DECEMBER JOURNAL ARTICLE OF2005 MARKETING EDUCATION

Introducing Professional and Career Development Skills in the Marketing Curriculum Craig A. Kelley and Claudia Bridges

According to recent studies in academic journals, business practitioners have expressed the view that marketing graduates lack certain professional and career skills. In addition, informal discussions with campus recruiters have suggested that their experience is very similar. This exploratory study reports the results of a survey of the perceptions of marketing practitioners and educators concerning the need to incorporate the development of professional and career development skills into the marketing curriculum. The results of this study indicate marketing graduates may not have many important managerial skills necessary to begin a successful career in marketing. Practitioners and educators agree that marketing departments should consider teaching professional and career development skills either as a separate class or by integrating them into existing marketing classes.

Keywords: career development; teaching management skills

R equirements of the twenty-first-century workplace

directly affect what marketing educators teach their students. The pace of technological transformation in the workplace requires marketing graduates have strong interpersonal skills (HR Focus 1999). Listening, writing, speaking, and a host of etiquette skills also are required for a successful career in marketing (HR Focus 1999). At a time when business skills are highly valued by employers, businesses are starting to forgo the spending of hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to teach college graduates professional skills such as assertiveness, empathy, and leadership (Georges 1996). Instead, businesses are expecting college graduates to possess these skills as a condition of employment (O’Sullivan 2000). The intense competition for well-paying professional careers requires marketing graduates to possess career development skills such as how to prepare for an interview, write a resume, write a career strategy, and understand how to relate to a diverse workforce. The debate over what should be taught as part of the marketing curriculum is an old one. Some courses in marketing, such as salesmanship, were dropped in the past from the mar-

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keting curriculum because they were viewed as falling within the domain of business training and not academically based (i.e., focusing on cognitive and/or theoretical knowledge). That has all changed, however, now that the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB 2005) has incorporated student skill development into their new standards. It is now extremely important that the marketing curriculum reflect the realities of the current employment marketplace and include the student development of essential professional and career development skills. There is a growing body of literature regarding practitioner views that marketing graduates lack certain critical skills (e.g., Arora and Stoner 1992; Litchfield 1993). Studies of the potential disparity between the perceptions of educators and practitioners have been conducted in advertising (Scott and Frontczak 1996), public relations (Stacks, Botan, and Turk 1999), and sales (Parker, Pettijohn, and Luke 1996). However, there are no studies that have directly compared marketing educator and practitioner perceptions of what skills students should develop through the marketing curriculum. A perceptual gap between these two groups may mean that the marketing curriculum over- or underemphasizes certain topics or skills. The genesis of the current study was a proposal to incorporate specific professional and career skills into the current marketing curriculum. The proposal met with resistance from the department faculty, and a request was made for more specific information about the need for a separate course to develop certain skills. To address this issue within a short time frame and start the process of filling the void in the literature, the current study was conducted to examine two basic issues related to the preparation of marketing graduates for a career in business. First, a survey was used to compare marCraig A. Kelley is a professor of marketing and sales management, and Claudia Bridges is an assistant professor of marketing in the Department of Management at California State University, Sacramento. Please address correspondence to Craig A. Kelley, California State University, Sacramento, Department of Management, 6000 J St., Sacramento, CA 95819-6088; phone: (916) 278-7199; fax: (916) 278-5437; e-mail: [email protected]. Journal of Marketing Education, Vol. 27 No. 3, December 2005 212-218 DOI: 10.1177/0273475305279526 © 2005 Sage Publications

