Sometimes being highly qualified is a drawback

In the UK July/August is the time of year when anyone who has ever taken an exam, whether it is an A level or degree, sits anxiously awaiting their results. Moreover, for university students, it’s also the time when young people begin to apply for jobs.  In fact, these years of a student’s life are one of the most excruciatingly stressful because they’re not only wondering if they’ll pass or if they’ll need to repeat the year, but also if their 3 or 4 years at University will have been in vain.

Not all new graduates get jobs.  Moreover, of those who do, not all of them get jobs in their chosen fields of study. True, there are some who decide they don’t want to work in their field of study but there are many who do want to but are not able to find anything suitable.  

After getting my chemistry degree two options presented themselves. I was offered a job as Scientific Officer by a leading pharmaceutical company at the time and I was offered a postgraduate place at Brunel University to study Surface Engineering. I chose neither because I really wanted to do something outside of a lab.  Moreover, I know of two engineering graduates who were never able to work in Engineering, not because they didn’t want to but because they couldn’t find anything.  

Neither of them, including myself, thought about going back to university but today that appears to be the exact course of action many new UK graduates appear to be taking. At the disappointment of not receiving replies to job applications, not even a rejection letter, many graduates are panic applying for their Masters degrees, hoping that might improve their chances of maybe landing a job the following year by which time they hope the situation will have improved.

Unfortunately many people think that getting this degree or that Masters will make them more attractive to employers.  Back in the year 2001, I was introduced to Quality Management, a field which I was extremely interested in getting into but couldn’t. So I began contemplating doing an online MBA. You see, up until then, my skills and experience had been linked to Chemistry and Intellectual Property Law and other legal related activity and I was very anxious to move away from that because there was little or no opportunity for me in those fields. I actually struggled to find anything suitable for an inordinately long time. But when I shared my contemplation with a contact he said something rather interesting and, in retrospect, I think, quite true. He said the best MBA training came from any work environment you can find and that getting an MBA wouldn’t necessarily guarantee you a job that you want. That being said, it may guarantee you a job if you wanted to teach at University level. But if that’s not your thing, then a postgraduate degree?

Needless to say that I went ahead with the MBA anyway and, to be honest, he was quite right in that it didn’t really help me find a job.  It boosted my confidence in applying for non-legal related roles but that confidence was, I think, a tad false because, at the end of the day,  I had no previous business related skills or experiences. I still struggled to find a job in Quality Management and the first job I got after the MBA was actually doing some writing. My first important QA role came after I bypassed HR and managed to get hold of the real decision maker.

It wasn’t the MBA that interested the MD but what I said I could do for them in terms of Quality Management.

You see, yes employers are interested in qualifications and where you got them but they are far more interested in what skills you acquired and where. Now, many job seekers argue, I myself included, that they can’t get a job because they don’t have the experience and they can’t get the experience because they can’t get a job.  

Both are true and, frankly, in some circumstances, the only way to get that experience is to offer your services for free for maybe 2-3months. Yes, you won’t get paid for those months but you will get the invaluable experience, the lack of which has been holding you back.  

One other thing that fresh graduates should bear in mind before jumping into a postgraduate degree course is that, not only may it not guarantee them a job at the end of it but it might make them unemployable because a potential employer might decide they are overqualified for any role they might have to offer.