When an education in business is not good for your career

[badon]

I attended a career fair recently at the largest University in my region of the United States. For the most part, it was the usual suits and handshakes. I was there out of curiosity, in jeans and a T-shirt, hoping to get some free stuff, and maybe - just maybe - some new ideas.  Turns out, there was plenty of cool free stuff, but there were also some juicy gems of insight into the career marketplace that I was able to bring home, and present to you here. I'll tell you about it, but first, let me set the scene...

There were all sorts of employers there. Big companies, little companies, government, foreign, etc. There was a little table in the midst of it all being blocked by a gigantic poster of what looked like the Death Star in orbit around earth. Curiously, it was the Peace Corps table, surrounded by all the weapons contractors and military recruiters. It was tough to get to it through all the people crowded around the toy missiles and spy satellites that were being given away. I'm sure whoever planned the table positions got a chuckle out of it.

There were also a lot of "pure business" businesses there, like investment companies that did mostly analysis of other companies. For fear of getting sued, I won't name specific companies here, but some of the biggest and most powerful financial companies were turning away people with business degrees! Why would a business analyst company NOT want people educated in business?  It turns out that they were looking for people with expertise in the OPERATIONS of the businesses they were analyzing. Engineers, computer people, and pretty much anyone BUT business people. The reason why, they said, was the business people can crunch the numbers, but the people with actual expertise in a company's products can offer more insight into the present and future success of the company they're analyzing.

For example, a business-educated person could look at the balance sheet and tell you the company has been making money. An engineer could look at a manufacturing facility and tell you that all the best employees are leaving because of because they're being pushed too hard to make up for inefficiency in the facility's production line equipment.

So, companies have been cooking the books for years, and now they're failing. The business people didn't notice the problem because all they were able to work with were doctored financial statements. Some of the big financial analyst companies have realized that you need an expert on the floor looking at the details to really know how well a business is doing.

The bottom line is NOT all that matters, and now it's starting to show in hiring practices.

I found out that this fall semester at America's Universities is going to have record enrollment numbers. Competition is stiff during troubled times, and people are looking for an edge. Lots of people are unemployed or underemployed, and education is their light at the end of the tunnel. If you're a student, or looking to move up in the company you're in now, my experience at the career fair tells me that you might want to steer away from business or finance degrees, and instead consider enhancing your marketability with practical skills.

Companies are leaning down their top heavy business staff, and in some cases they're combining business and productivity roles into one job. Financial analyst jobs aren't going to financial analysts - they're going to engineers. Management jobs aren't going to managers, they're going to hands-on laborers. Leaning down a top heavy business means hiring people that can follow as well as they lead. You need to be able to produce, or your job is going to be threatened by someone who can.

I've seen a few companies go unscathed in the current economy, and a few of them I've seen the inner workings closely enough to ask some questions about their management strategy. You know what they say? "All our managers are working managers. They don't even have an office."