Your Career Pivots

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We will end with a call in for people whose college degrees served you early in your working life, but then not after a certain point. What did you do then other than go to grad school? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. This is part of our series on being upwardly mobile without a college degree. In this case, it's a call in for people whose college degrees did serve you early in your working life, who did get a college degree, but then it didn't serve you after a certain point, economically speaking, what did you do then, other than more college, other than go to grad school, how did you get skilled through alternative routes? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692.

Let's get some stories on the table as part of this series. This time, it's staying upwardly mobile when your college degrees stopped helping you. Maybe you were in a job you had outgrown or trying to break into a new field that had suddenly changed its expectations. Maybe the industries you were in started asking for new credentials, new digital skills or higher degrees just to keep doing what you're already good at, or maybe you've never had a college degree and that's made moving up more complicated even though you have the experience.

In this case, we want to emphasize people whose college degrees did serve you early in your working life, but then not after a certain point. The whole point of this series is to help other people who may be facing things like the scenarios we've been discussing in various segments in the series. You can help other listeners right now by talking about what you did if you had a college degree, but then it stopped serving you in a career sense after a certain point.

Who has a story like that? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Did you go for another type of training? Did you get a certificate or maybe take a boot camp? There are so many people who've gone through various kinds of boot camps in recent years. You can call about that. Did you join a union training or find an apprenticeship even when you were in your 30s, even when you were in your 40s, or maybe you used online courses, employer training at the workplace you were already at, or just pure hustle to shift into a new role?

Tell us a story of what you did with a college degree that stopped serving you after a certain point in your working life. This will help others who are listening right now who are probably facing this situation and some who will. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. A few more examples. Maybe you're working in hospitality or food service and you transitioned into IT support after working toward a kind of certification. Maybe you had a college degree but found that wasn't opening doors anymore, so you trained to become a surgical technologist or an HVAC specialist, things we've mentioned on the show in this series previously.

Maybe you were stuck in an entry level office job with a college degree and found a short, affordable digital marketing course or something like that that gave you the skills to move into a new team at work. Call and tell us your stories so that they help others. 212-433-WNYC, and we'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your calls. If you had a college degree that stopped serving you after a certain point in your working life, what did you do then other than go to grad school? Monique in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Monique.

Monique: Hey, Brian. Nice to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Glad you're here. Tell us your story.

Monique: I got my marketing degree back in the late '90s and worked in corporate and affiliate marketing doing sponsorships and big events and things. Then came the rise of social media and I realized I was going to age out in my 30s because I just didn't want to manage somebody's Twitter or Pinterest page. I did the old-fashioned thing and went to the Society for Human Resources and found an industry organization of where I wanted to go, did their certificate programs, also did a small certificate through Cornell. Now I lead an HR group in New York for a company.

Brian Lehrer: Besides your particular stories, it sounds like the moral there is there are industry groups that have certificate training programs.

Monique: Absolutely. You can get the information, stay affiliated with them, stay abreast of what's happening in the industry. You don't necessarily have to go for that graduate degree, because after a while people like me, now I hire people. We stop looking at what your degree is in or what your graduate degree is in and just see if you're qualified for the role.

Brian Lehrer: Monique, thank you so much. Perfect example. Dominique in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Dominique.

Dominique: Hi.

Brian Lehrer: Tell us your story.

Dominique: I just had the experience of-- so the degree that I graduated with was public administration and I ended up working for the university that I got the degree from, and most of the skills that I needed to figure out were event planning. Luckily, at the time, what I found out before I actually started to go into the resources that the university provided, YouTube was my saving grace.

All the things that I needed to figure out, I got essentially either fully versed in learning or a good introduction to where everything that I needed to learn that I did not know I was able to accomplish. It just seemed like because everything that was thrown at me, I was able to accomplish more and more was thrown at me. Then I ended up starting to take advantage of opportunities offered by the university for these specific skills, but it's definitely-- it wasn't what I went to school for, what I learned, and what's coming at me.

Brian Lehrer: That's such a great story. Yes, people use YouTube in a certain way. It can be YouTube University, right?

Dominique: 100%. It worked for me.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Thank you very much. Vlad in Freehold, you're on WNYC. Hi, Vlad.

Bob: Hi. My name is actually Bob.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, sorry, somebody got that wrong.

Bob: No problem. I used to work for the railroad. I decided it wasn't the best idea for me. I got a degree in financial economics, and then I started working in that position, but then I figured out a way to do a lot of good and meaningful things. The point I'm trying to make is that AI exists. You can use AI, you can ask it questions, it will search the Internet, it will give you answers. A lot of jobs that don't have meaning are about to go away, so you need to find a way to be meaningful to society.

Brian Lehrer: Vlad, thank you very much. All right, we've got YouTube University on the table and AI University on the table, DIY, AI. Chris in Point Lookout, you're on WNYC. Hi, Chris.

Chris: Hi. How you doing?

Brian Lehrer: Good. Tell us your story.

Chris: My story might be a little different. I came out of college in a time when there was no jobs to be had, it was 1989, and spent two years looking for a job. That was an economic year, so I was looking for banking. Instead of going to school, I find opportunity to get trained by a company, the mortgage broker, small company, and learned a completely-- I never wanted to sell anything, but I learned a completely different way of having a career where basically you're not worried about anybody ever firing you or anything like that, because you create your book of business from referrals and just from learning and doing whatever you got to do to be the best you can be.

Brian Lehrer: How did you get the initial training in that field?

Chris: That's a rarity, but I got lucky. I found somebody who actually was willing to do that and to train. I ended up working with them as a process, a very low level kind of job, but I saw the potential for being completely on my own in terms of-- again, my income is totally dependent on me, which is, for some people, pretty scary. Instead of going back to school and getting into that world where I felt like I would be locked into whatever income stream might be, I was able to create my own world.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, Chris. Thanks for your story. We'll end with a few coming in. In text messages, listener writes, "I had a bachelor's in anthropology, worked in the nonprofit world for a few years, then went back to a community college for an associate's degree to become a paramedic."

Another one, "I have two sons. One went to Binghamton School of Management, worked in several low-level management positions, hated them all. Now a Metro North conductor and is very happy." Another one, "I went to film school and ended up joining the union as a lighting technician here in New York City. The thing is, my job now requires more electrical knowledge, and I am grateful for my union's continuing ed programs for turning me into a more qualified electrician."

Thanks, callers and texters, for those stories of after college degrees stopped serving you at some point in your working life, what did you do next? We got some good stories on the table that hopefully will help other people as part of our series on being upwardly mobile without a college degree. In this case, after a college degree stopped serving you. We've got a few more in this series coming next week. Thanks for your great calls and texts.

That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Megan Ryan is the head of live radio. Juliana Fonda and Shayna Sengstock at the audio controls. Have a great weekend. Stay tuned for All of It.

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