You’ve no doubt heard the saying “communication is everything.” Well, communication majors take that saying pretty literally. A communications major studies the best practices to convey information on both interpersonal and organizational levels, and it’s not always verbal.
Communication can happen in a variety of ways: verbal, written, gestural, formal, informal, and the list goes on and on. It’s up to communication majors to master these. By the time they graduate, they should know how to write and speak effectively and persuasively. Communications degrees can take a graduate anywhere they could ever hope to go, from journalism to public relations, music to film, and even politics in some cases.
Listed here are a few of your options, but with this degree, you could go anywhere.
Public Relations Specialist
This is a pretty safe bet for communications majors. Every company that has ever existed cares about what the public thinks of them. As a PR Specialist, you can influence just how the public sees your company. PR Specialists write press releases, organize press conferences, and convince media outlets that your company or an organization is of journalistic importance.
Social Media Manager
Social media is all about communication, so if you find yourself always checking Facebook and Instagram, then this job may be for you. It’ll be up to you to analyze the patterns of communication that are most effective, so they must be fantastic writers in order to compose messages about their organization. You must also be persuasive enough to be able to pitch ideas to and plans to staff and to convince customers.
Human Resources Specialist
HR Specialists are big on communication, they focus on recruiting staff, orienting new employees, developing new training programs, and other communication-intensive responsibilities. This job is all about communicating effectively. HR staffers rely heavily on their public speaking skills to deliver presentations, their writing skills to create staff manuals and compose web content, and their verbal communication skills to counsel and advise employees.
Marketing Manager
So marketing managers are in charge of assessing a market’s demand for their company’s products and services. From there, they have to help identify their demographics, and how, where, and whom to sell them to. This kind of work requires excellent interpersonal skills. Marketing managers must also be good at gathering information and communicating effectively.
Business Reporter
There’s been a crazy amount of growth in financial and business media, so if you’re wanting to go into a more business and finance-oriented career then this one might be for you. If you chose to pursue a business reporter job, you’ll have to tap into your journalistic side to properly cover the industry’s developments for TV, web, newspaper, and magazine coverage. For this job, you’ll also heavily exercise interpersonal skills that you developed during your undergrad to cultivate relationships with business insiders.
Sales Representative
You probably wouldn’t initially think of a sales rep having a communications degree, but it’s a surprisingly good match. While you’re in your undergrad, communications majors typically learn how to properly assess an audience’s preferences, just like how a salesperson assess the needs of their customers. All of your learned interpersonal, written, and verbal skills will come into play in this career, especially as you create and deliver pitches to the various consumers of a business.
Producer
Looking to make it big, but don’t want to be in front of the screen? Then being a producer may be the job for you. Producers deal with the behind-the-scenes aspects of making movies, TV shows, stage productions, video games, and news broadcasts. If you decide to go this route, you’ll be in charge of coordinating personnel and tending to budgets and schedules. You’re going to spend a lot of time talking to people and organizing them, so your verbal communication skills are going to be put to good use here.
