Business Careers

The word business is a catch-all term that covers almost all commercial enterprises, but in common usage, it refers primarily to those enterprises that are privately owned and that engage in the sale of a product or service to customers. In other words, business careers are commerce careers, and the world of commerce is where most private jobs can be found.

Because of that, there’s a large chance that, no matter what career you intend to pursue, unless you intend to become an elected official or work for the government, it will be one of the many business careers. But when we talk about business careers, we are mainly talking about the world of management. You can start in the lower ranks of a business—as a sales clerk, for instance, or a truck driver delivering goods to stores—but your ultimate goal is probably to work your way into the high echelons of management, where you will make executive decisions that will affect many hundreds if not thousands of workers in your company and that will have an impact on the even larger number of customers who buy your products or use your services. The world of business is a world of high responsibility and high excitement, and there are many ways in which you can be a part of this world.

Business schools and careers break down into a number of broad areas. Here are some:

Marketing: If you become involved in marketing, you’ll decide how to sell products and services to the general public. Many skills are involved in marketing, including graphic design, art, writing, and generation of ideas. Or, you can work in the sales department of a corporation and contact people by letter, e-mail or telephone to see if they’re interested in engaging your company’s services.

Human resources: Businesses need employees. In the human resources department, you would find the people who have the talent to be part of your line of work and help guide their business careers after they join the company.

Finance: Working in finance, you would help guide the use of a company’s money, determining how that money is spent, how it is nurtured, how it is loaned to others, and how it is protected in bad economic times.

Consultant: As a consultant, you would give people advice on how to run their businesses, how to invest their money, and how to grow from a small company into a large one. This is one of the most important of business careers.