What are integrated marketing communications objectives on advertising?

How do I make the switch from being a computer engineer to a more business side?

• I am currently unemployed. I graduated recently in June. Still trying to find my passion. But I think I am interesting in marketing/advertising/PR/Finance kind of things. I am finding it difficult to change fields. I have had 3 internships in programming and 1 in Finance. I was thinking of doing an MBA in marketing so that I can switch fields, or is that pointless? I was also thinking of doing masters in integrated communications or something. Is there any masters program I should look into? Other thing I was thinking of starting my own advertising firm but I am not too sure about the laws. I would love to hear from you guys and appreciate any sort of help. ps: I am finding it hard to get a job because I am an international student and will need sponsorship in the future. Thanks in advance.

• Answer:

  The big advantage of the fields you're looking at joining are that you can prove yourself by doing. You want to work in a marketing position? Start by learning how to market yourself. Start a blog outlining the good practices you have come across. Answer marketing and finance-related questions on Quora. In short, establish your expertise through public mediums. As an aside, writing on these topics will help you assess what are the topics you are truly passionate about ; mostly those topics that you find easy and natural to write about at length. Another thing you mention is that you're a computer engineering student. What kind of student are you? Did you try to put into practice some of the things you've learnt while at school? Lately there has been a lot of discussion about "growth hackers", people who use their programming talent for marketing-related tasks [1]: Airbnb does just this, with a remarkable Craigslist integration. They’ve picked a platform with 10s of millions of users where relatively few automated tools exist, and have created a great experience to share your Airbnb listing. [...] Certainly a traditional marketer would not have come up with this, or known it was even possible – instead it’d take a marketing-minded engineer to dissect the product and build an integration this smooth. Maybe becoming a growth hacker is something you should look at. Going the MBA route might help too, but it's going to be much more expansive. You could also try to get hired at a company as a technical project manager and have them finance your marketing-related MBA a couple years down the road (we've actually done exactly this last year for one of the employees of my current company). [1] http://andrewchen.co/2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study/