Deciding Your Major

I am a junior in college interested in Business Management. The problem is that I am a little bit too interested in the different subject matters and can't decide between human resource, consulting, finance, or accounting. I was hoping you could help me make the decisions by informing which of these careers are prone to more international traveling for durations of three months to a year. Thanks in advance.

Lynette

Answer

Dear Lynette,

Deciding on a major should come predominantly from interest in that career alone, and not from trying to figure out which may result in your traveling abroad or not.  Internships are key here so ensure that you work with your career services group to secure an internship for next summer ... or perhaps for even the Winter break.  Also know that you can pursue an internship with a company that doesn't come on campus, but that will require extra work.

These areas are all very different.  You need to narrow it down and you do that by conducting research.  Talk to your peers who interned in these various areas and find out what they think.  Find out the different strengths and different work/life balance of each group by speaking to career services or to your professors.  Wetfeet.com has a lot of information you can look into, as does your career services office, and you don't have that much time to do this as companies are coming on campus now to market for summer internships.  So do not pass go & do not collect $200 ... you need to research this now so you can ask the right questions at the marketing events and impress the company reps so you can be considered for interviews. 

I thought I'd give you a taste of what a career in each of these areas would be like.  Each has their strong points, and each could yield a very robust career:

Accounting is a great field because they, the business you support, can do nothing without you letting them know they have the money for it.  You help them to plan their year out with what will be spent andwhat cannot be spent.

Human Resources is interesting because it's so diverse.  HR has specialists areas such as:  Recruiting, Compensation, Employee Relations, or you could be a generalist and partner closely with the business on a daily basis.

Finance is a fascinating area but get ready to work about 100 hours a week.  You could work in Mergers and Acquisitions putting different companies together as one or you could be working on a deal to finance a government, or institution.  You have to excel quantitatively as Investment Banking usually looks for a 3.6 GPA or above. 

And finally consulting... companies look for a high GPA:  3.6 or 3.7 and above.  Consulting requires critical thinking and very strong quant skills.  You will travel quite a bit here (probably in the US), and work with a team on a problem a company is having.  Be prepared to put your ideas out there and back them up with fact.  You'll end up speaking directly to top management about what is wrong with their company so your confidence plays a huge part here.

Good luck to you & my best advice is for you to research, research, research until you are much more clear about what path you will take ... and that should be based solely on your interest for the job, and the skills and background you bring to it.

Best,
Connie

N/A