Careers in Business & Marketing

If you’re thinking of a career in business or of pursuing an MBA, strongly consider earning your bachelor’s degree in sociology.

Entering the business world or working on an MBA requires you have strong communication and analytical skills. Employers look for individuals who have the ability to synthesize information, creative thinkers, and people who are effective at working with people in group settings. Moreover, all major corporations and many other businesses have market research departments.

When you diversify your skill set with the knowledge a sociology degree provides, you can be as competitive, if not more, than other undergraduate majors. Indeed, some of the nation’s largest companies actively recruit non-business majors because of the depth and breadth of knowledge non-business majors have and because businesses today must deal with many social issues: diversity in the workplace, communication, globalization, management-employee relations.

Undergraduate sociology courses teach you written and oral communication skills as well as how to conduct and interpret empirical research. Specifically, the research methods sequence in the department — Research Methods in Sociology (SOC 317) and Quantitative Techniques in Sociology I (SOC 321) — will teach you how to read, evaluate, and conduct research. Our advanced methods and statistics courses will help you further develop your quantitative skills. These skills are especially crucial for individuals interested in working in a company’s market research area or for those who must evaluate their company’s performance.

Social Inequality (SOC 340) instructs students about workplace policy (for example, your rights as a worker and guidelines governing employer action) as well as how the workplace and organizations affect worker outcomes. Sociology of Professions and Occupations (SOC 343) teaches students about theories of the workplace, facts on the structure and order of workplaces, and about the causes and consequences of workplace hierarchy.

Fun fact: MBA students hail from all disciplines. For example, in 2004, at one of the nation’s top MBA programs, 13 percent of MBA graduates were social science majors, and 21 percent were liberal arts majors.