did and how it relates to their work.
Translate your degree experience into relevant evidence
One of the main challenges when changing direction is helping the employer see the connection between your background and the role. A recruiter may not automatically know what your dissertation, laboratory project or seminar work involved. Explain the parts that matter.
For example, instead of writing:
“Completed a final-year dissertation on Victorian political journalism.”
You could emphasise the relevant process:
“Researched and evaluated evidence from multiple primary and secondary sources, then produced a 10,000-word dissertation to a fixed deadline.”
For a research, policy, communications or consulting role, that description may be more useful because it shows how you worked. The aim is not to disguise your degree or make academic work sound like employment. It is to present the genuine skills and responsibilities in language that makes sense to the employer.
Check whether the new career has specific entry requirements
Some careers are much easier to enter from any degree than others. Before planning a route, find out whether the occupation requires a particular qualification, licence, technical skill or professional training. You may discover that your degree already meets the requirement, that the employer provides the necessary training or that a short conversion course is enough. In other fields, you may need a recognised professional qualification or a more formal retraining route.
Do this research early. It prevents you from spending time applying for jobs you cannot yet enter, but it also prevents unnecessary study when the employer is willing to train graduates from different subjects. Pay attention to wording such as “essential”, “required” and “must”. A desirable qualification is different from a compulsory one.
Do not assume you need another degree
Graduates sometimes respond to uncertainty by applying for postgraduate study immediately. Another qualification can be worthwhile when it is genuinely required for the profession or provides specialist knowledge that employers consistently demand. However, it should not be used simply to make your academic background look more relevant.
Before paying for further study, check current vacancies and ask whether employers actually require the qualification, whether you could apply directly with your existing degree and whether relevant work experience might be more valuable. Also consider whether the course leads to recognised professional entry and whether a shorter or cheaper route would provide the same practical benefit.
A master’s degree does not automatically make you more employable in a new field. In some careers, six months of relevant work, a portfolio or a practical project may provide stronger evidence.
Build evidence outside your degree
If your course does not provide enough evidence for the new career, look for other ways to demonstrate interest and ability. Useful evidence might come from part-time work, volunteering, societies, personal projects, online learning, freelance work, competitions, work shadowing or short courses.
For example:
- A biology graduate interested in marketing might use experience running social media for a society, promoting an event or analysing audience engagement.
- A politics graduate moving towards data analysis might build a small portfolio using public datasets and spreadsheet or programming tools.
- A mathematics graduate interested in publishing might highlight editing, writing, society work or a personal blog.
Choose evidence that reflects the actual role rather than collecting activities simply to make your CV look busier.
Use projects to demonstrate a new direction
A project can be particularly useful when you lack formal experience. It gives you something concrete to discuss in applications and interviews and shows that your interest extends beyond saying that you want a career change. The project does not need to be large. You could analyse a dataset, create a simple website, write an industry report, build a portfolio, produce a marketing plan or complete a technical task.
Make sure the project relates to the type of work you want to do. Explain what you created, which tools or methods you used and what you learned. A completed project can often provide stronger evidence than a long list of courses with no practical application.
Decide whether a direct-entry role is realistic
You do not always need an internship, apprenticeship or postgraduate course before changing career. A direct-entry role may be realistic if the employer accepts any degree, you already meet the main skills requirements, the role includes training and you can demonstrate genuine interest in the field. Your university work, employment, projects or extracurricular activities may already provide enough evidence.
Read several vacancies at the level you are targeting. If employers consistently ask for experience you do not yet have, you may need an intermediate step. However, do not reject yourself before applying. Employers sometimes describe an ideal candidate rather than someone who must match every desirable point. Focus first on whether you meet the essential requirements and can provide credible evidence for the main responsibilities.
When an internship may help
A graduate internship can be useful when you need practical experience in the new field or want to test whether the career actually suits you.
It may be particularly worthwhile when the industry is competitive, employers repeatedly ask for relevant experience or you want a short-term opportunity before committing to a permanent role. However, an internship should not automatically become the default route just because your degree is unrelated. A permanent entry-level job may offer better pay, stability and progression if you already meet the requirements.
The Graduate Internships guide explains how to find and assess these opportunities, including how to judge whether an internship offers meaningful experience rather than simply temporary work.
When an apprenticeship may help
An apprenticeship can provide a more structured route when the new career requires substantial occupational training. Graduates can sometimes enter apprenticeships in areas that differ considerably from their degree, provided the programme offers enough new learning and they meet the individual entry requirements. This can be especially useful where the programme includes professional qualifications, technical training or a clear pathway into a new occupation. However, an apprenticeship is not automatically necessary for a career change. Compare it with direct-entry jobs and consider whether the additional study, programme length and salary make sense for you.
The Graduate Apprenticeships guide explains eligibility, training levels and how to decide whether an apprenticeship is a suitable route after university.
Explain your change of direction clearly in applications
Employers may want to understand why you are applying for work that appears unrelated to your degree. Do not apologise for changing direction. Focus on explaining what attracted you to the new field, what you have done to explore or prepare for it and which parts of your existing experience are relevant. This gives the employer a clear reason for the change and shows that the decision is informed rather than impulsive.
Avoid vague explanations. The employer needs to understand why the new career makes sense, not only why you want to leave the old direction behind.
