Lost As an engineering grad

[rampa001]

Hi ! I'm a Poly grad with 3yrs experience working as an Assistant Engineer in the semiconductor field. I have recently completed a part time degree in electrical Engineering form a Australian University. Although I have not yet declared my new degree qualification I'm able to reach a gross pay of about 3.5K consistently. My problem is I don't see a future in making this salary grow , because in the engineering field salaries are low (compared to banking & finance). I'm currently in a dilemma ,weather to do a MBA or an MSC to help me grow up the ladder and to increase my pay.....My real passion is for engineering but Singapore doesn't seem to have any prospects so I'm thinking of career change also ......can some one plz advice me. Thx in advance

Originally Posted by rampa001

Hi ! I'm a Poly grad with 3yrs experience working as an Assistant Engineer in the semiconductor field. I have recently completed a part time degree in electrical Engineering form a Australian University. Although I have not yet declared my new degree qualification I'm able to reach a gross pay of about 3.5K consistently. My problem is I don't see a future in making this salary grow , because in the engineering field salaries are low (compared to banking & finance). I'm currently in a dilemma ,weather to do a MBA or an MSC to help me grow up the ladder and to increase my pay.....My real passion is for engineering but Singapore doesn't seem to have any prospects so I'm thinking of career change also ......can some one plz advice me. Thx in advance

One thing I think we all know is that you need a DEGREE. Without a basic degree, you will find it hard to enter banks. After degree, you need to change job every 2-3 years to get the pay up. The chances are 99% (1% being promotion) that staying too long in the same company, you will be UNDERPAID.

Of course, a lot of housing agents, insurance agents who are very successful have no basic degree, but I feel since you are young, you should get one before going for MBA or MSc.

If I am an employer, I wont employ someone with poly + Masters without the basic degree.

[rampa001]

Hi ! first of all thank you for taking time to reply. I think you didn't fully get my point. I have a part time degree at present ,since I've just completed it i haven't declared it to my present employer. my main concerns are,

1. should i immediately start an MBA in order to make a career switch ?
2. Will an MBA help me in the first place to reach my higher goals ??

Originally Posted by rampa001

Hi ! first of all thank you for taking time to reply. I think you didn't fully get my point. I have a part time degree at present ,since I've just completed it i haven't declared it to my present employer. my main concerns are,

1. should i immediately start an MBA in order to make a career switch ?
2. Will an MBA help me in the first place to reach my higher goals ??

you should've done a part-time degree in business and start in operations in a bank and progress from there. what you can do now is to try to get into a good MBA school - and what i mean is insead and chicago booth types. if you go for SMU, NUS, NTU or any of those lesser foreign programmes, my concern is that your prospective employers may think you are "over qualified" for ops & support positions and yet under qualified for BA positions, and you'll be stuck. alternatively, you can do CFA part-time and enter the fund management industry, or just do sales (which can be very very lucrative).

[rampa001]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

you should've done a part-time degree in business and start in operations in a bank and progress from there. what you can do now is to try to get into a good MBA school - and what i mean is insead and chicago booth types. if you go for SMU, NUS, NTU or any of those lesser foreign programmes, my concern is that your prospective employers may think you are "over qualified" for ops & support positions and yet under qualified for BA positions, and you'll be stuck. alternatively, you can do CFA part-time and enter the fund management industry, or just do sales (which can be very very lucrative).

Thanks again for the time & the effort taken to reply, Guess I need to do some research on the CFA program...... I too was a bit skeptical in thinking of doing a MBA straight off since I have no experience in Finance ,i'm a bit afraid weather i would be able to deliver as expected by my future employer..... Do you think that the CFA program will lay a solid foundation for me ?? and most of all be a practically applicable than a MBA. The main reason I ask this is that I have not done any modules/courses in Finance and gonna be totally new to the field .........