What can I do to succeed in business?

What is the best job I can get after college to learn and develop skills necessary to succeed in the business world?

• Currently studying Economics at a top liberal arts college; want to be a top executive or entrepreneur in the future. Don't see myself getting an MS or Phd. Considering Investment Banking or Management Consulting as potential ways to enter and learn about the business world.

• Answer:

  Have you perused the results from doing a search such as this: https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=economist+career+prospects?  Have you learned anything from your studies, thus far, which would allow you to refine that search and get results which are more useful to you? Are you going for an MS or PhD?  If so have you explored thesis topics which are aligned to your career goals? Have you approached your college counseling staff, or any of your professors with this question?  Done any research at all? If so, why post the question without context regarding any efforts you've made to explore the question on your own? Broadly speaking you could start in the public or private sectors. Most people would likely be biased against public sector options for a fresh graduate with ambitions of becoming an entrepreneur or top executive.  However a position with the Fed or one of its member banks, or starting in the BLS, SEC or the CBO might be an excellent place to get some experience and make some professional connections.  Perhaps you'll need to start at some state level agency. In any event I'd suggest that you consider focusing on the "harder" side of chosen field --- on the mathematics, analysis, statistics and computational aspects of the work.  Having a facility with R, Python (and iPython "Notebooks") and computational clusters (Hadoop) will probably help you to be taken more "seriously" prospective employers and colleagues. Read this: http://www.kevinsheppard.com/images/0/09/Python_introduction.pdf ... and see if it's applicable to your studies.