The road into a career in business

People in business are often held up as great examples to the world of work, creating employment and wealth and generally doing very well out of the business that they have developed. You only have to think of the likes of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and the late Steve Jobs to see how lucrative a business can be.

Yet all these amazing entrepreneurs rely, in the end, on other people in the business world to support them and to help drive forward their organization as technology and legislative circumstances change. It’s well worth exploring starting a business career because there will always be a huge number of opportunities to get your foot on the ladder and forge a path as far as you want to go.

Remember also that if you do the initial training and learning in business, there’s nothing to stop you setting up on your own with the many skills that you will have acquired and the contacts that you will have made during your degree course.

Routes to a business career

Not everyone is an instinctive entrepreneur, and if you’re not, it makes a lot of sense to get a degree in business studies. There are many options that you can look at, and you don’t necessarily have to attend college or university full-time. Online learning has developed in leaps and bounds over the years, so you could find Maryville’s online master degree programs the right fit in terms of your time and other commitments.

A business studies degree will equip you with a wide range of expertise that you can use to your own and your employer’s advantage. As a business major, you are more likely to have job security because your skills and expertise are needed in practically all industry sectors. Even if there are lean economic times, there will still be room for experienced businesspeople, so you can make a practical choice to do this and also provide yourself with transferable skills so that you can move from one sector to another.

The world is your oyster

One of the big advantages in developing a business career is that you don’t have to be tied to one part of the world. Your skills can be used globally, and when you are young and without ties, there are great opportunities to experience other cultures while still earning a good living. When you decide to settle down, you still have that flexibility of movement, so you can either follow your spouse or relocate to a place where you both have good job opportunities.

Decide on a specialization

When you’re studying, it’s a good idea to think through what you really want to do in your business career. You don’t need to specialize too early, but you should weigh up your options and aim for what you think suits you, your personality, and your ideals best.

You could go into management or marketing, go into human resources, or look to the financial side through accountancy and business finance. You may also be more interested in a particular sector, so explore your options, whether it’s in the entertainment business, the fashion industry, or manufacturing, not forgetting that you may also want to look into the not-for-profit charitable sector.

Transferable skills

What you learn in a business career over the years is that whatever you have learnt on the job can be transferred to another sector relatively easily. Looking for and accepting new challenges after a number of years keeps you fresh, ambitious, and able to bring new ways of doing things to a different organization.

Read also: Apply to an Internationally Recognized Business School

Attractive remuneration

Money isn’t always the objective for a career in business – often it’s a desire to help make people’s lives better – but it can be a prime driver. Hard work and continuing to develop your business skills can lead to an excellent salary and benefit package as well as other business perks that could give you enough money to put by for early retirement. Then, of course, as an experienced business professional, you could decide to go into consultancy and choose how much you wanted to do and when. Or you could decide that now is the time to start your own business with the immense amount of experience that you have developed and encourage young people to grow their own business skills under your tutelage.

Whatever you decide to do, your business career will enable you to achieve whatever goals you set for yourself.