Being a Journalism Major Has Helped Me in the MLHR Program
Last spring quarter when I my life was in shambles when I was rejected from graduate school (the first time I applied) my supervisor and coworker kept teasing me, because they told me that my life was going to amount to nothing and I was going to have to be the backup dancer for the Rapping Bum. (Side Note: The Rapping Bum is a real person.)
Both of my coworkers are Fisher alums (well my boss graduated in 2009 with a concentration in Marketing, Logistics, and HR....which he is choosing as his future career path since that is where he was able to find a job, and plans on applying for the program once he stops procrastinating and takes the GRE). The other one is an International Business major and fifth year, so he'll be an alumnus in a few months.
Before I got into the program I was rather regretful for choosing journalism for my major. All my work experience had been in marketing, and it was impossible to find journalism internships. I felt I had marketable skills, but none that anyone wanted at the time.
However, when I got into the Fisher MLHR program, I realize that the skills I gained in writing in communication were really helpful. They have been BEYOND helpful at the place I intern. It is a combination of marketing and recruiting. I use social media to market my organization, and the majority of it is used for posting jobs or communicating with potential applicants. I also have had to use several job boards to post job openings, and much like a journalism article it requires one to communicate all the necessary information about the job while being concise and actually drawing a potential applicant into reading and wanting to apply for the job. I'll eventually be using a blog to interview employees about their job experiences and what they like about their work. Though I currently do not interview any applicants, I do have interviewing/and information collecting experience from being a reporter for the school newspaper. All of these things I have done in various capacities in undergrad in a communications context...I am doing the same thing but now for HR and it has meaning in my program.
To add to this, sometimes when I am procrastinating I like to look up paying HR jobs with companies. I have seen that many companies actually have HR positions that are specifically for HR Communications. Many of these positions involve employee/internal communications, internal marketing, and some schools even offer master's degrees in organizational communication that can be used in HR (yes, lots of procrastinating!).
Basically, I am glad that I am able to transfer some of my undergraduate knowledge and skills that I had developed into my current program and into my current internship. I'm glad that I did not waste 4 years in what I thought was a useless major. So any people applying to the program who are/were communications or journalism majors are going to find that they have useful skills for HR, or if you are like me and are afraid you are not going to find a job in your field and would like to venture and do something different (a field that is vastly growing, I might add) then you may want to look into HR. Even if you are still interested in the communications field, there are jobs in HR communications, and it does not hurt to develop your skill set with a respected graduate degree.
-G