Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep176: Should you get a Master's degree?

Episode Date: May 28, 2023

✅ Get FREE GUIDE, newsletter, join career program 👉 http://www.meiphing.com ✅ Corporate Survivor™ is the ultimate career course for 9-to-5 working professionals, just like *you*, who want to enhance corporate world mindset, skillset and strategy so you can NAVIGATE + GROW your career with clarity, confidence & opportunities... 🚀 ⚡ 📌 ABOUT THIS PODCAST: Welcome to Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing — ex-Corporate Leader turned Career Coach & Founder of The Corporate Survivor™. On this podcast, Mei Phing shares her corporate world insights, experiences and wisdom so you can grow your 9-5 career with clarity, confidence and opportunities. ✅ WEBSITE ⮕ https://www.meiphing.com ✅ FREE GUIDE ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/freeguide ✅ NEWSLETTER ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/mondays ✅ CAREER COURSE ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co ⚡

Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Do you need to graduate from a top university or have a master's degree in order to grow your career or climb up the career ladder? In this episode, we're going to talk about how or if education actually plays a part

in you growing your career and actually enjoying career success. So if this is something that you find helpful, then let's dive in. And I'll start by saying that no matter which university you graduated from or which job you're currently working at, all awesome people are subscribed to my Career Confessions newsletter, which is the place to get exclusive tips and regular coaching from me every single week. So if you haven't subscribed yet, make sure that you do subscribe to my Career Confessions newsletter at www.mayping.com. So, okay, if you're someone who has graduated from university,

I think that is something to be absolutely proud of. Because you work hard, you made an effort, you did well in your exams, and you are rewarded with your paper qualification. And I think that's great. Now, the thing that I want you to really think about when you are thinking of growing your career is that growing your career is quite different from starting your career. Now, a lot of people who come to me on social media asking me whether, hey, Mei Ping, do you think I should sign up for a master's degree? Do you think that I should take an additional qualification? Do you think that it's actually worthwhile for me to

invest my time, money and energy for potential career opportunities? Now these are very valid questions and if you can relate to any of them, you know, feel free to drop it in a comment if you're watching on YouTube. Now what I notice is that a lot of times the people who ask me these exact questions are the people who solely believe that education equals career success. Theoretically, that sounds about right, but in reality, in the actual corporate world, you know, the actual working world, it doesn't really work like that. So today's episode, I'm just going to give you a couple of questions or rather a couple of scenarios to really help you think through whether,

yeah, do you want to really pursue the higher education or master's degree that you've always wanted? Or maybe your time, effort and energy is more worthwhile to really focus on other parts where you can really build your career foundations. So let's start with the first part. Now, the first question is, I want you to ask yourself, what exactly are you going to do with that higher qualification? Like what exactly are you going to do with this master's degree in case you choose to get it? Now, this is a very, very important question to ask because what I've seen is there are basically two groups of people

who want to take master's. The first group are the people who think that if I were to just get a master's, new opportunities will just open up for me. And then the other group of people is the people who tell me that, I don't like my job right now, everything is, you know, in a mess. I hate everything. But maybe I can just go and get a master's degree and figure out what I'm going to do after that now both these scenarios are not good scenarios but I say that 99% of people who come to me usually is you know either they say the first thing or the second thing now I'm going to break it down to you as to why these are not great ideas and towards the end of it I'll probably give you a suggestion on what you can do instead okay so. So the first thing, if you are someone who is thinking of

taking a master's degree just because maybe, maybe, maybe you're going to get some new career opportunities and maybe you have someone who has been trying to look for a new job or maybe trying to change careers

or you're trying to like climb up the career ladder but hasn't really been working out for you and you think that, okay, maybe what I'm missing is the master's degree. The first thing I'll challenge you to think about is, is this true?

Is really education the only thing that's missing? Or actually, actually, you are, there are still many areas that you might need to improve in terms of like actually working in the corporate world. So what I mean is maybe you need to speak up terms of like actually working in the corporate world. So what I mean is maybe you need to speak up more to ask for new opportunities. Maybe you need to get better at performance reviews to sell your value in the company or when you're looking to change careers or you are looking to look out for new opportunities, maybe you need to look into how you are positioning and selling yourself

so that the next company, the next employer can be convinced that you are the right person for the job. Now, none of these things actually requires a master's degree as you can see here. Now, I should also share a client story with you. Two years ago, I actually worked with a private client and let's call her Hayley. So Hayley was someone who is really, really good at her job. And she already had a master's degree at that point. So when she came to me, she has been working in an advertising agency for more than five years. She's been a top performer. She has been handling a lot of really important projects.