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keting educator and practitioner perceptions of the relative preparedness of today’s marketing graduate in terms of important professional and career development skills. Second, the survey assessed what professional and career development skills need to be integrated into the marketing curriculum. LITERATURE REVIEW Cunningham (1995) suggested that marketing education should focus less on the transmission of marketing knowledge and more on skill development. Now that the new AACSB (2005) standards emphasize student skill development, marketing departments are beginning to listen to employers of their graduates and restructure their curricula to provide students the opportunity to develop necessary career development skills. Education in marketing cannot be expected to have students develop every possible skill in preparation for future employment. Different employers may use different criteria in their recruitment of college graduates. However, there seems to be a consensus in the business and marketing education literature, and in informal discussions with campus recruiters, that graduates need to acquire a broad base of interpersonal and self-reliance skills needed for a successful business career (Nabi 1999). Previous studies have reported that business practitioners perceive college graduates lack creativity, people skills, aptitude for teamwork, and the ability to speak and write clearly (Davis and Miller 1996; Deutschman 1991; Eberhardt and Moser 1997; Hahs 1999). Kelley and Gaedeke (1990) reported that prospective employers of marketing graduates value candidates who possess oral, written, interpersonal, and leadership skills. Carnevale, Gainer, and Meltzer (1990) stated essential workplace skills include listening, negotiation, teamwork, leadership, career goal setting, and creative thinking. Inadequate development of skills, such as effective communication, leadership, and teamwork, means a marketing graduate is of little value to an organization (Mason 1992). Business etiquette and protocol are another area that is lacking in business graduates. Schaffer, Kelley, and Goethe (1993) reported business students often lack basic skills such as the ability to write a business letter, to speak on the telephone, to conduct a meeting, and to introduce business associates. Educators have written extensively on the topic of how to bridge the gap between what skills employers want and what skills are taught in higher education. Kelley (1992) described how marketing educators could include instruction in a variety of etiquette skills as part of a capstone marketing management course. Lazorchak (2000) reported new college graduates often lack knowledge in business protocol in a global business environment. O’Briant (2000) suggested it is imperative that college graduates develop proper job-search eti-

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quette (e.g., appropriate interview behavior and the use of Thank You notes) to secure an entry-level position. Business communication courses have assisted in this process by incorporating the teaching of interpersonal, critical thinking, leadership, and teamwork skills (Mood, Stewart, and BoltLee 2002). The importance of having marketing graduates develop skills for handling a variety of workplace issues, and the ability to plan and develop their careers, is receiving more attention in the literature. For example, McCorkle et al. (2003) argued marketing graduates may develop essential selfmarketing skills by incorporating self-marketing projects throughout the marketing curriculum. Some business schools and marketing departments have gone so far as to develop specific courses to help students develop the skills desired by employers. Towson State University added a business cornerstone course in its curriculum that includes topics such as how to manage a diverse workforce, teamwork, career development, professional appearance and behavior, and leadership (Holter and Kopka 2001). Taylor (2003) described the process that the marketing faculty at Florida International University used to develop a required marketing career planning course. The course is designed to facilitate the development of skills such as written and oral communications, job search, interviewing and networking, meeting coordination and office protocol, teamwork and working with diverse groups, and how to present a professional image and attitude. In summary, previous research suggests marketing educators need to focus their attention on producing marketing graduates who are well versed in marketing knowledge and have developed essential professional and career development skills needed to apply that knowledge. It is not sufficient to teach marketing students just about the rudimentary concepts of marketing. Knowledge without problem solving, communication, and technical skills will not serve the graduate well in an entry-level marketing position (Kelley and Gaedeke 1990). METHOD A mail questionnaire was developed to obtain perceptual responses from marketing educators and practitioners. This questionnaire focused on the perceptions of the preparation of marketing graduates for entry-level marketing positions and the need to integrate professional and career development skills into the marketing curriculum. The professional and career development skills included in the questionnaire were taken from informal conversations with 10 campus recruiters and the literature (Deutschman 1991; Eberhardt and Moser 1997; Hahs 1999). Although a limited number of skills (e.g., communication, teamwork, and leadership) were found in all of the previous literature, some very specific skill competencies (e.g., etiquette, interviewing, and career planning) were

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found in only a subset of the literature. The authors served as expert judges to determine the final set of skills that were included in the questionnaire. Each judge drafted a list of skills, and then the lists were compared. If a skill appeared on both lists, it was automatically included in the survey. If a skill appeared on only one list, the judges discussed the merit of including it in the survey before arriving at a decision to include it in the questionnaire. Practitioner Sample

A systematic random sample of 500 marketing practitioners dispersed throughout the United States was selected from the 2002 American Marketing Association (AMA) International Membership Directory. A sample of marketing practitioners rather than campus recruiters was selected on the basis of the assumption that they would have a working relationship with recent marketing graduates and therefore be in a position to evaluate the professional and career development skills that are needed for a successful marketing career. Twenty-four surveys were returned undelivered. This meant 476 surveys were delivered. One hundred seventy questionnaires were returned. The overall response rate based on the number of surveys delivered was 35.7%. Educator Sample

