First of all, let me say I have nothing–I repeat–NOTHING against marketing, or any other intended major or specialization.
I googled “why marketing is a useless major” to confirm the theory, which I keep hearing all around me, that having a marketing degree is USELESS. Here are some responses (each paragraph is a separate response):
You get a job in fields with “soft” job requirements like marketing by either attending a name-brand university or thru having had internships (paid or unpaid). It would be nice if we lived in a world where everyone was looked at fairly, but we don’t. Kids from Stanford, Ivies, etc. are going to have a leg up for jobs in areas like Marketing because employers feel like they’re taking less of a chance when they hire someone already certified as being at the top by virtue of getting accepted to schools like that (and heck, they might have even learned something while there!). For the rest, resumes with Marketing majors are a dime-a-dozen. To stand out you need to have practical experience so that they think that you know what the job really entails, and so they can call your internship supervisor and have them rave about what a wonderful job you did.
Agree. I have been a marketing communications professional for 25 years, for technology companies. When there is a corporate takeover, merger, or downsizing, the FIRST fired are the marketing people. Choose a “hard” major.
clearly the only useful major is engineering and everything else is trash
I agree that every college major is completely useless. Engineering, business, science…none have a single bit of relevance to anything in the real world. The average engineer these days is only going to use their degree to fix their kids bike. Chemistry? Might be helpful when you’re making another mix drink to feed your raging alcoholism that developed as a result of the lack of employability. Physics? Med school? All of them are dead fields. College is pointless…everyone should drop out.
And my favourite:
If you insist on staying in school, I recommend majoring in basket weaving and quilting. At least it gives you a product to sell. I think that’s going to be my new major.
Basically, lots of sites and posts I’ve come across have recommended getting a “hard”, or a quantitative, degree since it gives you a specific skill set and shows how you would be an actual asset to the company. Marketing and entrepreneurship, to name a couple, are very “airy-fairy”, broad specializations with no real, hard skills (however it could be argued) to show your skillset, so companies are more reluctant to invest and take a gamble on someone with “real world common sense”.
It all depends on what you’re into, basically. Whether you want a guaranteed job, like most people who intend to specialize in accounting, or because, somehow, you absolutely love adding up numbers and balancing equations. Personally, I f*cking hate accounting (I hate pretty much all business courses–the intro ones mostly); however, given the job situation it would not be a bad idea for me to at least start out in accounting or finance or the like.
THAT IS if i get the 72% or whatever average I need. Damnit.
OUT
4 Comments
This was a super interesting post – how would you suggest making marketing knowledge more quantifiable? What about individuals who pursue a degree in marketing but wind up working in another field – do you think theres any benefit to their specialization?
Hmmmm… “Useless”? Really? You definitely got my attention with that headline.
Just because one of the people whose comments you quoted has 25 years in marketing doesn’t mean s/he knows what marketing is all about. (Case in point: s/he doesn’t know that at least half of all marketing jobs are actually hard-skills jobs – research, pricing, product development, brand management, all extremely quant-based…)
It’s true that marketing (and HR) roles are some of the first to be cut in hard times. Thankfully, marketing is everywhere and needed by every single company, so the opportunities abound, even in hard times. Good marketers can apply their abilities to find exciting, fulfilling jobs, no matter what.
Besides, as Forbes, The Economist, Fortune, BusinessWeek, FastCompany, HBR, Inc., and many other leading business media (based on their interviews with thousands of successful CEOs) have been saying over and over lately (e.g. http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2012/06/16/creativity-the-secret-behind-the-secret/), creativity is the most important leadership competency for this millennium. Creativity! Talk about a soft skill to end all soft skills. And there is no more creative business field than marketing.
That’s why if someone is truly suited to marketing, they’ll be OK with (and excited by) the fact that a set career path isn’t lined up like an airport runway for marketing grads as it is for other majors (e.g. accounting and finance). It’s definitely a “choose your own adventure” field, and you can make of it what you wish. Jobs don’t often come TO the marketing grads, as they do in other options (e.g. there is no marketing recruiting season at universities), but that doesn’t mean the jobs aren’t out there. It just means you can’t be lazy or uncreative about finding a great job. So it’s not for everyone. It’s not even for most people.
I expect that the comments you’ve quoted in your post come from lazy, unoriginal people who just happen to be in marketing (and hopefully, for their sakes, on their way out of marketing and into fields in which lazy and unresourceful can still get them a job – basket weaving might be a good fit).
I thought I’d stir a little action up with that title–that’s exactly why I chose it (maybe I should go into marketing<;))! I disregarded the more statistical side of marketing which definitely should not be overlooked (I really don't know that much about any specialization for that matter). I agree that marketing is everywhere and needed by every company and in that respect the opportunities are endless; however, I still think it is more challenging to get a marketing job. Like I said, I think it all depends on what you're into. Thank you for shedding some light on the situation!
I was searching online for, “how do we stop people with no marketing degrees get marketing jobs” and I found your article.
I have a B.comm, Marketing and it is useless.
I’ve been working for over ten years in this profession, working hard and long, learning, staying up to-date and fine-tuning my skill set only to discover that people with a hard-education, like engineering, science or mechanics, will get promoted to VP, Marketing, while I get stuck in ‘operations’.
If I had known this, I would have never, never, ever gotten into this profession.
Plus, I feel social media is killing marketing.
Everyone talks about strategy like it is a to-do list, today graphic artists position themselves as strategic brand makers, and technology companies like Marketo are considered marketing thought leaders.
Why did I go to school and spend all that money to learn strategy just to be side-stepped by technology and nice graphics?
I’m having a hard time applying to jobs today. When I find a position that is interesting I do a company background check on LinkedIn only to discover that I would be reporting to an engineer who is the VP, marketing.
In other words, I would be educating this guy on strategy and tactics, while he gets all the glory.
I have no choice but to become an expert in a hard-industry.