And she also had a master's in a related field. So if you just think about her entire profile, background, education, experience, it sounds like the perfect scenario. But the problem was she really, really struggled to look for new career opportunities. And when she came to me, she has already been applying for eight months, hundreds and hundreds of job applications, hundreds and hundreds of hours spent in looking for the next thing to grow her career but no opportunities came so when we sat down in our one-on-one

coaching session right when i actually looked through her resume and i also asked her you know what are some of the things that she's looking out for in terms of the roles that she wants actually the first problem is that she had no clarity of what she wanted which is obviously the biggest problem if you're someone who's trying to grow your career and you don't even know what you want. Problem number one. Then the second problem is that when I actually looked at her resume, it really didn't come across to me as someone who could add a lot of value. So it's kind of all over the place and her resume looks really, really junior and these are all inherent problems to not let the next company or the next employer feel like you are a very valuable employee that they want to quickly hire right

so the inherent problems were her her problem really was around how does she how to articulate and kind of like package her background skills and experiences to get the next job. And problem is her master's, which she did have a master's at that time, actually didn't help because she didn't know how to tell her story. She didn't know how to tell her career story. Now, the good news is that after working together, she did manage to land her dream job. She increased her salary by 40 percent and she's super duper happy and nowadays i teach this step by step in my career course the corporate survivor

particularly in the job search bonus lessons which have infused a lot of these client sessions and learnings into the step-by-step video lessons now the i will i'll tell you a quick wrap-up on hayley story so um at the end of our session, what she told me when she updated me that she got the new job was, she said that, hey, how come, right, these value positioning topics, right,

are not taught in my master's degree? Because I spent a lot of money, a lot of time, for a master's qualification that I believed would help me to advance in my career but after job searching for eight months it clearly told me that okay like you know maybe that understanding is wrong and maybe I should have actually invested in career coaching right career courses that can actually help me get the next opportunity and maybe later right if really

really the real reason and you know my boss told me that i couldn't advance because of a lack of qualification then maybe i'll do that now this i think is a great reflection and hopefully that's something that you can take away and you can resonate if you're someone who's actually thinking of like oh should i do it should i not do it and whether you actually want to first learn how to position your value and really learn how to seek opportunities in the right step-by-step way in the right step-by-step strategy before directly jumping into higher education which is obviously going to commit a lot more time so there's a super duper happy ending to hayley's story i'm super happy for her and since then she has been able to

move overseas and move on to better companies and much more salary increments. So completely perfect in that sense. Now, let's talk about the second type of person that I told you about. And these are people who, what I call escapism mode. Now, why escapism is because if you are someone who is not doing well at your job, you're getting negative feedback, it's very difficult to adapt, you're not getting along with people at work, you're not getting good reviews of your performance, you are stressed out, you are working late hours, basically nothing is going right if you're working with your work days, for lack of a better word.

And then you start thinking, huh, maybe, maybe I should take a career break and maybe I should take a master's and just figure it out later. That doesn't sound like a very smart or helpful strategy to me. Because what it sounds to me is that you are someone who is trying to avoid and not deal and learn how to overcome your workplace challenges which you know trust me it can be overcame because i've already worked with a lot of clients who are struggling in their careers in my career course career coaching and 100 it can be overcome so if you are looking to you know to pursue a higher education just because you you don't want to deal with your job right now i think it's a really important point for reflection as to where is your mind at, right? What's your existing mindset? Because that sounds to me as a person who

has avoidance behavior, a person who, you know, has a fear of failure and just refuse to work on personal development, to refuse to work on personal growth and also avoiding career development as well. Because the reality is that you're not going to be perfect at any job that you're in, right? When you first start, there's always a major learning curve and that's why it's called a new job, right? So I think it's really a mindset issue at that and really not knowing how to overcome workplace challenges.

And, you know, it does take a little bit of time to learn how to understand the corporate world to really understand how to deal with people deal with problems and then that's completely normal right because i teach this step-by-step my career course to hundreds of nine to five professionals so i completely know that but i think the point of consideration for you is really like, what's the plan? Because let's say, right, you go with person number two and you're not happy with your job. You quit. Then you sign up for a master's program that will probably take you about two years. You complete the master's. Now you have an additional paper qualification grade.

Now, what's going to happen? If you haven't really learned how to sell yourself, can you actually get the next job? Just because you have a master's degree doesn't necessarily guarantee that you will get the next job. And if your working attitude or your working knowledge or your skills is basically non-existent, given the previous problems in the past, then how can you guarantee that even with the masters, let's say you do get the job, right? How are you going to guarantee that even with the masters, your next job is going to be smooth sailing? The next job is going to be easy, your relationships with people are going to be seamless, you're not going to have any

communication problems, and you're going to be as productive so that you can actually enjoy work-life balance. So how can the masters guarantee that? I'm not sure. To be honest, I'm really not sure. Because I've seen a lot of instances of people who struggle at work and then they take this career break and escape and go and pursue a different qualification and so forth. When they come back, they basically start back at square one.