A systematic random sample of 300 marketing educators at 4-year institutions dispersed throughout the United States was selected from Prentice Hall’s Marketing Faculty Directory (Hasselback 2001). Eight questionnaires were returned undelivered. One hundred fifteen questionnaires of the 292 surveys delivered were returned. The overall response rate based on the number of surveys delivered was 39.3%. RESULTS The educator respondents were heavily represented by men (73.9%) but were relatively equally distributed based on age. More professors (44.8%) responded than assistant and associate professors combined (43.1%). Approximately 70% of the educator respondents were from AACSB-accredited schools. The mean years of teaching experience was 18. The majority of the practitioner respondents were male (54.7%), earned $25,000 to $70,000 (47.3%), and were younger than 35 years (51.7%). Slightly more than 40% of the respondents had some college but not a college degree. Most respondents held middle- (30.0%) or upper-level management (28.8%) positions. Upon examining the data, the authors concluded that only respondents who completed at least a college degree should be included in the data set because they would have enough familiarity with a college curriculum to respond to the questions. The result was that 96 completed surveys were retained for further analysis. The final distribution of the education level of the practitioner respondents was 47% having an

undergraduate degree and 53% having an advanced degree. The respondents were not asked their specific major in college. The first question in the questionnaire asked, “How well prepared do you think marketing graduates are for entry into the business world compared to 10 years ago?” Almost 31% (30.9%) of the marketing practitioners perceived that graduates today were better prepared, and 39.5% perceived that the preparation of graduates had stayed the same. Only 29.6% responded that marketing graduates were not as prepared today compared to 10 years ago.1 The distribution of educator responses was somewhat different. Only 23.5% of the educators perceived marketing graduates were better prepared today, while 50% indicated they were about the same. Only 26.5% responded that marketing graduates were not as prepared compared to 10 years ago. The difference in responses between practitioners and educators was not significant (χ2 = 2.165, df = 2, p ≤ .339). Respondents were then asked to rate the importance of 23 professional and career development skills. Each item was evaluated on a 5-point scale with the end points anchored 1 = not important and 5 = very important. The skills were grouped together into three categories. The first category contained scales that asked the respondents to “rate the importance of the following skills/issues as they relate to a successful career in business.” The means of the items are reported in Table 1. MANOVA was used to test for differences in the means of the practitioner respondents on the items in Table 1 based on gender, age, education, and income. There were no significant differences in the interactions or main effects tested (Wilks’s λ = .636, p ≤ .177). However, practitioners and educators both viewed all of the items as important, and there were no significant differences between the two groups (Wilks’s λ = .674, p ≤ .731). The second category contained scales that asked the respondents to “rate the importance of the following job candidate skills in terms of securing an entry-level marketing position.” MANOVA was used to test for differences in the mean responses between practitioners and educators on the items in Table 1. Although practitioners and educators rated every item as relatively important, there was a significant difference between the two groups on two items (Wilks’s λ = 3.621, p ≤ .004). Practitioners rated experience gained from internships as less important than educators (F = 4.437, p ≤ .002). This is a surprising result given students are often advised by faculty, career center advisers, and campus recruiters to complete an internship. It could be practitioners did not view experience gained through an internship as a skill. Practitioners also differed from educators in their rating of the importance of interviewing skills (F = 9.841, p ≤ .002). Educators rated this skill higher in importance compared to practitioners. It is possible that educators may have rated skills in this category independently, while practitioners eval-

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TABLE 1 PRACTITIONER AND EDUCATOR RATINGS OF SKILLS Practitioners

Category 1 (“Rate the importance of the following skills as they relate to a successful career in business.”) Communication skills Presentation skills Conflict resolution Office politics Corporate culture Business etiquette Organizational change Health issues (e.g., stress management) Understanding diversity in the workplace Category 2 (“Rate the importance of the following job candidate skills in terms of securing an entry-level marketing position.”) Interviewing skills* Leadership skills Prior knowledge of interviewing company Internship experience* Appropriate business attire Category 3 (“Rate the importance of each of the following areas as they relate to career planning and development.”) Skills assessment Career goals Career strategy Salary negotiation Career evaluation Job search methods* Resume preparation Preinterview preparation Postinterview follow-up

Educators

M

SD

M

SD

4.73 4.50 4.31 3.55 3.70 4.01 3.85 3.33 3.77

.49 .58 .58 .91 .94 .75 .97 .95 .99

4.63 4.60 4.22 3.74 3.85 4.04 3.74 3.41 3.81

.66 .63 .75 .87 .83 .79 .84 .91 .94

4.35 3.95 3.72 3.59 4.34

.68 .86 .80 .83 .61

4.64 3.91 4.14 3.99 4.55

.66 .82 .82 .84 .64

4.12 4.28 3.94 3.26 3.84 3.86 4.13 3.99 4.26

.70 .76 .90 .90 .83 .77 .69 .79 .68

4.04 4.11 4.12 3.39 3.75 4.19 4.31 4.48 4.15

.66 .84 .75 .79 .72 .67 .69 .66 .73

*p ≤ .05.

