Most of what’s written about getting into practicing anthropology is written by well established figures at the end of a successful career, most of whom describe falling into it after receiving their PhD’s and a brief stint in academia. But there are other ways to go. 

The trick is to understand that there are solid differences between practicing anthropology and academic anthropology in terms of outlook and the goals of your research.  In academic anthropology you produce knowledge for the academy, and the goal is getting published and pushing students through the graduate school.  In practicing anthropology you’re lucky if you even get to call yourself an anthropologist, and all that matters is how well you are able to produce, in a timely fashion, a predetermined set of “deliverables” for a client, agency, business, or non-profit.  In the grad school you have the luxury of studying whatever is interesting to you (or your professor), and you can make a contribution to the ethnographic record.  In the practice of anthropology, though, a client outlines your field site, and determines the parameters of study.  As a practitioner you will always have in your mind the question ‘how will this benefit my client?’ or, ‘how will this help them accomplish their needs and goals’? 

This is something that students should understand before applying to a graduate program. Schools that benefit future academics (U. of Chicago, Berkley, Columbia, etc…), are usually not the schools that will benefit a future practicing anthropologist.  When you enter into a prestigious graduate program, you soon learn that your professors’ job is to teach you how do replace them one day, even though the math indicates this probably won’t happen—after all each professor trains something like 20 Ph.D. students during their career, and logically, only one can “replace” them.  The others then win the booby prize by being sent packing off to a teaching U. (like Tony), or slipping into the “practice” route.  But, if you are bright enough to know up-front that you want to work as a practicing anthropolgist, and have no intention of becoming a professor, then the Chciago, Berkeley, Columbia route really isn’t going to help you gain the skills you need especially if you don’t plan on getting your PhD. I would recommend instead going to a well-ranked undergraduate institution with a theory-heavy program, and then to a high quality Master’s applied graduate program (U. of South Florida, U. of North Texas, U. of Maryland).  The undergraduate program will teach you anthropology (all four fields), and the graduate program teaches you the methods and techniques to actually practice anthropology.  This graduate program should include one course in advanced statistics, geographic information systems (GIS) techniques, human geography, and maybe population, and a minor in a relevant foreign language.  Other elective courses, and a possible second M.S. degree, will depend on what sub-fields you plan on specializing in.   These are worth far more to future practicing ethnographers than a summer dig, or memorizing primate nomenclature, which are things you’ll do in a good undergraduate program anyway. 

At the end of the day employers care about what you can do for them, which is what you need to concentrate on. This means having things on a resume like GIS, multivariate analysis, qualitative methods, and knowledge of software packages. If you are going overseas, indicate language skills, backed up with scores on standardized tests.  (Military recruiters are happy set up these tests for you free of charge, just don’t let them know you probably aren’t going to join). For example, very few people outside of the academy are going to care about your graduate thesis or dissertation on the linguistic patterns of cowboys, or the parenting strategies or the LGBT community in the Philippines. However, a resume that explains how your thesis consisted of a structured study for a public health dept., Samsung, or whoever, and how you were able to solve some problem for them is something that employers want to hear about.  If you have the right skill set then there are plenty of jobs out there, but it requires proper planning, training, and experience. 

 If you’d like to work in the non-profit sector, then intern or do your thesis for a non-profit.  Chances are you will be working with a future employer (this is how most professionals start out).  Don’t be afraid to dream big.  If you want to work in urban development like I did, then market yourself to a major city.  Chances are good that whoever you intern with, or do research for, will appreciate the anthropological difference and ask you to stay on.

 Another thing you will learn as an anthropologist is that nothing is more interesting to someone than themselves.  You will be amazed at how well prominent people doing jobs you want to do someday respond to an eager student when asked, “Please tell me about your job, and tell me how I can do what you do someday.”  After you graduate you’re just some person looking for a job, but as a student you are a non-threatening young student that they can mentor.

 Also, a practicing anthropolgist who has two master’s degrees is eminently marketable.  And two Master’s degrees can take far less time and cost less money than one Ph.D.  If you’d like to be a medical anthropologist, a degree in anthropology combined with a Master’s in Public Health gives you the skills you need, and increases your standing among your competition.  If you add a language like French to work in areas of Africa to that then you’ll be set.  Finally, I would recommend that those interested in working outside of the academy that you purchase Riall Nolan’s, Anthropology in Practice: Building a Career Outside of the Academy.  

