Antoinette Hayden

Name:  

Antoinette Hayden

MSU Degrees:

BA in English, 2013

MA in English, 2016

Favorite memories of being an undergraduate English major:

I thoroughly enjoyed class discussions. All of the instructors and professors know how to engage students in a way that ensures we feel invested in the work.

Current Position:

Talent Acquisition Strategist

Organization:  

Methodist Health System (Dallas, TX)

When you graduated with a degree in English from MSU, what were your plans for your future?  Has your career path mostly realized those early plans, or have you discovered new plans and goals along the way?

When I graduated with my Bachelor’s Degree in English from MSU, I thought I was fully prepared to work in Secondary Education. However, after a year of teaching middle school, I quickly realized that I needed to expand my options. So I went back to MSU and earned my Master’s in English Literature. While I was not meant to teach middle school, I thoroughly enjoyed my years teaching undergraduates as an English Lecturer at Mississippi State University. As I have evolved as an adult, I’ve discovered that teaching, learning, and writing are my passions, and I’ve been able to put all these skills to use everywhere I’ve worked.

What is your current occupation, and what does your work mostly consist of?

Currently, I am a Talent Acquisition Strategist at Methodist Health System in Dallas, TX. My current position involves recruiting and hiring graduating Nursing students for our Nurse Residency program. As a Talent Acquisition Strategist, I also create and implement programs to find top talent and bring them into our system. Networking and attending recruiting events at colleges and universities are other crucial parts of my role. As my role has expanded, I am invited to high schools, colleges, and universities to teach resume writing and interviewing.

Which skills that you learned as an English major do you use most in your job?

I use critical thinking and close reading every single day. I think many people underestimate the importance of developing these skills for the workplace. As a recruiter, I hear this feedback from my managers daily. They worry about the lack of critical thinking skills they are seeing in their candidates. As an English Major, literature analysis will help you critically analyze various documents in the workplace. Also, I write daily: emails, proposals, standard operating processes. If I hadn’t been an English major, I would struggle with many of these tasks. Putting together a clear and concise email to senior leadership does not come easily to everyone, and I would encourage people who struggle to communicate clearly in their writing to take an English class. Some of my students used to say, “When will I use these skills? This won’t help me!” Now, I have concrete evidence that they will use all of these skills daily.

What additional skills did you need to learn to do your job, and how did you learn them?

Excel is a must in the workplace. I’ve had to teach myself how to use Excel through YouTube tutorials. Now, I have team members who reach out to me to improve or fix their Excel sheets to improve their own processes, and I have barely scratched the surface. If there is an Excel class at MSU, I highly encourage students to take advantage of that opportunity. It’s one of the best ways to keep track of data, and it can be an invaluable tool.

I also needed to be a strong communicator to be successful in every field I’ve worked in. I learned how to be an effective public speaker by participating in conferences. I gained a lot of confidence I didn’t previously have by standing in front of crowds of strangers and explaining my research. Once I learned how to do that, I became more comfortable talking to students and talking to strangers at networking events.

Are there common misconceptions about your career field, which current English majors might share, that you have learned the truth about?

One misconception that I’ve heard from a fellow English major is that we are the only ones who utilize close reading. I work with policy every day, and I close read every document to get a better understanding of what it’s saying, the context within which it was created, and how it can be improved to help employees. Reading and writing are essential aspects of every professional career. Close reading engages crucial critical thinking skills that help shape the policies that run corporations and government entities.

When I entered the corporate world, many of my colleagues were surprised that I was good at public speaking. However, one of the by-products of teaching is becoming a more confident public speaker. Effective teachers learn how to engage their audience rather than just talking at them. Also, participating in conferences helps hone this skill. I highly encourage students to participate in conferences and/or teach if they have the opportunity.

In what ways does your career enrich your life and help you to achieve your personal as well as your professional goals?

When I taught English Literature as a Lecturer, watching students engage with literature and enjoy the conversations was the best part of my day. Watching them make connections between literature, history, and life was deeply fulfilling. I’ll always believe that literature is one of the few ways humans can, in some ways, experience other walks of life. As such, it’s a way for people to connect in meaningful ways. Facilitating this experience as a teacher motivated me to explore different types of literature, which helped me improve as an educator and grew me as a person.

The skills I learned as an educator help me in my current role as well. My ability to connect with people and converse about an array of topics makes me a stronger recruiter. It has also brought me full circle. I have gone from preparing students for the workforce to hiring them into it. Calling graduating seniors to tell them that they have landed their dream job makes me feel as though I’m making a small difference in people’s lives, especially if it’s a candidate I worked with and advocated for. My drive to help students achieve their goals has led me to become more innovative in my role and create more avenues to help students hone their writing, interviewing, and networking skills. This has led me to receive two promotions at my current company in the three years I have been here. As a result, I am currently studying for my Project Management Professional certification, which will open more professional opportunities for me.

What advice do you have for undergraduate English majors right now who might want to follow the career path you did?

Take your research seriously, and don’t be afraid to participate in the undergraduate research symposium. Even if you don’t place or win, it will be an invaluable learning experience. I also suggest you read diversely. Read comic books. Read speculative fiction. Read sci-fi. Read horror. Read authors from backgrounds that differ from yours. Read the news. Read theory, and realize there is so much to learn. Once you get comfortable learning new information, learn how to teach that information to others. If you can master that, you can take your English degree anywhere, including the corporate world as a Talent Acquisition Strategist.

[Updated August 2026]