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What can you do with a business degree?

Become an in-demand business professional with Australia’s #1 uni for grads who get jobs. If you’re wondering what you can do with a business degree, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve got the lowdown on lots of directions you can take your career in business. And as the Australian uni with the highest graduate employment rate – you’ll be starting your business career virtually guaranteed to succeed!

What’s more, you’ll be well-positioned for a secure career. The government predicts strong future job growth for so many business roles, including accountants, finance managers, auditors, advertising and sales specialists and HR advisers.

Business is all around us and accounting is the language of business. Therefore, a degree in accounting or business is an exciting career path providing a diverse range of career opportunities, in your local community, nationally and internationally. Across all industries, from sport to theatre, construction to fashion, government to corporate multinationals across all businesses, large or small.

So, what can you do with a business degree? Here are 6 ideas for career paths

Accounting
Human resources
Management
Marketing
Strategy
Careers ‘outside the box’

Work in accounting

Are you a numbers person? A career in accounting could be your calling. After all, accounting is the ‘language’ of business. From reviewing a business’ financial situation, to advising clients on tax, working in accounting is all about helping organisations and people maximise their financial security. You make a difference to the bottom line.

And it offers a lot of different opportunities. Just ask Charles Sturt’s very own Kylie Gumbleton.

“Accounting is significantly more than numbers. My career started in a big four accounting firm, doing everything from preparing tax returns, audits and accounts for small to medium-size enterprises, to consultancy for large enterprises and government departments. Since then, my career has spanned a role as finance manager in a large government agency, work in a small regional accounting firm, and now working as a lecturer, associate head of school and course director here at Charles Sturt University.”

Kylie Gumbleton Associate head of school and course director at Charles Sturt University

Work in human resources

If you consider yourself to be approachable, an ace problem-solver and also a total people person – human resources (HR) might be the right career path for you. Your main responsibility? Supporting each one of the employees in your organisation.

Workplace health and safety. Payroll. Recruitment. Harassment. Policy and procedures. Training. Conflict resolution. Data management. You’re the go-to person for employees.

Yianni Athanasopoulos, who lectures on HR at Charles Sturt, explains what a career in this field looks like.

“HR professionals oversee the business of managing people in an organisation. This includes remuneration, benefits, training, career development, staffing, and strategic HR management. Human resources practitioners also work alongside management to recruit and retain the best employees. HR plays a central role because people are the only thing that differentiates one business from another.”

Working in management

Got a dream to make it to the top of the business world? Specialising in management and leadership is where you want to be focusing your energy. Managers and leaders can be found across all industries and fields – and your main responsibility is to provide structure and strategy to a workplace.

We’ll be real with you. Management and leadership roles can be demanding. You’ll face more pressure and have more responsibility than others. In saying that: where there’s no guts, there’s no glory! The trade-off for your hard work is, firstly, a higher salary and, secondly, loads of opportunities for career progression.

Work in marketing

Marketing is where you get to combine your business acumen with creative flair. So there are plenty of different roles for you to explore depending on your interests. Events. Advertising. Graphic design. Social media. Market research. Content marketing. Digital strategy. Likewise, sales, public relations or brand management. The opportunities are endless.

Firstly, no matter the role you find yourself in, marketing is a profoundly human field. You’ll learn how to build brand loyalty with your customers and place the customer at the centre of everything you do. It’s one of the few industries where you can bring a business idea to life through original emotive content deployed via marketing campaigns and projects.

Felicity Small is a senior lecturer in marketing at Charles Sturt and knows that a career in marketing is very rewarding.

“The diverse range of activities involved in marketing can lead to a personalised and also engaging career. Marketers monitor, track and also predict societal shifts. They tell stories to engage with others. Then explore and analyse individuals’ behaviour and big data sets to draw insights. They also create disruptive innovations to provide solutions for consumer problems. Consequently, a business degree in marketing contains a set of skills that will take you anywhere you want to go.”

Work in strategy

More and more businesses are looking for people with the ability to look at an organisation through a strategic lens. As a result, it’s not simply enough to understand how a business runs, you need the vision, data and also planning skills to take things to the next level.

When you work in strategic planning, you’ll set overall goals for your organisation and develop a plan to achieve them. So you’ll need to have complete oversight of the entire business, an understanding of the strategic goals and priorities, and the vision to bring those plans to life.

Dr Alain Neher is an Associate Professor in the School of Business at Charles Sturt University. He’s up to date with the ins and out of strategic planning and also why there has been such an increase in demand for planning professionals

“Strategic planning establishes a clear path for an organisation to succeed in the future. We can also call it a roadmap which means that an organisation defines the best possible route and provides direction to all employees. Leaders in the industry have told us that they need people who can, firstly, establish direction and a sense of purpose. And, secondly, who can develop the right goals and objectives so employees are motivated and engaged to excel in their jobs – and the organisation to succeed.”

Dr Alain Neher Associate Professor in the School of Business at Charles Sturt University

Your business degree can lead to careers’ ‘outside the box’

Certainly, for most people, careers in finance or marketing or management are pretty synonymous with the term ‘business’. But did you know that business graduates have skills that are in demand across many other fields that you might not initially think as ‘business careers’?

For instance, how about working in the media? Or running a fashion label? Managing a disability service? When you study a business degree, you’re setting yourself to work anywhere. Literally. You can work in any industry, anywhere in the world.