But maybe not even square one. They're starting at a negative right now because they've already spent more time to pursue this additional qualification they have spent about hundred thousand dollars to get their qualification but they're also missing out on the time and years of experience that they could learn to continue to improve their mindset and skill set at work so to me it's kind of like a negative negative negative point and you're not even starting at step one probably like you're starting at step zero, while not actually learning the skills to overcome challenges, like if that makes sense, right? So if that makes sense, so far, you can definitely drop a comment if you're watching on YouTube. Now, as I said, right,

the people that I've seen, the people have come to me, their struggles and really asking me about, you know, higher qualification and so forth, usually falls between like these two groups. However, there is a third group as well. And the third group is really around people who have graduated from top universities. And of course, right, if you're someone who's graduated from top university, education is something that you really prioritize and that's okay now the the challenge then comes in is um again you know the mindset block around how important is education as compared to career success so the third group of people um usually i would say are younger professionals like closer to fresh graduate but a lot of them are you know junior executives um analysts, analysts, associates, and so forth,

a lot of times I find that they really struggle to adapt to the corporate world and definitely something that can be resolved. But I find that most of these people tend to end up in group one or group two,

which is really believing that the reason why they're not doing well at work is because of lack of education. And then they want to, you know, go back to their university and take another qualification, which will then put them in person number one. Or they're really struggling in their jobs

and then they start questioning themselves and the whole thing just goes into a downward spiral, which is also not a good thing, right? And then they escape and then, you know, they kind of go back, take a career break and then like try to take another qualification again. So it's kind of like a downward spiral. And to me, all these are connected.

All these are connected. But the real root cause really comes from putting education at the top and like seeing education as the only sole reason for you to perform at work, to be a top performer, to get recognized, to get appreciated, and to get new opportunities,

and to get promoted, and to grow your career. So this is, I'll say, an incorrect perception of how education is supposed to work because paper qualification can get you the interview. It can maybe even get you a job, depending on your career level. But how well you do in that job and how well you progress your career from there,

that's a completely different story. And paper qualification and education is just a very, very small part of the entire journey. Because I've met a lot of successful people who may or may not necessarily have the actual paper qualification that is specifically required for the industry but they have been able to really advance because they understand how the corporate world works. They understand how to sell themselves. They are confident in what they do. They know that they can add value because they are very good at their job, they deliver quality work, they work fast, they're able to produce outcomes, results and achievements and all these things are really really highly valued skills and characteristics and attitudes if you're

someone working in the 9 to 5 corporate world. I challenge you to really think about what actually is the thing that you need. Is it really education or you're just lacking some core skills to survive in the corporate world, which is really important because you can take your master's for two years, but you're working a lifetime. You're talking about 20 to 30 years. So that's a really, really long time. And you can't be like taking a master's program every two years just because you're unhappy about 20 to 30 years. So that's a really, really long time. And you can't be like taking a master's program every two years

just because you're unhappy at your job. That doesn't sound like a winning strategy to me. So I think what would be a lot more useful if you're someone who is kind of like contemplating and a lot of the things I say in today's episode actually resonated with you. I think what would be a more worthwhile strategy and something that's, I think,

a little bit more sustainable for you in the long term is to really ask yourself, what are your current soft skills deficiencies that is causing you to burn out at work or to struggle at work that's leading you to think about taking that additional qualification? What are you potentially missing

in the way that you are speaking up, the way that you are selling yourself, the way that you're positioning your value skills and experiences, that you are really unable to get the opportunities that you want? Because all these things can be resolved in a step-by-step strategy.

And that's definitely something that I teach in my career course, The Corporate Survivor. So what I am saying is that at the beginning, you really want to like diagnose, like diagnose like diagnose like a doctor right what exactly is the issue and what do you need and what is the fastest way or rather what is the first initial step that you should take and that you can take right now like

to be honest like learning how to understand the corporate world is something that you can really do right now because that's something I teach step by step in my career course. And if you sign up, you can literally get started right now. And learning how to sell yourself, that's something you can get started right now as well. Like you can start drafting your career summary and really rethinking your skills and experiences, how you add value. There's something that you literally can take out a piece of paper right now. Do it right now. And for those students in my career course, they can just jump into the job search bonus lessons and literally go through the lessons and start drafting that

right now. So my point is, my point is, before you make a long-term commitment to higher education, to get more paper qualification that will obviously lock down your more time and energy, I suggest you think about something that you can do right now. And it all starts from learning how to actually diagnose what's potentially missing, what's the blockage, what is the thing that is stopping you from that next opportunity or, you know, the opportunity to get recognized at work or maybe in the next job, the next industry, because I assure you that the blockage is there and 99.9 of the time the blockage is not your education so as we wrap up this episode i really challenge you to think about what is that one blockage in your career just drop a

comment on what do you think is the biggest blockage that you have in your career right now that is not education related so if if you're watching on YouTube, just drop a comment. I like to see it. And if you're someone who wants more helpful tips, more practical advice and coaching from me every single week,

then make sure that you're subscribed to my Career Confessions newsletter, which is really the best way to connect with me and to learn from me every single week. So welcome to my email community and do subscribe for free at www.mayping.com.

Till then, I'll see you in the next episode.