Keep That College Degree Working For Your Career – Long After Graduation

iStockphoto.com | Nutthaseth Vanchaichana

Many people out there want to help you with your career. The good news is that your college – from which you graduated long, long, ago – has an entire staff committed to just that.

Whether you’re a recent graduate or a professional well into your career, your alma mater may provide helpful career benefits long after it has stopped cashing your tuition checks. Successful alumni contribute to a school’s reputation and to its endowment, so it has a vested interest in aiding its former students.

Here are some potential lifelong career boosting benefits your college/university may offer:

Career Placement & Support: Most colleges have a career services office that provides everything from individual career coaching to career fairs. Advisors can facilitate connections to potential employers with whom they've built relationships. Some schools have their own job boards to which you can upload your resume. You might even be able to attend their career fairs, too.

Continuing Education: Many schools offer alumni classes at a reduced price through programs designed for busy adult professionals. Whether you want to earn an additional degree or audit classes, going back to your old school, so to speak, is a cost-effective way to bring your skills and knowledge up to date.

Digital Career Resources: You can find a wealth of webinars, podcasts,  virtual career fairs, and on-demand presentations with alumni, career professionals, and industry insiders. In fact, go to YouTube, and you can probably find these originating from a wealth of schools.

Professional Networking: Chances are there is an alumni group where you live that hosts mixers, seminars, fundraisers, or meet-ups for the big game (although these days, Zoom is the preferred platform). These events give you access to prominent alumni. A well-timed introduction can facilitate a career-changing conversation. Events like these are worth exploring post-pandemic.

School Reputation: A strong ranking enhances a school's profile, boosts enrollment, and improves the market perception of degrees conferred to students and alumni alike. If your alma mater has risen in the annual rankings, your earning potential grow with it.

College Friends: You may be surprised who you end up working with during the course of your career. It may be a fraternity brother or sorority sister, or the drummer in your college band. It may come in the form of a referral at a critical time or even investment money. The people with whom you went to college are an unofficial career services office dispersed through every field all around the world. 

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Should I Drop Out of the Workforce and Go Back to School During the Pandemic?

iStockphoto.com | kzenon

In our recent past, deciding whether or not to go back to school was a big, life-altering, decision (“Do I Need to Go Back to College to Change Careers?” / “5 Pieces of Good News for Online Students”). Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this already difficult decision is even more complex.

It’s no secret that COVID has fundamentally altered every aspect of life, transforming business, labor, and education. There is no reliable way to predict how deep the changes will be and how long they will last.

Thus, it may be tempting to ditch this horrific job market (with a national US unemployment rate of 8.6%, and much higher in places), and go back to school full time to earn another degree. Is that a good idea right now? There’s no easy answer.

Pandemic or not, the first and primary step, is an objective assessment of your personal circumstances and an informed projection of the Return on Investment (ROI) you can realistically expect under the best circumstances. According to U.S. News, “tuition and fees for the 2020–2021 school year was $41,411 at private colleges, $11,171 for state residents at public colleges and $26,809 for out-of-state students at state schools.” When you consider that colleges have been consistent in raising tuition on a regular basis, the above numbers are starting points. 

Ask yourself:

• How much will it cost to earn the degree I want?

• How long will it take?

• What is the average market salary for professionals with the degree I wish to obtain?

• If I do not have the resources, how does a student loan alter my calculations?

• How long will it take to pay back, and what kind of salary will I need to pay it back?

Really run the numbers, then add 10% for good measure. And keep in mind, an MBA, law degree, or other advanced diploma doesn’t come cheap, and can be more expensive per credit than other programs. But with COVID-19, we’re in uncharted territory and even the questions above might not provide a complete picture.

Let’s look at the arguments for returning to school:

• The labor market is crowded and uncertain. By returning to school you are taking yourself out of a hyper competitive and uncertain labor market. In traditional downturns, economists are able to make reasonable projections about the course a recession will take and steps that can be taken to alleviate the crisis. In our current situation, there is no reliable historical data to make predictions with any kind of certainty.

• When you return to the workforce, it may be less competitive in an improved overall economy. Consider the normal time frames required to earn  bachelor and advanced degrees – four years for most bachelor degrees, four years (+ residency) for an M.D., four years to become an RN, three years for a law degree, three years for many Master’s degrees, and two years for an MBA. There are intensive one-year diploma programs and Associate degrees of various types that may take less time, but you get the idea – the economy may or may not be better by the time you earn a degree, but you know for a fact that right now it’s terrible. This might be a good time to take a break.

