That up there is one of my prized possessions. That is my college degree and I am very proud of it. I worked hard for it for a very long time and receiving it is one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. It meant a lot of things for me but there's one thing in particular it did not mean for me: a guaranteed career.
Now there are a number of reasons for that but there is one in particular I would like to focus on today. That reason is that my degree is simply in Marketing with no specialization. I believe this is a problem for many Marketing and Management majors as they graduate in this day and age.
There was a time when it seemed that all one needed to get in on the ground floor of a good company was a degree in anything. It didn't matter whether that degree had anything to do with that industry. Simply having a degree meant that a person was reasonably intelligent, trainable, and worthy of an opportunity. In particular a general business degree could be seen as something of a "Golden Ticket".
But times have changed and I had to learn that the hard way. When the economy collapsed the job market became a buyers market. Companies have the pick of the litter and can afford to be choosy with their hiring standards. So just having a degree is no longer the foot in the door of your dream career.
If I had it to do over again I would absolutely do more to specialize myself in something more specific. But you cannot change the past; you can only learn from it and use what you have learned to better yourself going forward and pass that knowledge on to those who are where you were.
Coming out of college I had to ask myself the questions I should have asked before. What kind of marketing will I do? What will I market? So that's what I have done for the last year.
I've had an interest in social media marketing for several years. So I decided I was going to take the time to really study it and learn it. My study of social media lead me to an interest in learning about search engine optimization (SEO). Studying SEO lead me to wanting to learn how to develop full-scale online marketing strategies. That took me to learning about how important it is to create quality written content for websites, social media platforms, blogs, etc. And that is where the gears really started turning for me as I have always had strong writing skills so that can be a real golden opportunity for me. Going forward I will need to learn more about producing & distributing audio/visual content and I will also attempt to learn web design in the coming weeks and months.
So what I've done for the last year is gain a knowledge base and skillset that will work in tandem with my degree so that hopefully my services will become a hot commodity in the marketing game. It's a learning process that will be continuous as I gain more knowledge and sharpen my skills over time.
So my advice to you Management and Marketing majors, still in school, out there is to either learn about a specific industry or learn as much as you can about a niche or niches beneath either of those two umbrellas on your own time. For those of you who have graduated and are wondering "ok what now?" I suggest you do the same with your time. Trust me, you need to specialize in something. And even if you don't feel you need it, you should want to anyway.
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