An Alumna of the MAE program has been very helpful and offered to write a letter of advice to current MAE students. The letter is below.
Hello
Fellow MAE students and graduates:
How
to find a job with the MAE? I can
appreciate your dilemma because I faced the same one 30 years ago, when I
finished my degree.
The
MAE is an overly flexible degree that could work in many many contexts and it
requires that someone--you--do some careful thinking about what you want to
achieve in your career. From the
opposite end of the career spectrum, I know that students are desperate to get
somewhere, but it is worth taking a long term view of your career, expect that
you will succeed and accomplish and contribute, and spending some time (6
months to a year) doing two things.
· First, clearly identify your
personal strengths, and learning to state them clearly. You should know what you want to offer an employer. Ultimately, you will want to target jobs that
use your core skills and grow those skills over time, in a context that also
allows you to develop secondary talents.
A career and your current job should center around something that you do
easily, so that you will excel in the longer term. To give some examples, higher math and
diplomacy are both skills that are easy or hard for various and different
groups of people. If you are terrified
to speak in front of groups, you shouldn't target a job or be persuaded to take
a job as a spokesperson for an organization.
If you have terrific database and math skills, you need to state that
and be hired to do that. If you don't
want to be a database manager, you don't want to get into a job where that is all
that you do, just because you have a MAE.
When you're working in a job 40+ hours a week, you must be using your
strengths. If you're not, you won't be
happy and you won't perform well. If you
find yourself in a job building on a secondary rather than primary skill, your
boss needs to support you while you build your capacity. If s/he doesn't, s/he will mark you down or
even fire you for a weak performance.
· Second, learn about the content of
jobs in various sectors. Do ALOT of
informational interviewing with a diversity of well-educated successful people
to ask them to carefully define the daily content of their job, and tell you what
skills they have that are essential to their success. Ideally, one would do this before entering
graduate school, but it can be done in the course of completing a degree. [By the way, every week, the second page of
the New York Times Sunday business section has an interesting interview with
CEOs about careers, managing and hiring, being ambitious, strategic moves and
thinking outside of the box. Read the
back columns for some interesting views on interviewing as well as very
interesting places to work.] This kind
of research will inform your choices regarding the sectors of the economy that
interest you, the size of organization you might want to work in, and related
lifestyle issues. There are so many
organizations: public sector, private
sector, multinationals, national companies, regional public service utilities,
small start-up firms, your own company operating from your study. Can you stand to sit at a desk all day
long? Do you need to work alone? Do you want to manage, train, and mentor staff?
· When you have a list of skills that
are central to interesting jobs, you should look over your proposed course choices
and make sure that the content of the courses you choose will supply those
skills. If the MAE required courses
don't offer you what you need, you may need to extend your stay to get a few
courses that do fill those gaps.
Interview next semester's professors and find out what skills you will
acquire in his or her class.
· Finally, get a suit and haircut,
get your resume in perfect order with your personal strengths and your job
skills front and center, and go to professional conferences and network. Most professional organizations have a discounted
student membership fee. Working
professionals are usually interested in meeting and informally interviewing
potential employees, and giving suggestions about places that might be hiring. If you structure it well, that MAE will take
you to finance, banking and accounting conferences, transportation conferences,
urban planning conferences, engineering conferences, demographics and
statistics professional conferences etc. etc. etc. Meeting people will hone your understanding
of what about you sells and where opportunities lie. It will be fun and will affirm to you the
value of your education.
· Possibly take ANY job in a location
that excites you, and locate a good job after you've relocated. There are agencies in every major city that
place professionals in temporary jobs, and working through such an agency gives
you the opportunity to examine potential employers from the inside. However, assess the quality of your credential
vis-a-vis other job seekers in the location before jumping in. Here in Washington DC, having a masters
degree is like having a last name, everyone has at least one so what you have
to offer has to be strong enough to withstand tough competition.
· For U.S. citizens, if you want to be in the
federal government, it is always hiring.
The baby boomers are retiring and the federal government is increasingly
desperate to backfill and retain talent.
That said, the federal government has not adopted many of the management
approaches and tools that are typical in modern successful private sector
firms. The federal government's hiring
mechanism is a horrible website called USAJOBS, which one MUST master to get
any job in the federal government. At
the end of every job announcement in USAJOBS is the name and phone number of
the personnel officer handling paper work for that job listing. Call that person up and ask them about
employment in their agency, including unpaid internships. Many new MA graduates get a toehold by doing
unpaid internships at their agency of choice.
· After you get a job--and you will
get a job because you're very well trained--settle in, work hard to make a
contribution to your organization. Work
with and support your boss, but make him or her support you in your career and
help you advance. After a while, assess
your employer and your immediate boss.
If you don't think you've landed the right opportunity, change jobs.
Best of luck to you,
Renee in
Washington DC, MAE 1983.
