<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I just have a quick question about the information systems and operations management major:</p>
<p>I've heard that grads in this field have a hard time finding jobs compared to industrial engineers, largely because they lack the quant background. I was wondering, if you double major in ISOM with something quantitative like applied math or CS, is it still hard to find a job? The more I've been looking at it (based on what I have seen so far in my intro business class and my own assessment), I would be much more suited to a job in operations research/logistics/supply chain, etc, but, especially since I don't go to a "target school", I'm worried about getting a job. So yeah, anyone have any idea/advice about what to do? I can't do industrial engineering btw because my school doesn't offer it, and I don't really like engineering (but I do like the math, and am willing to try some of the programming aspect), plus I'm looking at getting into management in this field anyways.</p>
<p>While they are somewhat related, IS and OM are really two seperate areas…so I’m assuming there are two seperate majors at your school. I would try to get a list from the college of business (or possibly career services) of the job offers that OM majors receive. Furthermore, you will probably want to talk to an OM professor to get a better idea of what courses you should be taking (and how to break into Operations). A quantitative subject like math would go well with OM. Whether or not that would make you more employable, I can’t answer.</p>
<p>BTW, computer science is essentially an engineering discipline and I don’t think it would be nearly as useful as math for OM. Also, it seems like you could just take extra IS classes rather than CS classes if you wanted to be more technical, but I would think the understanding of processes and statistics would be far more important in OM.</p>
<p>If you wanted to go more IS (MIS/CIS; sounds like you don’t want to) then math would be of little to no help. CS would be very helpful, but if you double major in those two, that begs the question: Why major in IS at all?</p>
<p>I can’t really answer the question about how employable OM grads are compared to IE because i really don’t know. I do know that CS grads are more employable than IS grads, but IS grads are quite employable and often times the difference is not that great (there is a lot of overlap…but for instance an IS grad isn’t going to get a job developing video games and will have a tough time landing a job at a engineering based company).</p>