<p>I've always had a passion for sports and have dreamed about becoming a sports writer or getting a career in something related to the field of journalism. I am currently a freshman at Rutgers and joined the sports department of the campus radio station. I have also been thinking about majoring in Human Resource Management and potentially double majoring in the two. However, I am unsure as to what I should do with journalism. I feel as if journalism can be a waste because it can be hard to break into. I'm not sure if I should double major, or keep my interest in sports and journalism as more of a hobby and minor while pursuing a career in human resources. Also, are these two majors a wacky combination and look weird if they are together on a resume? Any help is much appreciated. Thank you!</p>
<p>A degree in HR is absolutely not necessary to work in HR. People who work in Comp and Benefits have strong quantitative and analytical skills- math majors, econ majors. People who work in Employee Relations have strong counseling skills- psych is a frequent major. I work in Talent Management (recruiting, retention, organizational and succession planning, hiring strategies) and have a degree in Classics. My boss majored in Renaissance Studies (and in fact, he is a Renaissance Man- interested in everything). Other people on our team majored in sociology, history, literature, urban planning, anthropology.</p>
<p>The best way to explore your interest in HR is a summer job. The best way to get that summer job is to volunteer (maybe not this year if you’ve got a lot on your plate). Every non-profit has obsolete job descriptions, or a very old onboarding system for new hires (the computer program that makes sure that new employees get a paycheck, get their taxes deducted appropriately, have an accurate social security number, etc.) so if you like to write- volunteer, and if you’re good with programming and can patch together better databases or are good excel- volunteer to do that.</p>
<p>Volunteer work for HR related projects is a great way to get the summer internship with a big company’s HR department, which leads to the full time job after graduation.</p>
<p>I think journalism is a fine major btw. Writing, critical thinking, learning to document your sources-- people in HR do that every day.</p>
<p>In many organizations Employee Communications if either a formal HR team member or has dotted line reporting or simply works very closely with HR. Journalism and HR Management make perfect sense. </p>
<p>Mom- good point. My company had Employee Communications reporting up through the Comms/Marketing chain of command, then moved it to HR, then moved it back. But regardless- we work with those folks daily and consider them teammates.</p>
<p>But you don’t need a degree in HR…</p>
<p>I was a journalism major who went on to get jobs in public relations, advertising and marketing. Writing skills are needed for all three. I noticed during one of my internships in a public affairs office that there are jobs in sports journalism that are not the traditional sportswriter or sportscaster that people normally associate with that. Most colleges in the country have a “Sports information director,” and people who work in that department. That’s where I’d try to get an internship if I were you.</p>
<p>Re: HR – any business degree will benefit by someone who is a competent writer. So perhaps a double major in journalism, or maybe a minor.</p>
<p>Are the journalism major and the HR major in different colleges at Rutgers? If so, you need to make sure of all the requirements. Often one school issuing a BA will require different things than the one offering a BS. </p>
<p>I think for journalism (and many other jobs) the most important thing is writing, writing, writing. As someone pointed out above, the inhouse publications and magazines are often handled by the communications department, or the HR department. At a major company I worked for, we had one guy doing stories for a quarterly magazine (I forget what department he was in, maybe marketing?). He was good. The legal department checked his work. Then we got a new ‘communications’ department with 8 people. They did the magazine, several home office things, brochures, some marketing things. They were awful! Their grammar, to a person, was terrible. We were only supposed to check it for legal content but we ended up rewriting most of the scripts, articles, advertising. What we wouldn’t have given for a decent writer.</p>