Diverse group of business people in business casual dress smiling in board room

6 Smart Skills to Develop If You Want to Major in Business

So you want to major in Business in college? Student writer Sydney can help you get a head start by teaching you about six skills you should develop now.

Business skills allow businesspeople to use their understanding of human behavior in the consumer and organizational sector to promote a product or service. These skills are essential to develop as early and intentionally as you can if you plan on majoring in Business in college. The exact business skills you’ll use in your career will vary depending on your position, industry, and type of company—but some skills are universal to most business careers. Here’s a list of six specific business skills you should consider developing as soon as possible.

1. Strategic thinking

Strategic thinking is when you train your thinking to process in the context of achieving a goal or success in a certain project, service, or product. Being able to make decisions on the spot, weigh potential positive and negative outcomes, and consider variables all factor into your strategic thinking abilities. Strategic thinking taps into other skills of analytical thinking, innovation, communication, leadership, problem-solving, and decisiveness. In the business world, strategic thinking is necessary for market forces, resourcing, and economic realities. Company leaders gather, examine, and combine their business's internal data and ideas to develop a strategic narrative.

2. Market awareness

Market awareness is the ability to assess your entire industry from a macro level, allowing companies to optimize good business plans. This knowledge is broken down into sector awareness, fear awareness, and participant awareness. It’s a clear understanding of what exists in the market and what needs to exist in the market, and how you can fill that gap. It involves being aware of market trends, market size, and market shares as well as standards of the market.

Related: The Top 10 Hard and Soft Skills All Employers Want 

3. Organizing and planning

Effective planning and organizing involve the ability to use logical and systematic methods to achieve your goals and track progress. It’s necessary in business to visualize your steps, organize, and modify as necessary. This requires estimating the time and effort required to achieve something, identifying and organizing resources, maintaining good time management in completing tasks, developing schedules and timetables, and establishing how to measure results. Delegation is also a part of effective planning and organizational skills; it’s important to distribute work throughout a team according to everyone's skill sets to maximize productivity. 

4. Team building

Teamwork is a skill taught to us from a very young age, and team building is an essential skill in the workplace for many reasons. Being part of a successful team creates a positive work environment and builds company culture and trust. Employees can better their skills in other areas by learning effective teamwork. It helps employees be more accepting and understanding of people of different backgrounds. Team building can also foster healthy competition, which helps productivity. The better you are at learning to effectively work with and communicate with others, the more able you’ll be to contribute to a harmonious work environment. 

Related: 5 Ways to Build Work Relationships for Career Success

5. Goal setting

Goal setting means deciding what to accomplish, knowing when you want to accomplish it, and devising a plan to achieve the goal. Goal setting and planning work cohesively with the aforementioned skills because working in business means seeing both the big details as well as the minute. When setting goals, you should follow the SMART acronym: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Goals are powerful tools that allow your business to focus on its priorities and experience success. 

6. Communication

Businesses are run by people, for people. Communication directly correlates to how a business is run. It’s an important tool in a business both internally and externally. Communication skills are useful for negotiating disputes, composing emails, speaking one-on-one and in large groups, and talking with employees. Working on your communication skills means you’ll learn how to be persuasive and a key factor in your business’s success.  

Related: How Useful Transferable Skills Can Land You a Job

These six skills are fundamental in establishing, coordinating, managing, and executing a successful business. They’ll ensure your business is able to produce high-quality products, maintain excellent customer service, maximize profits and productivity, preserve a sustainable company culture, and more. To further your business skills, try taking on leadership roles, finding a mentor, volunteering to participate in extra projects, reading books, and furthering your education in college. 

Want to learn more about what to expect from your business education? Check out the articles and advice in our Business section.

Like what you’re reading?

Join the CollegeXpress community! Create a free account and we’ll notify you about new articles, scholarship deadlines, and more.

Join Now

Tags:

About Sydney Mathew

Sydney Ann Mathew is a student at Shadow Creek High School in Texas. She’s an academically successful student, participating and holding office positions in a variety of organizations and clubs. At the age of nine, Sydney won first place in a city-wide invention competition. Her invention currently has a “patent pending” status and is in the process of being approved. Sydney enjoys attending church and singing in the youth choir. She volunteers in her local neighborhood community and was instrumental in starting a chapter of Color Cycle, a national recycling initiative, at her elementary school. In her spare time, Sydney enjoys spending time with family and friends, dancing, and playing basketball, volleyball, and the piano. She also writes and uses poetry to convey her emotions and feelings. After high school, she plans to pursue a career in business.

 

Join our community of
over 5 million students!

CollegeXpress has everything you need to simplify your college search, get connected to schools, and find your perfect fit.

Join CollegeXpress

College Quick Connect

Swipe right to request information.
Swipe left if you're not interested.

University of Mississippi

University, MS


Fabiola Rodriguez

Fabiola Rodriguez

High School Class of 2022

CollegeXpress helped me on my journey to get to the school of my first choice by showing me all the options I have. I didn’t know of the College of Southern Nevada until I went on this website, and it helped me look for other choices and compare what colleges would be right for me.

Heaven Johnson

Heaven Johnson

Back to School Scholarship Winner, High School Class of 2023

I’d like to thank everyone on the CollegeXpress team for their generosity. Not only have I been awarded this scholarship, but CollegeXpress makes it easier to apply and gives amazing tips for schools and scholarships. I am extremely grateful as this will help with my schooling and allow me to be able to enter into the field I’ve been dreaming of all my life. 

Rose Kearsley

Rose Kearsley

High School Class of 2021

CollegeXpress has seriously helped me out a lot, especially when it comes to scholarships and studying for tests like the ACT. I also really love the financial help. It’s a little harder to pay because I live with a family of eight, so any help is appreciated. Thanks for this opportunity!

Keaun Brown

Keaun Brown

$2,000 Community Service Scholarship Winner, 2020

As I transition to furthering my education, I can say with certainty that it simply wouldn’t be possible without the help of generous organizations such as CollegeXpress. Those who initially founded CX had no idea their platform would give a plethora of information to a first-generation homeless kid native to the ghettos of over half a dozen states. Everyone at CX and Carnegie Dartlet gave me a chance at a future when the statistics said I had none. And for that, I thank them.

Lydia Huth

Lydia Huth

Student, Campbell University; CollegeXpress Student Writer

I discovered CollegeXpress while embarking on my college search journey as an excited—but scared and way confused—high schooler without a counselor or college-bound sibling to give me advice. Let me tell you, I’m so glad that I stumbled on this community! CollegeXpress helped me find potential colleges and keep application deadlines straight. It gave me a great list of scholarships, and the blogs and emails made me feel like I wasn’t going it alone. Almost three years later and with freshman year of college down, I still love the CollegeXpress vibe so much that I’m writing for them. I’d recommend this site to anyone!