Do You Need Grad School To Have A Successful Career?

Question:

I really want a career in journalism. My parents won't pay for J-school (they think I won't be able to make a good living if I became a writer), but are dropping obvious hints that they will foot the bill for law school if I decide to go. I've given some thought about doing law school instead, but my heart's not in it. Is there a way I can have a successful journalism career without a graduate degree?

Answer:

Wouldn’t life be so much better if parents didn’t meddle? Sadly, parents do hold some control when it comes to money, and often, make you play by their rules.

My advice is that you should not go to law school if your heart is not in it. In fact, that ranks up there as one of the biggest mistakes students make when it comes to their career. Sometimes, pressure from peers, professors, and especially parents forces students to pursue a job or industry that they simply do not enjoy. Or they will take a job simply to make a few bucks for a couple years.

Here’s the scary part. A few years can be an awfully long time. If you are miserable two weeks into a 104 week commitment, you are definitely in for some tough times! Work is much more relentless than school. Think about it this way. If you don’t like your class at school, you only spend about 3 – 5 hours with your professor each week. You have spring break, winter break and a nice long summer break. If you don’t like your job, you are spending anywhere from 40 – 80 hours a week there with a whopping two weeks off per year. You spend more time with your boss and your coworkers than you do with your boyfriend, your family, and your friends! Like I said, pretty scary.

Now here’s the good news for our question this week. You don’t necessarily have to have a journalism graduate degree to have a successful journalism career. Especially in a career like journalism, your real-world abilities can often trump your education. If you are a fabulous writer with a great portfolio of work, you should be able to land employment. If you want to go into broadcast journalism as an on-air personality and have a wonderful reel and are willing to start in a small market, you should be fine.

For some industries, your undergraduate major and an advanced degree are a must. You have to go to med school to be a doctor. You must go to law school to be a lawyer. You better have an engineering degree if you want to work in engineering, and you probably need to major in accounting if you want to be an accountant.

However, for many other industries, a strong academic background with good internships and relevant work experience, coupled with student leadership can be a ticket to a wonderful career. Heck, I was a history major and spent 15 years working in advertising!

Now that being said, landing a job is never easy, especially in a competitive field like journalism. But not having the graduate degree is not necessarily a black mark against you.

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Brad Karsh is President of JobBound (http://www.jobbound.com ), a company dedicated to helping job seekers with resume writing, interviewing, career coaching and landing that dream job. Author of Confessions of a Recruiting Director: The Insider's Guide to Landing Your First Job (Prentice Hall Press), Brad is considered one of the nation's leading expert on the job search. Brad has been featured on CNN's Paula Zahn Now, CNN Headline News, FOXnews Chicago and CNBC and quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Fortune, The Chicago Tribune and many others.

Prior to starting JobBound, Brad worked for 15 years at Leo Burnett advertising in Chicago – one of the world’s largest advertising agencies. He left in late 2002 as VP/Director of Talent Acquisition. While at Burnett, Brad evaluated more than 10,000 resumes, interviewed more than 1,000 candidates and hired hundreds of new employees.

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