Have you ever thought about what you’d major in if you could go back 10 (or 40) years and do college all over again?  I certainly have, and here’s the answer: I’d be a double major, in English and computer science.  And by the way, I’d be a multi-billionaire by now.

Here’s my assertion: In any industry, working at any company, with any type or level of responsibility, your ceiling of potential as well as the pace at which you’ll realize that potential are greatest if you’re able to (1) write well and (2) grasp relevant technology quickly. These are two skills that college study can directly help you build; just about every other skill you’ll need in the workplace is secondary, best learned on the job rather than in the classroom.

I myself was an International Business major with a minor in Spanish.  How’d that work out for me?  Well, first of all, my International Business classes familiarized me with plenty of business-related topics and ideas, but in actual fact barely scratched the surface of any of them and taught me exactly nothing that I could put to tangible use in the real world.  So there’s that.  Second of all, if you and I ever meet, please do not attempt to talk to me in Spanish.  The conversation won’t last long.

I suppose the argument can be made that some form of verbal communication or mathematics training could be practically useful.  But in today’s business world, where so much is said and done over email, chat, and online in general, mastery of the written word is, I think, more valuable than any other form of verbal communication.  Moreover, being able to write well is a skill that translates easily into all-around effective communication–perhaps the most important skill for each of us to foster in any aspect of our lives, personal or professional.  Simply put, if you can write well, you can probably learn to talk well; in my experience, the opposite isn’t necessarily true.

As far as math/technology is concerned, I concede that some understanding of advanced mathematics and the theoretical abilities that come with it should be acquired before you dive into complex technology studies.  That’s just sort of a prerequisite; you have to learn about numbers before you can build things with numbers, so to speak.  Unless you’re gunning for a career in academia, though, technological prowess is the smarter end game of any mathematical course of study.  Technology is prevalent everywhere, in every industry—or will be very soon, even in those industries that haven’t yet fully gotten with the times.  And while most of the skills applicable in the business world are things you can only learn firsthand on the job, technical know-how is one of the glaring exceptions.  I don’t know of a single company that teaches its employees how to code, for example; you have to bring that skill in yourself.  Sure, coding knowledge isn’t required for most jobs, but the point still remains: regardless of your specific job responsibilities and the amount or complexity of the technology necessary to carry them out, in learning a technical skill such as coding, you build a certain type of mental muscle that’s a ubiquitous asset.  That enables you to operate on a mental level that a more theoretical course of study (like, say, International Business) doesn’t prepare you for.  So if math is your thing and you’re about to select your major, my advice would be to think of math as a means to a more practical end, and set your sights on a degree that will make you useful to (i.e., hireable by) many different types of companies after you graduate.

So what about the other skills you need to do your job effectively?  As I said, you’ll learn almost all of them on the job itself.  In the workplace, there’s no substitute for firsthand experience.  Every industry, company, and job role is unique, and being good at most any job requires a set of skills—mental pliability, people smarts, logical decision making, structured problem solving, etc.—that no degree can prepare you for.  Even just a few days into your first job out of college, it becomes glaringly obvious just how impossible it is for a college concentration of any kind to prepare you for the actual responsibilities the real working world requires.

So what should you do?  Get back to basics.  Master those fundamentals that are needed everywhere.  The foundation you’ll have to build upon will put you well ahead of the game.

Moral of this blog post:

If you’re a recent graduate looking to get hired by iSearch Media, prove to us that you have the answer we’re looking for to the following questions (give you a hint: the answer we’re looking for isn’t “no”):

»     Can you write?

»     Can you talk?

»     Do you understand technology?

»     Can you do math?

Everything else, we’ll teach you when you get here.