Math in the Marketplace

Jobs discussed below are jobs that use math as an important job skill and are directly related to the commercial market- place and, therefore, tend to be dynamic environments characterized by high energy and lots of change. Because the marketplace is always seeking buyers and sellers, it's a field where decisions are often made quickly and often in an atmosphere highly charged with risk. Innovation, the ability to seize opportunity, intuitive knowledge of the marketplace and people, and a quick response mechanism are all phrases that might describe attributes for success in this environment. If those descriptions are appealing to your personality and your work style, you might consider exploring this career path.

There's no question you'll be needed and appreciated. In today's competitive marketplace, profit margins can be slim, costs must be carefully controlled, and business strategists are increasingly dependent on sophisticated mathematical models to anticipate possible outcomes with changes in variables such as the price of raw materials, advertising costs, competitive threats, the volatility of the stock market, packaging and shipping costs, and all the other host of variables that can affect the success of a business enterprise. The math graduate fits right into organizations that are working under these demands and pressures, and you might be that math major!



Every job brings its own environment and its own "package" of associated values. While everyone reading this book may be a math major, everyone reading this book is a different person with different needs. "The Self-Assessment," and worked through some of those exercises, you may be beginning to build a mental picture of some of your particular personality dimensions, work attributes, and values. When you combine that growing self-awareness with your past work experience, you begin to understand that different jobs deliver different atmospheres, differing interactions with others, varying degrees of remuneration, and often dramatically different work experiences in terms of pace, location, energy, and so forth.

As career counselors, one of the most enjoyable aspects of working with math majors is letting them in on a well-kept secret-everybody wants to hire a math major! Career counselors listen to employers and recruiters complain frequently that math majors never interview with them. They wonder aloud, "Where do we find them? How can we get them to interview withes?" Even math department faculty can sometimes be guilty of hiding their majors from a larger world of employment because they themselves fail to realize where a math graduate can be employed.

One of the reasons career counselors are so enthusiastic about math majors is that they talk to employers all the time who need individuals with mathematical skills in the workplace. Many math majors are unaware of this demand and may even graduate and begin their own, often frustrating job search without any idea of the demand for their skills. It can then be easy to assign blame to your program or faculty, and that wouldn't be fair at all. The simple fact is that your math major is one of the most demanding scholastic majors offered in a college-so demanding, in fact, the small numbers of graduates are a good indication of your rarity and value in the marketplace! Mastering your college math curriculum requires many courses and credits and doesn't t leave a lot of time for direct application by your faculty. It's common to be so involved in your program that it may have been hard to take time to explore career options. That's understandable. The reason for this book, and particularly for this chapter, is that it focuses on some areas you may not yet have encountered as career options,

So while this may all sound intriguing and attractive to you, you justifiably may be asking yourself, "What's the catch? What else do I need to know about working in the area of buying and selling?" What's behind these questions is the legitimate concern for what else the job may demand of you in addition to your math skill. You are correct in thinking that there will be other expectations beyond a facility with numbers. Some other attributes that will be helpful include, but are not limited to the following:

• An interest in and awareness of the commercial marketplace
   
• An appreciation for the competitiveness of the marketplace
   
• A willingness to assume management responsibilities, including staff supervision, budgets, hiring, and evaluation of employees
   
• Ultimately you will be asked to shed your technical abilities and taken increasingly conceptual responsibilities for strategic concerns, planning, and evaluation

This is a career path where you are hired for your math degree and something more, where you will use your math degree every day, but many other skills as well, and where you will be expected to assume the mantle of management responsibility in your preparation of professional staff work (business writing of reports, memoranda, and correspondence), in your staff supervision of employees and your ability to represent the organization you work for in a responsible manner. Let's look at some specific occupational areas in this career path.

Definition of The Career Path

Because this career path offers a number of exciting, but perhaps unfamiliar opportunities for the math major, let's begin by identifying some possible occupations in this area; acquaint you with some of the terminology, the job definitions, and typical career pathways in those fields. A caution is in order here: the jobs described below are just some solid examples and are not a finite (to use a math term) just by any means. Further we'll give you even more ideas of possible job titles and related occupations for this area. The jobs illustrated have been selected by the authors because

1. jobs in math are seeking math majors
    
2. math majors are in demand in the marketplace, and
    
3. This path contains good general examples of career paths and job demands in the area of buying, selling, and marketing in the workplace.

We'll look at series of sample jobs and job categories representative of those jobs that value your math education highly but demand other skills and interests in addition to your fluency with math. It may be decision making, it may be customer service, it may quite simply be your listening skills, but in this category math is but one of many important tools in your skill package that you'll need to do these jobs. The positions we'll highlight are:

• Retail buyer and buyer/merchandising trainee
   
• Sales service representative
   
• Purchasing agent

What do they have in common? First, they are all part of the network of jobs that provide information and services to support the movement of godsend services from the manufacturer to the ultimate consumer. It's a huge part of our economy and an activity that can potentially use as many math majors as might apply for jobs in these kinds of activities. In fact, if you were total to your college alumni office or career office about surveys taken of former graduates of your institution, you'd discover a high proportion of math majors employed in the jobs listed above or in some of the related occupations listed further on in this chapter. Let's look at each of the four representative jobs listed above individually through the following categories.