HR or Marketing????

My blog has helped me in many ways in terms of keeping repository of my thoughts, getting visibility,networking and much more. But I feel even better when i am able to help my readers in a small way.


Recently I got the following mail from a reader:

from XYZ[Kept Confidential] to saikatsaha23@gmail.com date Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 2:27 AM subject HR or Marketing mailed-by gmail.com

hide details Aug 11 (6 days ago)

HI

I am a MBA aspirant.please can you suggest me which among HR and Marketing should i choose as a specialisation(interested only between the two streams). and am a little more interested in HR. i have heard HR is mostly taken up by females and scope for future improvement and job opportunity is less in HR compared to marketing(in any job site we can find a lot of marketing related openings).Many say initially i have to take up sales roles in a company and only after few years i will be put into marketing management.I am not interested in taking up a sales role in the beginning of my career.I am confused,can you suggest me which one as growth and as future and which one i can take up.

Regards
XYZ [Kept Confidential]

My reply to him was as mentioned below:

Dear XYZ [Kept Confidential],

Thanks for consulting me on this issue. This is a common dilemma faced by many students while picking up their specialisation.

I would recommend you to first understand your inate skill sets and area of true interest.The bottomline is that choose a specialisation which you truly feel will do justice to your career. Remember that the choice you make now would be a career choice that will influence the rest of your proffesional and personal life too. You have to wake up every Monday morning and be either compelled to go for your job or feel completely excited about your job. The choice you make today will determine a lot tomorrow. So it's logical that you understand your strengths and weaknesses better and make a choice. Try to understand if your personality matches a marketing job or HR job.

In the long run, issues like whether 'HR is more suited for women or not' & 'HR is a less paying career choice or not' would be irrelevant. Be truly passionate towards whatever specialisation you want to choose.

All the best.

Regards,

Saikat Saha