Saturday, April 24, 2010

Are Careers In Communications Right For You?

Up until only a few years ago, careers in communications were pretty rare. Business people are pretty practical folks, and like all practical folks that can be a little thick from time to time. The traditional image of the office as a place where bosses give orders for underlings to obey is only just starting to dissolve in favor of an image that has more to do with cooperation and communication than a hierarchy. Getting everyone to work together in an atmosphere of teamwork is much harder than just having some people tell other people what to do. It requires good communication skills, sophisticated policies, and even interpersonal training. This is why there is such a big boom in careers in communications.

Nowadays, as a matter of fact, you can go almost anywhere with a career in communications. Careers in the communications field are available for broadcasters, copywriters, public relations representatives, workplace analysts – the list goes on and on. Even school districts are beginning to hire communications consultants to facilitate better rapport between teachers and students. More and more, the world is run not on raw material, but on raw information.

For some people, it can be difficult to tell whether or not they want to have a communication career. After all, there are so many different paths to get their that it is difficult to describe the type of person it appeals to. Some communications specialists are very verbal people who have a great sense of interpersonal skills. Other ones are surprisingly shy and introverted, but with intense linguistic abilities and the ability to understand unspoken power structures. Some people start as communications majors, others with advertising degrees, and others with more traditional liberal arts programs. All of these paths to careers in communications have the same end result, but they tend to attract different people.

In my case, careers in communications were a natural choice. You see, as a fiction writer I had to face the fact that it might take me a while to be able to make a living doing my chosen craft. I did not want to work as a journalist or a freelancer, so that left little choice. I decided that my strength lay in helping other people understand their own patterns of communication. Since I became a consultant, I have been quite happy with my career. If you are creative and verbal, perhaps it is the correct career choice for you as well.

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