Over the past few years, my employer had paid free tuition for me to get 2 master’s degrees of my choosing (an employee benefit.) The degrees were from a cheap, online, for-profit university (still accredited, but a school no employer has likely heard of.)
The first was a master’s in military studies. I had always been interested in war history and the like, so I pursued this degree just for hobby’s sake. In hindsight I really regret choosing such this major and wish I’d spent that free tuition getting something more career-useful like healthcare administration or supply-chain management instead, but it’s already done.
The second was an MBA, which I am still finishing (just 1 more class and a capstone left to do.) This is presumably more career-useful, but the sort of MBA you get from a cheap online school is totally different than a “traditional” MBA from a place like Anderson, McCombs or Wharton. I had posted a thread about this a month ago; I’m not sure what exactly such an online MBA is good for, especially since it’s an “MBA General Concentration” degree with no specialty track such as IT management or accounting, and I did no internships.
I’m now unemployed. My previous 12 years were spent just doing clerical-administrative work. I guess maybe I could be an…office manager or something? Any advice welcome.
Advice: Don’t conflate education and employment. If you want work, look for work that interests you. Education typically broadens a person’s interests, but it is absolutely no guarantee that they will be a suitable employee even if the job posting says they want a person with your exact resume.
FWIW I’m the staffing manager for my program, and am also a hiring manager. My opinion of how you use the degrees? You list the completed master’s on your resume (add the MBA only after it is done; degrees in progress don’t matter at all), and apply for jobs that interest you that require a degree. Keep equivalencies in mind: sometimes a job that requires 14 years of experience with a bachelor’s may only require 12 years with a master’s. You’ll have to carefully read job descriptions for the word “related”: requirements like related experience or degrees in a related field.
The type of school the degrees are from and the type of MBA you have won’t matter: you just list “MBA, institution, year granted.”
Your office manager idea is good. If you’re personable and very organized, you could maybe also look for executive admin positions.
I have an M.A. in English: most potential employers haven’t cared about a master’s in that subject (except when I’ve applied for tech writer/editor jobs), but its main usefulness has been simply allowing me to apply for some positions I might not have otherwise.
IME, few there are only a few fields where employers actually require the MA to be in a field relevant to the job once you get to a certain level. I believe that the MA requirement is mostly a filter to winnow the applicant list to people who have the determination and ambition to get the degree.
I totally agree that you should list the degrees (when complete) on your resume. This demonstrates initiative and persistence (I can’t imagine doing a degree on-line, even at a lower-tier school), as well as the intrinsic value of getting at least some familiarity with a particular discipline.
At the age of 68, I went through the process of applying to study for an MS from a school in CT. (Study area and name of institution don’t matter.) The ONLY thing that stopped me was their absolute requirement that they would have control over my picture and other information related to being a student there. IOW, I could open their website and find my picture there as a student profile and they could use my name in their marketing. They wouldn’t budge on this and so I didn’t enroll.
The MS degree itself would have been of minimal worth, but I just wanted something to do as a project.
Nonsense. “12 years experience + MBA candidate (expected graduation 2023)” puts you in a different class of job opportunities than “12 years admin experience”.
And job postings always have all sorts of “requirements” but half of them are bullshit. I’m not sure what job requires “14 years of experience” that the right candidate couldn’t do with 12 years or even 5.
As an MBA candidate (even one from an nth tier school), I would expect a certain level of ambition and business acumen beyond “clerical-administrative work”. I’m not even sure what that means. I don’t think I’ve seen a proper “admin” in like ten years (i.e. someone who answers phones and assists with stuff like processing timesheets and expenses).
Someone with a new MBA should be looking to grow into a role where they can significantly contribute to the business. Maybe it’s operations or sales or strategy. That’s up to the OP.
“12 years experience + MBA” would, but simply being in a degree program (or “working toward” a particular certification) isn’t worth a damn thing to a smart hiring manager. Tons of people start degrees/certs and never finish them. In-progress stuff can be mentioned during interviews, but should be left off resumes.
True, but recruiters often look for stuff like that/don’t know any better.
There is definitely more than one way to skin a cat; I was just giving the OP my best advice.
Sorry: I thought it was obvious that I used that number simply to match the OP’s 12 years of experience, as a way to show that a master’s can sometimes count against required experience and make someone qualified (on paper) for a job that they wouldn’t have been qualified for otherwise.
Just to be clear, I wasn’t quoting from an actual job req.
My last couple of companies didn’t use them, but my current one does (in fact my program has one). They may be endangered, but aren’t completely extinct yet.
I understand. My point is simply recruiters and HR people often put arbitrary and bloated requirements on job reqs that don’t really mean anything and shouldn’t discourage someone from applying simply because they don’t think they check all the boxes. Plus with applicants inflating their experience and bloating up their resumes, it can be difficult for people on both sides to figure out what, exactly, the job is and who is actually qualified to do it.
IOW, if you think a job req looks interesting and you think you can do it, apply.
I would say that I my experience my colleagues and their HR support put on requirements that at least half the SUCCESSFUL applicants don’t meet.
In the past this meant that the HR screeners could eliminate 90% (even 99%) of applicants coming through the web portal. Then they can more easily hire “connected” applicants who rarely have the education and experience qualifications in the job description.
This has been true at almost every employer I have had in the last ~30 years since I became a manager.
Most places aren’t going to be all that picky about just where you got it, so long that you got it, and it’s a school they’ve at least heard of or can look up easily. In many ways it’s a check-box that they look for to weed out candidates for many jobs and/or like @Misnomer points out, a substitute for experience.
I wonder if you could combine your two Master’s somehow - like maybe working for some military contractor or supplier?