uated the skills as part of a portfolio so that no one skill was overemphasized in its importance. The third category contained scales that asked the respondents to “rate the importance of each of the following areas as they relate to career planning and development.” MANOVA was used to test for differences in the mean response between practitioners and educators on the items shown in Table 1. Both groups rated these items as important, but there was a significant difference between the two groups on only one item (Wilks’s λ = 2.174, p ≤ .027). Compared with the practitioner respondents, educators rated job search skills (F = 2.603, p ≤ .035) as more important. It could be educators place a greater importance on the method used to search for an entry-level position, whereas practitioners may look at the graduate in terms of the ability to do the job. The respondents were asked to check the topics that should be incorporated into the marketing curriculum. The topics included in the questionnaire were culled from the literature as well as informal interviews one of the authors held with campus recruiters. The results are presented in Table 2. Overall, educators thought the topics should be included at a

higher rate than practitioners. It could be that educators have more experience in designing the content of a course and curriculum so they were better able to see how more topics could be included. In descending order, practitioners felt the top seven skills that should be included were (1) business communication skills, (2) business presentation skills, (3) resume preparation, (4) preinterview preparation, (5) career goals, (6) assessment of skills, and (7) conflict resolution. In descending order, educators felt the top seven skills that should be incorporated into the marketing curriculum were (1) business communication skills, (2) business presentation skills, (3) resume preparation, (4) business etiquette (5) preinterview preparation, (6) establishing career goals, and (7) appropriate business attire. Practitioners and educators were asked if they believed a course that taught professional and career development skills should become a part of the marketing curriculum. A chisquare test determined that practitioners and educators differed in their response to this question (χ2 = 13.415, df = 2, p ≤ .001). A large number of practitioners (74.2%) indicated such a course should be included in the curriculum compared with

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DECEMBER 2005 TABLE 3 OBSTACLES TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A CAREER DEVELOPMENT COURSE (TWO OR MORE RESPONSES)

TABLE 2 TOPICS TO BE INCLUDED IN A CAREER DEVELOPMENT CLASS (IN PERCENTAGES) Practitioners Educators Business communication skills Business presentation skills Resume preparation Preinterview preparation Established career goals Skills assessment Conflict resolution Appropriate business attire Understanding workplace diversity Leadership skills Corporate culture Career strategy Business etiquette Job search methods Organizational change Prior knowledge of interviewing company Career evaluation Postinterview follow-up Coping with job stress Company politics Internship experience Salary negotiation

92.6 81.9 72.3 69.1 69.1 69.1 69.1 68.1 63.8 61.7 57.4 56.4 55.3 54.3 54.3 45.7 44.7 41.9 34.0 38.3 28.7 18.1

92.2 86.2 78.5 76.7 74.1 65.5 64.7 71.6 68.1 58.6 63.8 70.7 78.4 63.4 56.0 65.5 45.7 59.5 54.3 55.2 54.3 34.9

49.1% of the educators. Only 14% of educators and 10.8% of practitioners indicated a course should not be included in the curriculum. The remaining respondents in both groups were undecided whether a specific course should be included in the curriculum. Perhaps educators felt professional and career development skills are already “taught” as workshops by college career placement offices, and therefore, believed it would be redundant to teach these skills as a separate class in the marketing curriculum. The practitioners were asked if the business school that they attended offered a course that taught professional and career development skills. Only 6.8% of the respondents answered yes. Educators were asked if their business school offered such a course. Somewhat surprisingly, almost one fifth of the respondents (17.3%) answered yes. Practitioners and educators then were asked the following open-ended question, “What problems/obstacles do you think might occur in adding this course to the marketing department’s curriculum?” The problems/obstacles are shown in Table 3. Although acknowledging such a course would be an asset to students, practitioners noted the most significant problems would be that the course would overlap with existing courses and it would require more units to graduate. Educators felt the curriculum already had enough units and that students do not have enough time to take additional courses given AACSB requirements. In addition, 17 educators felt such a course may not be approved because the topics may not be viewed as appropriate for an academic course. Other educators indi-

Comment

Number

Educators Business major already has too many units Faculty may view the course as nonacademic and not approve it Something must go if you add a new course This belongs in the career center Many topics are already covered in another course Who would teach it and when would it be offered Will take away scare resources from offering other courses Practitioners Topics overlap with other courses Adds to the number of units needed to graduate May be viewed as not needed This course would be an asset to students Limited funding available