 So, next time you tell someone that you’re majoring in anthropology, and they ask you, “what are you gonna do with that,” you can tell them exactly what you’re going to do “with that.”  All you need is a realistic goal, a solid plan, a good work ethic, and a hustler’s spirit.  Or, you can go to grad school, because you don’t want to pay back your student loans, and haven’t figured what do with your life like most students at your university.

COMPANY: Intuit

JOB LOCATION: San Diego, CA

JOB TITLE: Staff User Researcher

JOB DURATION: FTE

JOB DESCRIPTION:

Intuit is a leading software provider of business and financial management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, consumers and accounting professionals. You probably know us by our flagship products, QuickBooks(r), Quicken(r) and TurboTax(r), but that’s just the start. We are currently going through a fundamental transformation from a shrink-wrapped software company to one of the country’s leading providers of web-based applications and solutions.
Come join Intuit as part of the Consumer Tax team as a Staff User Experience Researcher, New Business Initiatives . We are looking for creative problem solvers with a passion for innovation to join our team and revolutionize the way the world does business.

Summary:
New Business Initiatives (NBI) is a group in San Diego dedicated to finding Intuit’s next big consumer-facing ideas and building them into businesses. It is a fast-paced and exciting atmosphere, and a great fit for innovative people who love problem-solving. The team is hungry for customer insights, making this a great opportunity for researchers to have a direct impact on the success of the overall business.

The Staff User Experience Researcher will report into the Customer and Market Insights (CMI) group and will partner with NBI product managers and marketers across a variety of initiatives. He/she will be responsible for working cross functionally with teams to shape and execute learning plans, with an emphasis on making sure that new products/experiences deliver on customers’ needs.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Conduct research throughout the design process to ensure that experiences are delivering on business goals and customer needs
• Develop XD-centric research plans in conjunction with business owners and designers
• Develop overall business learning plans to help teams gain the insights necessary to drive projects forward successfully
• Balance organizational demands, timelines and internal milestones to determine the most appropriate methodology for research
• Execute in-house on research using a variety of research methodologies
• Manage vendor relationships with recruiters and outsourced research companies

Qualifications:

• 5 to 7 years of research experience
• Solid, demonstrated experience conducting usability research for large scale products, websites or web-based applications
• Must be able to work independently
• Experience writing appropriate discussion guides, screeners, test protocols, etc
• Experience with quantitative research and related statistical packages like SPSS are a plus, but not required
• Education: Minimum Bachelor’s Degree with advanced degree preferred (e.g. MBA, MA, Ph.D.)

COMPANY: Intuit

JOB LOCATION: Mountain View, CA

JOB TITLE: Experience Design Manager

JOB DURATION: FTE

JOB DESCRIPTION:
Come join Intuit as part of the Small Business – Financial Management Solutions group as a Experience Design (XD) Manager. We are looking for creative problem solvers with a passion for innovation to join our team and revolutionize the way the world does business.

The Experience Design (XD) Manager is responsible for inspiring individuals and teams across the Financial Management Solutions group.
This individual will work with Product Development, Product Management, Marketing and others to provide the leadership and direction necessary to deliver great end-to-end user experiences for QuickBooks software products.

This leader will have a proven track record in setting a vision for great customer experiences, inspiring others to get behind the vision, and ultimately delivering products and services that are known for their delightful experience and ease of use. The individual will have 7+ years of demonstrated results as a practitioner of design and research. He/she will bring deep knowledge of innovation, customer research, ideation, storytelling, prototyping, design frameworks, concept visualization, etc and will manage and inspire a team of interaction and visual designers to produce great outcomes. In addition, this person will have a demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with a variety of business leaders, technology leaders, Product Managers and other key people to develop large growth initiatives.

