Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

Honing Skills From Inside and Outside the Classroom

Throughout my time at Babson so far, I was able to take courses that interested me in the marketing field taught by experienced professors. Introduction to marketing really helped me realize that this was something I would want to do in the future. Professor Sandy Bravo’s passion for marketing really stuck with me. Seeing a strong female that had great success in her career really showed me the possibilities. The last semester, I took Web Technologies taught by Professor Steven Gordon. This course satisfies my own curiosity and creative side in learning how to code HTML, CSS, and Javascript, but also the design side of building a website. 

From just these two courses, I was able to learn and apply my knowledge into my Internship. Understanding the basics of marketing, I was able to support my advertising campaigns. Learning the basics of coding helped me with designing parts of the website for one of the start-ups I’m interning for as well as their email marketing. 

Although skills from school courses are extremely helpful, experiences and skills from outside of the classroom are important as well. I find myself researching topics that interest me as well as building on the skills that I have developed over time. Some of these skills have helped me through projects and assignments  I have had for my classes. My recommendations for hard skills to start learning if you’re going into the marketing field are:

  1. Photoshop: I have been using photoshop since the senior year of highschool and this really helped me when it came to projects and assignments at Babson. I was able to design logos and put together mockups. At my internship I use photoshop heavily to design parts of the website and emails.
  2. Coding: Using my coding skills have helped me retain my knowledge as well as being a benefit to my internship. Just knowing the basics of coding can really help with small tasks that need to be completed.

All of the skills I was able to display my capabilities and willingness to learn to my employer.