Business Career Center.com

Those pursuing business majors have one thing in common: they all know they want to work in business. Unfortunately, that may be the only thing they all have in common. Each and every business major has a different idea of what business means to him or her and a different idea of what specialization will be the most intriguing. In order to help you sort out which major, minor, or specialty will be the best for you, I recommend Great Jobs for Business Majors, by Stephen Lampert.

This helpful book, part of the “Great Jobs” series, tells business students what type of jobs each major is likely to lead to. It is a great source of career information and also contains personality and skill assessments to help you determine the specialty that will serve you best. It covers the necessary steps to land a job and discusses career targeting and the perfect job search. This book is a must for every business student’s bookshelf.

There was a time when the corporate world was one of individuals. Men rose to the top of their careers through independent work and an ability to demonstrate their superior work. No more. Today’s business world is cooperative, collaborative, and interrelated. If you wish to rise to the top in today’s business world, teamwork is the name of the game.

When executives put their heads together, more creative solutions emerge and a wider variety of options are put forth. This type of thinking—accepting opinions from a wide variety of individuals, all with different specialties—has built the business world that we have today. It is an efficient world of work, that results in many creative, fascinating solutions to today’s complex problems.

If you want to be good at teamwork, try the following three tips and watch your career take off:

• Learn something about every different specialty so that you can ask intelligent questions of team members.
• Be a facilitator. Always ask for other opinions and even ask others to play the “devil’s advocate” when considering a course of action.
• When offering an idea to a team, present the reasons for the action and the benefits expected in simple terms. Distribute these in written form so that others can take their time responding yay or nay.

If you are a business major in college or graduate school and are wondering which specialty to choose, you are wise. It is a good idea to choose a field of specialty early on in your education so that you can become highly qualified in a specific area of the business world while also enjoying the general qualifications that a bachelor’s degree in business or an MBA provide. One specialty that many business majors find ideal is that of information management. If you are savvy with computers and delight in organizing and transmitting information, then this specialty may be perfect for you. If you go into information management, the highest position you can aspire to in business is that of the chief information officer (CIO), so let’s take a look at some of the duties of this position.

• The CIO must understand administrative procedures, budgeting, hiring, and supervision.
• The CIO must propose budgets for projects and programs.
• The CIO will hire computer specialists, information technology workers, and support personnel to perform projects.
• The CIO reviews employee output and establishes administrative procedures and policies.

These are the day to day duties of the CIO, but even more importantly than that, the Chief Information Officer must offer his or her organization a vision. He or she must be able to conceive of the ideal company, the goals and the duties of that company, and work toward this vision. Any business major can go into information management. That’s a relatively popular field with a lot of opportunity. But if you wish to ascend to the heights of the Chief Information Officer, then you have that little something extra called vision.