• When you return to the workforce, certain degrees should put you in a better position. Depending upon your starting point, if you’ve earned an MBA, or a J.D., or a specialized Master’s Degree from a highly ranked program, it could potentially make you a stronger candidate for more types of positions at higher salaries than you historically earned.

• If you are in an industry that’s becoming obsolete there may be no better time to return to school than right now. For example, brick and mortal retail was a rapidly shrinking sector before COVID-19, and now its troubles have accelerated. However, virtual retail is booming. A shiny new degree in Digital Marketing or E-Commerce may an intelligent path forward.

Let’s look at some of the unique challenges of returning to school:

• Schools are operating on the fly, already demonstrating a start/stop pattern and operational uncertainty when outbreaks hit. This could be the standard for a while; if you return to school now, you should expect an uncertain first year, at minimum.

• Many schools and programs are going all virtual. You must determine for yourself how you believe virtual learning affects the quality and value of the education you receive; however, collective in-person learning can have a great amount of value through interactions with peers and professors. In addition, virtual learning requires a different level of personal discipline than showing up to class. Do you have the discipline?

• One of the great assets of earning a degree are the connections you make while you do it. Some of the people you meet in school will become the foundation of your new professional network. Are the connections as strong and actionable in a virtual environment? Just as interaction with one’s peers is important from a scholarly perspective, establishing long-lasting professional connections requires it. In the current environment, new students may find these connections lacking.

• COVID-19 has curtailed campus recruiting. Many colleges maintain regular relationships with corporate recruiters, serving an important nexus for graduates launching new careers. Much of these relationships is based on personal visits and interaction with both students and staff that have now been disrupted by the pandemic. While both schools and employers are working hard to maintain these relationships, it’s stressful for everyone.

• Internship programs can be a bedrock component of a particular degree. For example, MBA candidates often use their summers for internships, and law students perform clerkships or summer associate roles. These not only provide the student with experience; they also make them more valuable upon graduation. Many of these programs have been scaled back, eliminated, or made all-virtual.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

6 Job Hunting Tips For 2020 Grads

Unsplash | Joshua Hoehne

Graduating from high school, college, or graduate school are all significant rites of passage in their own right, and the huge transition from student to professional is ripe with new challenges, even in the very best of times.

And then 2020 came along. Students have graduated into recessions and weak job markets before, but nobody in over 100 years has graduated into a pandemic lockdown and its subsequent unprecedented impact on the national economy. It’s as if recent graduates walked off their commencement stages and into a wall of uncertainty.

Furthermore, the patchwork of Covid-19 restrictions we all face affects the local job markets in a different and more unpredictable way than the more traditional economic downturns of the past. The tried and true methods espoused by your college career center to establish the first steps of your professional career may be momentarily unavailable to you – or, at least, trickier – based on where you live and the virulence of COVID-19 in your community.

With those variables acknowledged and kept in mind, here are 6 tips that can help recent graduates find their footing:

1.     Don’t give up. There is a reason that federal employment statistics include the disclaimer, “does not include people who have given up looking”. Sometimes job searches can seem hopeless. Don’t give up. It will improve. Keep searching. You will find a job.

2.     Volunteer. There are many organizations that need help right now, if you have the time on your hands. Not only is volunteering for a good cause one of the best uses of your time, and valuable to you and your community, it also enhances your resume and is an opportunity to start building a professional network.

3.     Become a shadow. If you have relatives or other relationships in the field in which you wish to work, ask if you can “shadow” him or her to learn how and learn how things work. Your parents may be your greatest resource here – nobody wants you to succeed more than Mom and Pop, and they will move heaven and earth to prevent you from moving back in with them (hahahahaha). Ask them who they know!

4.     Temporarily level down. It may be necessary to recalibrate your immediate expectations. For example, perhaps you had your sights on an entry level job on Wall Street but due to Covid-19 the barriers are too steep right now. First, don’t give up on that Wall Street job. Keep trying. Second, if you can find something else to do in the meantime, do it, even if it’s not your dream job. Be flexible. Working is better than not working.

5.     Get creative. There is no harm in brainstorming ideas that you can turn into immediate income, or monetizing a hobby or passion you already have. “Necessity is the mother of invention”. Now is the time to take some risks.

6.     Always be training. Employers love candidates who turn their involuntary idle time into self-improvement. When someone chooses to pursue knowledge on their own, it says a lot about his or her character.  It is in your best long-term interests to proactively seek out educational opportunities. If you have the resources, consider a professional certification. If you can’t spare a dime right now, there are many free courses available.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.