Add value to your degree

Gauri Chhabra

The year 2019 will see the focus shift to performing analytics at the edge. This would change our perspective to anything and everything...In terms of how we view our careers, our education, our skills and most importantly, our degrees. The linear progression between a degree and a job is fast disappearing. College is now ridiculously expensive. Good jobs are tough to land. On an average, we spend almost Rs 20 to Rs 30 lakh on getting a college degree only to land in the job market ill-equipped and ill-prepared. In order to survive the dystopian and fast-moving trend of automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence, you need to, for one, pick your degrees with care; and two, make them work for you. 

Even if you go to a university that’s at the top of the league, you’re not going to land a job just because you went there. Getting a good degree is important, but the degree is the key that opens the door — it doesn’t take you through it.

In these straitened times, the assumption is sometimes made that only vocational degrees, or those with a tight focus on a specific career sector, are worthwhile. But with so many vocational degrees on offer and fast-changing job  skill landscape, the skills that you may pick up during your degree might not be relevant once you enter the job market. Therefore, the need to go for a vocational degree to get a job is an overly simplistic maxim.

Here are a few ideas on which degrees should be chosen to make them work for you.

Choose a degree with a wider surface area

In other words, avoid majoring in a job description of the most significant mistakes that you can make is choosing an overly specialised major — in other words, one that sounds like a job description. 

Several colleges, for instance, offer degrees in turfgrass management or science. While this concentration may successfully position you for a career managing a golf course grounds crew, it may also close more doors than it opens. Also, these careers are found in very niche areas. A broader degree, like business management, will ultimately benefit you if your goals change later in life. 

Blend your Liberal Arts degree with a technical skill

While artificial intelligence and the internet of things (IoT) get all the attention, 5G could be the technology of the year in 2019. 5G, which could improve processing speeds by more than 10 times and could enable remote surgeries and Uber’s announced food delivery drones. In such a landscape, technical skills are a given. You may have to suck it up, and force yourself to study something semi-boring — er, practical — whether it’s a web design programme, a project management certificate, or an introduction to marketing class. 

Some outlets, like MediaBistro, offer professional courses for artists and writers looking to bridge the gap between creative pursuits and real-world money-making. And truth be told, online courses are quick, direct, and usually pretty interesting. 

Intern with companies that are broad-based

Whatever degree you choose, there is one thing on which employers and careers advisers are unanimous: what you do outside your course is as important as your academic work.

When everyone has a degree that sits on his resume, what sets him apart is his internships. 

Choose these with care as the next decade employers are trying to find a match there. Some of them would be ready to extend a pre-placement offer if they see you have the right attitude. Chances are you will only have time for one or two internships before you graduate, so be sure to conduct research before committing to one.

While choosing internships, follow the trend. A Cisco study suggests 74 per cent of application workloads will be SaaS-based by 2020. What it implies is, rather than focussing on businesses that deal in sector-specific products like the CRM, go in for companies that provide a broader overview of project management, email marketing, and survey technology.

Be relevant

Your degree might not be as relevant to your employer as YOU. Anticipate the type of help a future employer will need, and make yourself the solution.

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2018 Report estimates that by 2022, everyone will need an extra 101 days of learning, and two-thirds of employers expect workers to take on the responsibility of reskilling now. 

Relevancy depends on acquiring ‘Industry 4.0’ skills around new technologies. Industry 4.0 combines automation and digitalisation with human creativity and innovation to increase production. For example, according to Upwork, the first quarter of 2018 saw an explosion in jobs connected to the blockchain, with 6,000 per cent growth in the sector.

Build a portfolio

What would matter in the long term is the accolades you have earned and the projects you have completed then they will about your complete course list or college minor. 

Jobs in fields like computer science and fine arts almost always require a portfolio, for example. If you are interested in software development, consider registering for a GitHub account, and keep it updated with your projects. If you are an artist or writer, create a website for your material, and include a brief statement of your vision and goals. Even for fields in the sciences or in business, it is always wise to keep a record of your accomplishments. 

These can be class assignments, freelance commissions, or undergraduate research projects. The point is to demonstrate how you have applied what you have learned to "real world" endeavors.

Find a non-profit venue

Unless you have lots of time in which to pursue a whole new degree, along with internships and a capstone project, your technical skills will need some real-world practice. And who knows? Maybe a whole new degree will come later on when you have an employer who's willing to pay for it. For now, look for volunteer opportunities that will allow you to combine your old specialties with your latest ones. 

Build a website for your local shelter. The work might involve spreadsheets, management skills, or HTML, but it will also benefit from your background in art, psychology, writing, or sociology. You might discover that you love non-profit work. Either way, you can cite this concrete example of your unique competencies.

Learn to learn

With truncating product life cycles and shrinking services cycles, the skills that you pick up today will be obsolete tomorrow. There would be a constant need to re-skill and up-skill, whichever degree you may get into. The ability to pick up a skill fast would hold you in good stead in the near future.

That would require a complete dismantling of mental blocks. For instance, the mental block that it took 10,000 hours to learn a skill has to be shelved. It does take 10,000 hours to master a skill, but simply learning it? It can take less than 20 hours of “smart” practice. 

The idea is that you learn the 20 per cent of the material that will yield 80 per cent of the result. To learn anything in life, you have to work with your brain. You have to make your brain work for you. We have limited time on this planet before we’re gone. The faster and better you learn, the more you’ll thrive.

Preparing for the future

So, while you prepare for 2019 and the future ahead, don’t think you have a degree and the world would take care of itself. Go back to the basics. To make your degree work for you, learn more fundamental skills. Figuring out root causes and why something needs to be done, discovering the real problem, not just the stated one: these skills will serve you in 2019, and next year and every year after that.

Couple your STEM degree with a liberal arts brain 

Research says that STEM degrees would fetch more employment opportunities. So, everyone will have a STEM degree. How will you stand out in 2019? Well, by coupling it up with liberal arts brain. In the same way that your eyes glaze over when business folks bandy about buzzwords like synergy and low-hanging fruit. The science-and-numbers types should be baffled by your vocabulary. They know that more clients and consumers identify with your humanistic thinking than with their formulaic perspective. And a little bit of fancy rhetoric can go a long way during an outside-your-field interview. Confidence is a killer professional advantage. So go ahead and talk up your interests with lofty je ne sais quoi.