Career Readiness Skills for Marketing Majors: An Examination of Soft Skills, Hard Skills and Course Applications

Abstract

What are the skills marketing majors need upon graduation from college? In today’s world, many of the skills rely on technology within the field of marketing (technical/hard skills). Other skills (soft skills) can be taught across various curricula. Organizations, educators and professional job search sites are placing increasing emphasis on “workplace” or “career” readiness skills. In this paper, the authors discuss their analysis of 133 pieces of literature from practitioners and academics on the in-demand skills needed by marketing majors. The first section provides a categorization of marketing soft skills to give a broad picture of various soft skill sets that students need to be aware. Next, the paper analyzes different “hard skills”, or technical abilities individuals need to perform to be successful in different marketing careers. The authors then examine the primary soft skills needed to execute different hard skills. Finally, the paper discusses course strategies to implement soft and hard skills in class. Attention is given to developing an integrative and “robust” set of soft and hard skills, and strategies, that can be used in different types, and sizes, of marketing classes.