Readers:
If you have any questions or comments that Dr. Hansen could provide valuable assistance with, please feel free to email mailto:careerdr@careershop.com

Previous Columns: Get more advice from our archive of previous Career Dr. columns.

New!: QuintZine: A free career and job-hunting newsletter filled with timely and topical tips for springboarding careers, will arrive in your e-mailbox every other week. CLICK HERE!

It’s a bit staggering to consider – that one in four workers in the U.S. labor in a low-wage job. Low-wage jobs are ones that pay under $9 an hour and produce an annual income – if they are full-time – of about $18,800, the poverty level for a family of four in 2004. And the reality is that many of these jobs are not full-time because employers can cut costs by offering little or no benefits to part-time employees.

Here’s just a small sample of low-wage jobs: retail clerks and cashiers, fast food workers, wait staff, child-care workers and education assistants, nurses aides, security guards, hotel maids, janitors, agricultural workers, and many more…

Yes, education could help these low-wage workers, as more than half of them have a high school diploma at best – and about a quarter never finished high school. But education and training are just a small part of the solution. These job-seekers need career coaching to develop the skills needed to move beyond these dead-end jobs. I recommend going to the local Career One-Stop Center in your area to meet with a professional counselor. I think learning the value of transferable skills and networking is essential.

There are a growing number of employers that have programs designed to assist low-wage workers – from providing benefits (such as emergency loans, healthcare, etc.) to training programs – and you need to identify these employers and attempt to land a job with one of them.

Get all the details, including statistics and resources, in this section of Quintessential Careers: Low Wage Jobs: Tools, Statistics, Resources.

I had a client a few years ago who had NO work experience. She was a music major as an undergrad and went straight into an MBA program. Near graduation she was losing job opportunities to students who were only earning bachelor’s degrees in business – because these undergrads had several internships and could be hired at a lower salary.

The key for you is that you DO have experience… maybe not in running a company or managing a brand, but five years of teaching does give you solid experience. And part of the problem may be that you are downgrading this experience. You also don’t tell me what you want to do with your MBA, and that lack of focus could be another of your problems.

So, first decide what you want to do with your MBA. An obvious choice for a former teacher is to go into human resources into some sort of corporate training position, but perhaps you are looking for something completely different than teaching. You first must sit down and determine a career goal. Once you completed this task, you can start looking for prospective employers.

The combination of your years of teaching and your MBA should really provide you with some rich skills to put on your resume and cover letter. From teaching, identify all those transferable skills that you mastered that apply to the corporate world – things such as time management, communications, leadership, etc. Then examine all the projects and cases you completed for your MBA and pull out relevant skills from them – financial analyses, problem-solving, strategic analysis, communications, etc.

Finally, of course, you are going to need to use your network to get interview opportunities. Networking works for all job-seekers, but it is especially important for career-changers.

Get all the tools you need in this section of Quintessential Careers: Job & Career Resources for Career Changers.

Employers of college graduates want two things: the degree (sometimes with GPA minimum) and work experience (ideally in your chosen field). And it sounds as though a year from now you will have both.

You are leaning toward some element of marketing communications – and you say you plan on doing a public relations internship this year. Good… but you can do more. Are you interning this summer? If not, find another one. The more internships the better. If you are doing the PR one next year, consider one that involves advertising to get a taste for that. Even though it is late to be looking for a summer internship, there are still plenty that can be found. I just had a student land a fantastic marketing internship with a science center, where he will work with the marketing director to help with advertising, PR, and marketing strategy.

But, let’s also not totally trash a sociology degree. There are lots of job opportunities for sociology majors (especially ones with work experience), such as: social worker, research assistant, foster care worker, teacher, consumer advocate, case worker, data analyst, and many others. The skills you gain from this degree can certainly also help you in marketing jobs, such as public relations, sales, advertising, and marketing analyst.

I recommend you meet with a career professional from your school’s career office and set some career goals and strategies. Talk with some of your sociology professors – and perhaps with a communications or marketing professor. Conduct research online. Talk with your network of contacts. You have a year to make a plan for exactly what you want to do when you graduate, which is plenty of time to succeed.

Use the Career Exploration Tools and Resources section of Quintessential Careers to learn more about various career paths.

If you want to be logical about your decision, here are some criteria to consider – in alphabetical order:

Accreditation: There are two main types of accreditation: institutional and program-specific.
Admission Standards: You want a graduate program with tough admissions standards.
Career Assistance: One of your main goals for earning an advanced degree most likely revolves around career advancement.
Cost/Financial Aid: If we all had unlimited resources, then cost would not be an issue; for most of us, however, this is usually a top issue.
Culture: You need to identify schools with cultures that fit your style and comfort-level so that you'll have a better chance to excel.
Faculty: A graduate program is only as good as the faculty who teach in it.
Reputation/Ranking: Lots of different organizations rank graduate programs, so while rankings are an important measure of quality, you also need to investigate the source of the rankings.
Size: There are two aspects of size that you should evaluate -- size of the program and size of the entire university.
Surrounding Community: You're going to have to live there for a number of years, so you better be able to at least tolerate the surrounding areas.

Read more about these criteria – and others – in this article published on Quintessential Careers: Criteria for Choosing a Graduate Program. And for more general advice about graduate school, review this article: Considering Graduate School? Answer These Five Questions Before You Decide.

Dr. Randall S. Hansen is currently Webmaster of Quintessential Careers.

Dr. Hansen is an associate professor of marketing at the School of Business Administration, Stetson University. He has been a published career expert for the last 10 years and an employer and consultant with hiring/firing decisions for the past 15 years.

Through his experience as a professor of marketing, Dr. Hansen uses proven marketing techniques and applies them to job-hunting. He is currently working on such a book. Some of his work can be seen at his personal Web site.

He and Katharine Hansen co-wrote the very successful job-hunting book, Dynamic Cover Letters, published by Ten Speed Press. You can order copies from Barnes and Noble of this cover letter bible. He is also author of several career-related magazine and journal articles.

Finally, Dr. Hansen has been an employer and has firsthand experience in the hiring process. He also stays active in the field by reading magazine and journal articles and by talking with employers on a regular basis.