How an Economics graduate like me ended up in marketing
Should your university degree dictate your job?
I receive dozens of inquiries every week from students and corporate folks asking for advice about their careers. I’d like to share and answer one interesting note which I think a lot of people (especially folks in marketing and sales) will be able to relate to:
Hi, Jonathan!
My name is Linh from Hanoi, Vietnam, and I am a big fan of "The Apprentice Asia"! I am a high school student and will soon attend university. I honestly don’t know what course to take but I have some options in mind. I want a course that will help me get a good job, something that I like, something I enjoy.
My question is…how important is your college course in choosing the job you want to get after graduation? I am scared that I might choose a course that will limit my options. I think I want to get a job in marketing and sales like you because you can go to a lot of companies! I think selling products and making advertisements on TV is exciting. Please share your advice.
Thank you,
Linh
*****
Hi Linh,
Thank you for reaching out. You are definitely not alone with your concerns. Millions of high school students (including myself years ago) fear the same thing.
The answer to your question (with some qualifications) is a yes. Your university degree will greatly influence the job that you will end up with because careers and jobs are defined by a set of skills, knowledge and competencies that match with what you learned in school.
Doctors need to study medicine to be able to practice in hospitals. Engineers need to study engineering to be able to participate in construction and architecture projects. Artists take art lessons to refine their creativity, and so on.
However, let me make an exception that this is not strictly the case in all situations.
As you start working, you will realize that many folks have university degrees that were not originally intended to match their jobs. I had a boss before in the marketing department who was a Philosophy graduate. I have a friend who works as a producer for a theater company but finished engineering in school.
It takes more than effective absorption of textbooks and the receipt of a diploma to practice a career and succeed in it.
The good news for those who are “trapped in courses” that they realize they don’t want to practice is that shifting gears is still possible and manageable. You can also still make the most of what you learn in school.
Here are some insights you can work on:
1. Unless you are taking up a highly-specialized course (medicine, law), know that you can still branch out to other fields that are related to your course
Let me clarify something about me that may shock a lot of people — I’m living proof that your course should not strictly dictate what you should become. Most people think I finished a marketing or advertising degree because I’ve been practicing marketing for 10 years now, but I actually finished with a degree in BS Economics. It’s an intensely mathematical course suited for working in government positions that involve research and analytics.
Have you heard of people who study and predict a country’s inflation rate, GDP growth, interest rates, and the like? That’s a classic example of what could have been my first job. I could have ended up as an economist, analyzing growth rates of developing economies for the Central Bank, but I didn’t.
When I was about to graduate, a telecommunications company recruited me to become a management trainee and I gave marketing a try. Because I was always fascinated with branding, advertising and product development (and convincing people’s minds to buy your product or service), I tried it.
I realized later on that marketing wasn’t just about the glamor of making the most talked about TV commercial or video on YouTube; it also involved a lot of mathematical analyses such as forecasting. My forecasting acumen (thanks to my Economics degree) have been helpful in marketing — from forecasting my product’s inventory in grocery shelves, or forecasting the number of times a person will likely send an SMS or call, to forecasting the number of times a passenger will travel.
There were many skills and disciplines in Economics that were related with marketing, too — analysis, research, finance and budgeting, and the like.
In most cases (again, except in cases of highly technical courses), what you learn in university is the general discipline (ex. a deeper level of mathematical acumen vs. what you learned in high school), the general set skills (ex. a deeper level of reading comprehension, vocabulary and writing ability), and the general knowledge (ex. a deeper understanding of your culture, your world and the dynamics of power in your society) that will further expand your capacity and tenacity to learn.
In this context, I’d like to believe that the skill and discipline I learned from taking up Economics was generally suited to practice marketing. Other courses which I think are also suited are Psychology, Communication Arts and Sociology.
Finally, your industry can also be an influencing factor. An engineering graduate who is also creative can work as a marketing or sales executive in the IT industry. All those folks in Silicon Valley who built and managed their own start-up companies? They’re likely IT or engineering graduates, too — not marketing or advertising graduates.
2. You gotta love what you’re doing to be good at it
What does it take to become a Marketing or Sales man? From my personal experience, getting a marketing degree can give you advantage from a theoretical perspective. However, being a successful marketer also involves an immense amount of love and passion for it.
My smile reached my ears when my brand recently stole market shares from my competitor. I get a kick whenever I see my brand’s viral video being shared on Facebook. Simply put, marketing makes me exercise what I’m good at — being creative and strategic.
So even if I often spend sleepless nights developing Powerpoint presentations, or visiting a remote farm to interview a customer under the scorching heat of the sun, I still get motivated to succeed because I love what I’m doing. You need to love your job for you to be good at it.
3. You will learn the most while doing the job, more than anything else
You may have heard of the popular 70-20-10 model of learning and development based on a research crafted by Morgan McCall and his colleagues. In this study, they concluded that lessons learned by successful managers come from the following sources:
70% from doing the job (doing the job routinely and repeating what works, and avoiding next time the things that don’t)
20% from people (feedback and observation shared by your boss, colleagues, etc.)
10% from courses and reading (ex. school, books, online articles, case studies of other businesses, etc.)
What does this mean? It means that even if you miss all the lessons in marketing in university, you still have the opportunity to catch up as long as you persevere to learn (and be humble) while being on the job. I made many mistakes when I developed my earliest TV commercials. As I did more, I made less and less mistakes as I got better at it.
Practice perpetually breeds perfection. I was always a curious learner. I loved asking questions from my mentors and bosses, even if it got to the point of irritating them at times. I requested to sit down in meetings of other marketing departments that had nothing to do with my project because listening alone taught me a lot of things. I went to events and concerts organized by other industries so I can steal best practices and apply them to my brand.
Learning by doing was my mantra. This, coupled with the an open mind to constantly ask people for feedback on what they think I can further improve on (with emotions put aside), and constantly reading articles and watching videos on the Internet about success and failure stories of popular brands — I got my way into becoming a marketer and, finally, becoming “one of them.”
Take this advice with a grain of salt
Of course, not everyone will fall into the same situation as I did. I am arguably a fortunate case of being at the right time, at the right place and with the right heart. This article is not declaring that anyone can be an instant marketing or sales executive regardless of his course in university (the marketing geniuses of our times such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates didn’t even finish college, mind you).
Neither is this article claiming that students and teachers of marketing are simply wasting their time. Marketing students study dozens and dozens of case studies about the rise and fall of various companies and brands that they are obviously more knowledgeable about than an Engineering or Education student.
This article celebrates the fact that we are fortunately living at a time when opportunities are plenty, whether it may be in the field of marketing, medicine, law or what-not. Opportunities can be twisted to our advantage. In today’s times, technology has immensely leveled the playing field to almost equal for everyone.
So if you are somebody reading this article with a university course you feel you have wrongfully chosen (and is painfully forced to stick it out for three years or more), know that the possibilities remain abundant (and what more five years from now!).
If you do succeed, please do reach out and share your success story with the rest of the world. Good luck!
Need motivation at work? Read more insights from Jonathan:
Jonathan Yabut is the season one winner of the hit business reality TV show, "The Apprentice Asia." He currently serves as the Chief of Staff reporting directly to Malaysian business mogul and Group CEO of AirAsia, Tony Fernandes. Jonathan actively engages in motivational and leadership talks within Southeast Asia and is soon to launch a book about leadership and “making it big.” Visit Jonathan’s website, www.JonathanYabut.com for more updates or follow him via AAJonathanYabut (Facebook) and @jonathanyabut (Twitter).