JOB QUALIFICATIONS:

• Strong leadership and change management skills, being able to galvanize energy and great people around delighting customers through great user experiences, and ensure successful implementation through influence and hands-on leadership
• Strong understanding of software products and services environments for consumer customers, while also having a strong business sense and appreciation
• Experience attracting, developing, and exciting Experience Design talent
• Great communication skills, being able to paint an exciting vision for experience design and drive it into practical reality
• 10+ years of significant track record in defining and delivering great user experiences in software products and services to a large number of customers
• 3+ years experience managing an experience design team and a strong track-record of developing and hiring great people
• Master’s in interaction design, the social sciences, or related fields
• Excellent command of: user experience methods, design principles, problem-framing skills, verbal and written communication skills
• Exemplary ability to build positive, collaborative relationships across teams/groups/functions through facilitative leadership, and to “raise the bar” continually as an effective leader of positive change
• Strong track-record of developing and hiring great people
• Experience, comfort and track-record in dealing at all levels in a large organization, and in leading both through influence and hands-on ownership

CONTACT INFORMATION:
nancy_falkenburg@intuit.com.

Design Science is seeking a researcher to design, manage, and conduct ethnographic projects. Most of the projects involve providing information to support new product development, particularly for medical devices.

Required:

• Experience conducting observational research.
• Advanced degree in Cultural Anthropology or a related field.
• Ability and willingness to travel, sometimes extensively, on short notice.

Desired:

• Research experience for product design.
• Medical/health care-related background.
• Knowledge of basic statistics.

About Design Science:
Design Science, established in 1991, is a world leader in helping manufacturers tailor their products to the needs of their users.
For more information about the position and to apply, please see: http://ds.dscience.com/ethnography. For additional questions, you may contact Nicole Dery, nicole@dscience.com

       Some years ago, I asked the question, “Who Stole Culture from Anthropology?” in a brief essay in  Anthropology News in 2006.  I raised the question because many anthropologists had complained to me since about 1987, about how they had trained “too many” anthropologists with the result that they were unemployed.  The discipline seemed to be in a perpetual depression, wallowing in its own insecurities, seemingly like no other.  This bothered me though, in part I guess because I was a victim of this insecurity.  Indeed, it was in 1987 that I first applied for graduate study in Anthropology because I thought the subject of culture—which anthropology has a special claim on—was among the noblest.  My application was rejected, and I was told by some old grizzled anthropological veteran that I was lucky not to be going into the field since, after all, there were too many anthropologists, and no one really cared about culture anyway.

      But when I looked around me, I  found that many many people were “doing” the core subject of anthropology, culture.  At the university, these people were found in almost any department except anthropology.  Thus there are classes on culture and marketing, multi-cultural classrooms, genetics and culture, multi-cultural social work, culture and the law, and in my own discipline of sociology classes like popular culture, and cultural contacts/conflicts. 

        Many of these courses are well-done, but they do not keep culture at the center of what is taught.  Nor do they keep ethnographic observation, or cultural anthropology at the center of things.  Rather, they are expressions of their own disciplines, which is perhaps as it should be.  Thus, a class on culture and marketing focuses on how to sell in modern multi-cultural societies, the multi-cultural classroom course focuses on delivering a curriculum to a diverse audience.  Social workers learn how to offer services to people who have different understandings of “the system”, and biologists speculate about how culture selects for particular genes and not others.  In sociology, where we have the closely related concept of “society” and a strong emphasis on survey research, culture is often reduced to a box checked on a survey form.  But missing are the traditions of anthropology, including emphasis on field work, ethnographic writing, four fields approach, and the rich traditions of people like Malinowski, Boas, and Durkheim.

           Chico State where I teach is right now engaged in an overdue dividing up of the “general education” curriculum.  Consistent with trends in higher education, we are developing seven (or eight or ten) pathways which students can select for their general education program.  There will presumably be pathways for internationalization, sustainability, communities, technology, health, and a range of other subjects which cut across disciplines.  Culture probably will not be there, though I suppose it should be.  But I wonder, if it was there, would our student body be served any better?  The range of courses they would be required to take would come from almost anywhere except anthropology, and it is still unlikely that our undergraduates would be required to read any of the anthropological greats, or listen to someone who has experienced the loneliness and anomy of anthropological fieldwork.

        Cindy van Gilder once asked on this blog when anthropology’s wayward child—that is culture—would come home.  When will anthropology’s child ever finish flirting with the Business School, Education School, Sociology Department, or Biology Department?  Or in other words, when will Cultural Anthropology be given the same weight in the curriculum of the different disciplines as Accounting in Business, Classroom Management in Education, Statistical Methods in Sociology, and Genetics in Biology.  When this happens, maybe all those under-employed Ph.D.s from Anthropology will begin to claim their discipline back.