Tailor your CV towards the new career
Your CV should still present your background accurately, but the emphasis may need to change. Give more space to experiences that support the new direction. This might mean bringing a project, technical skill, part-time role or society responsibility higher up the document.
Your education section can also emphasise relevant modules, research methods, presentations or projects rather than focusing only on the degree title. Do not hide your subject or rename academic work to make it sound more directly related than it was. The aim is to make relevant evidence easier to find. A recruiter should be able to understand both where you have come from and why your experience makes sense for the role you are applying for.
Be realistic about gaps in your knowledge
Transferable skills are valuable, but they do not replace every form of specialist knowledge. If the role requires software, technical concepts or industry knowledge that you have not used before, recognise the gap and decide how you will address it. You may be able to learn the basics independently before applying, complete a short course or develop a project that demonstrates your progress.
At interview, it is better to say that you are developing an area than to exaggerate your knowledge. Employers hiring graduates may expect to train new starters, particularly when they recruit from several degree disciplines. What matters is whether you can learn and whether you have taken sensible steps to prepare.
Avoid trying to recreate an entire degree in your spare time
Once you decide to change direction, it can be tempting to learn everything about the new field before applying. That is rarely necessary. Focus on the knowledge needed to become a credible entry-level candidate. Review job descriptions, identify the most common requirements and prioritise those.
If employers repeatedly ask for Excel, learn Excel rather than completing several unrelated business courses. If they want writing samples, create a small portfolio rather than collecting certificates. If they require coding ability, spend more time building something than reading about programming. Practical evidence usually makes your preparation easier for an employer to assess.
Give yourself permission to change direction
Choosing a degree at 18 or 19 does not mean you must remain in the same field throughout your career. Your degree may still be valuable even when the subject itself is not directly relevant to your first graduate job. It demonstrates academic ability and may have developed skills that become important in a completely different occupation.
Career decisions also become easier once you learn more about the labour market and your own preferences. Discovering that another type of work suits you better is not the same as wasting your degree. The important thing is to make the next move deliberately. Research the career, understand its requirements and build enough evidence to show why the change makes sense.
Key takeaways
You can start a graduate career outside your degree subject when the profession does not require a particular academic background or when you can complete the additional training it genuinely needs. Begin by researching real vacancies rather than assuming your degree disqualifies you. Identify transferable skills from your course and support them with specific examples.
Build additional evidence through projects, part-time work, extracurricular activity or short training where necessary. Consider internships and apprenticeships when they solve a genuine experience or training gap, but do not assume that either is compulsory. Direct-entry work may already be realistic if you meet the essential requirements. Avoid postgraduate study unless it provides something employers genuinely value or require.
Most importantly, explain your change of direction positively. Show why the new field interests you, what you have done to explore it and how your existing experience prepares you to begin.
Frequently asked questions
How can I prove that I am interested in a different career?
Show what you have done to explore the field, not just that you like the idea of it. You could mention a project, part-time job, society role, short course, work shadowing or talks with people in the industry. Choose examples that show you have taken action and started to build useful skills or knowledge. For example, if you want to move into marketing, you might discuss running social media for a society. This helps show that your career change is based on real interest and thought.
Should I do a master�s degree to change career?
Only if the course gives you knowledge, training or access that the new career genuinely needs or values. Check job adverts first and see what employers ask for. You may find that your current degree is enough and that the employer will train you, or that a short course, project or period of useful work would be a better route. A master’s can help in some fields, but it should fill a clear gap. Do not assume another degree will automatically make you a stronger candidate in a different career.
Is an internship necessary if my degree is unrelated?
Not always. An internship can help if employers often ask for work experience that you do not yet have. It can also help you test whether the career is right for you. However, many entry-level jobs accept graduates from a range of degree subjects and include training. Compare internships with direct-entry roles before you decide. If you already meet the main requirements and can show useful skills from your degree, projects, jobs or societies, you may be ready to apply for a permanent role straight away.
Can I do an apprenticeship after university to change career?
Potentially, yes. An apprenticeship may suit you if the new career requires structured training or new technical skills. Graduates can sometimes apply when the programme provides substantial new learning and they meet the entry requirements. However, you do not need an apprenticeship simply because your degree is in another subject. Compare it with direct-entry jobs and consider the training, pay, length and likely next step. Choose the apprenticeship because it provides useful preparation for the career, rather than assuming it is automatically the best route after university.
How should I explain an unrelated degree at interview?
Explain why the new field interests you and how your degree has still helped you prepare for work. Mention the steps you have taken to explore the career, such as projects, part-time work, short courses or work shadowing. You can also point to useful skills from your degree, including research, writing, data work or problem-solving. Keep the answer positive and avoid saying that your degree was a mistake. The employer mainly needs to see that your change of direction makes sense and that you have taken practical steps to prepare for it.
What should I do if employers keep asking for experience I do not have?
Look for a pattern across several suitable job adverts. If the same skill or type of experience keeps appearing, treat it as a real gap to work on rather than applying in the same way each time. You could build evidence through a small project, part-time role, volunteering, short course or internship. Focus on the exact requirement employers want rather than trying to gain experience in general. Once you can show that area more clearly, review similar jobs again and decide whether a direct-entry role now looks realistic.