27 17 9 5 5 2 2 10 10 10 8 4

cated another course would have to be deleted from an already crowded curriculum to make room for this new course or that perhaps the topics to be included in a specialized course could be covered in other marketing courses. DISCUSSION The consistency in the results between marketing practitioners and educators suggest that they appear to be “on the same page” concerning the need for teaching professional and career development skills. This conclusion is similar to what Stacks, Botan, and Turk (1999) found after studying practitioner and educator perceptions of public relations education. However, significant obstacles remain before a specialized course to teach specific professional and career development skills may be included in the marketing curriculum. Although Florida International University developed a required marketing course with the objective of teaching career-oriented skills, in an era of tight budgets, it is unlikely that a separate course could be established at most marketing departments. Many educators may argue that a university should not be involved in career preparation but should focus on education in general. Even if such a course does make it into the curriculum, several barriers may exist in the teaching of the course. These barriers may include overambitious course content, problems with identifying and selecting of faculty to teach the course, and developing ways to address student resentment related to having to practice skills rather than “study” course content (Holter and Kopka 2001). Practically speaking, it might be more realistic to provide marketing students with multiple opportunities to develop the skills included in this study. For example, career planning

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skills could be incorporated in the basic marketing course as an assignment for students to write a marketing plan using themselves as the product (McCorkle et al. 2003). Business etiquette and interviewing skills could be integrated into the capstone marketing management class since seniors would be in the process of interviewing for entry-level marketing positions (Kelley 1992). Oral and written communication skills, teamwork, and leadership skills could be sharpened in most marketing classes using class projects and presentations. Some marketing educators may argue that career development skills belong in the greater business curriculum or the university career placement office. There is some validity to this argument. After all, marketing students are graduates of a school of business first, and the mission of the university career center is to satisfy the students’ career service needs. However, trying to persuade other faculty in the business school to develop and teach such a course could be a daunting task. Much greater control is available at the local level of the marketing department. In addition, a university career center may choose to channel their resources in a different direction. The results must be interpreted in light of the limitations of the study. First, the items used for the questions included in the three categories in Table 1 were culled from the previous literature as well as informal talks with college recruiters. Therefore, the results of the current study tracked the results of past studies. Another way for a marketing department to proceed would be to survey campus recruiters to identify specific strengths and weaknesses of marketing graduates. Campus recruiters may have a different perspective of marketing graduates than those marketing practitioners listed in the AMA directory. Second, the practitioner sample may be somewhat biased since a question was not used to qualify the potential respondents relative to their previous history with recent marketing graduates. Hence, they may be providing general opinions about the skills included in the study rather than specific experience with the skills of recent graduates. Third, the questions in Categories 2 and 3 in the current survey asked respondents to indicate the importance of the inclusion of certain skills in a specific course that is designed to teach these skills. This may have led the respondents to indicate all skills were relatively important. A different result might have been found if the respondents were asked to rank in order of importance the skills listed in these questions. A fourth limitation is that some of the constructs and variables that were measured were confounded by other constructs and variables. For example, the terms marketing curriculum and business curriculum were used interchangeably in the questionnaire. Respondents may not have differentiated between the marketing and business curricula, leading to potentially compromising the validity of the study. Future studies need to examine faculty-student-employer differences before determining the outcomes desired from the marketing curriculum. A gap analysis would highlight

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differences in faculty, student, and employer expectations regarding the mix of skills and knowledge that should be taught (Davis, Misra, and Van Auken 2001). Second, scale development based on theory is needed in studies of practitioner perceptions of student skill development. The development of a reliable and valid scale could provide greater depth of understanding of the perspectives of practitioners and educators of the skills included in this study. Third, perhaps an experimental course could be developed that included instruction in the professional and career development skills discussed in this article. After controlling for self-selection bias, students who have completed the course could then be used to benchmark the skill development of students who have not enrolled in the class. Educators could then determine the value added from such a course. Fourth, future studies might examine the perceptions of campus recruiters regarding the professional and career development skills that were examined in the current study. Recruiters may have somewhat different insights regarding the current skill development of marketing graduates because they are involved with students during the transition from college to industry. NOTE 1. The results from this question must be examined in light of the fact that more than 50% of the practitioner respondents were younger than 35 years. A chi-square test determined that there was no difference in the response to this question for the respondents younger than 35 versus 35 years and older. Therefore, the aggregate practitioner responses are reported here and are compared with the educator responses.

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