Last modified: 2019-10-18
Abstract
Employers are increasingly expecting their new hires to have knowledge bases that are both broad across multiple academic-professional career areas as well as deep in one or more discipline-career areas to provide additional flexibility and value to meet rapidly changing data and technology needs. These types of positions are commonly referred to as hybrid careers, which are generally seen as more recession proof, receiving higher pay and growing at paces faster than their component areas. Often liberal arts educated students are perceived as providing the sought-after knowledge breath. However, this breadth must be matched and integrated with one or more areas of deep discipline/career expertise knowledge. These hybrid positions often require transdisciplinary data analytical and information systems skill sets that are increasingly in demand in more career areas. Educating and advising students for these hybrid career positions is largely an unresearched topic. This study examines aspects to consider in advising, educating and preparing students for hybrid internships and career positions. This includes topics encompassing advisement strategies, early academic starts in multiple areas of deep domain knowledge, as well as integrating both hard and soft skill sets in real world projects and problem domains. Often this involves students acquiring, integrating and applying multiple information systems and business skill sets such as business process design, business data management and analysis as well as the holistic integration of soft people skills. An academic-advising model to integrate experiential learning courses and experiences spanning multiple disciplines is presented for preparing students for hybrid careers.