Dilemma - accept job offer or further studies
 

My current situation: local uni grad (second upper hons), regret choice of degree, employed in a horrible job I dread going to most days

Been job hunting for around 6 months plus, but little luck. So thought of going to do a Masters to open more options for myself and hopefully can enter a field I'm more interested in, as I have little passion for the industry related to my bachelors degree.

But earlier today I received a job offer where the job scope, environment and work-life balance is an improvement from my current job. Quite decent, but it's still something I'd be tolerating rather than enjoying. But now I'm wondering whether I should decline the offer and go study, so that in the long term I have the chance to be more fulfilled. I'm male, so I did NS, not very young anymore, and I think if I want to try a career switch it has to be now.

Though there's the fear that studying Masters, though enjoyable and personally fulfilling to me, might not guarantee a job, and it's a huge time and money investment. Maybe it's better to just take the offer and play safe.

What do you guys think?

ps. Assume I can't work and study as I'm the Masters degree I'm considering is at an overseas university, also I'm not rushing to get married or buy house/car or anything like that...

can u be more specific? watz ur deg? watz the field u r in now? wat master r u going to take and which field u hope to get in with ur master?

some masters are more useful than others, and sometimes, highly educated but with little work experience might do more harm than good (again depending on the field/industry).

If you are certain you will not want to work ever in the area of your first degree and if this Masters is one of those that allow you to bridge the gap and thus switch to a different profession, you might as well get started on the Masters. But you have to be really sure that your Masters would lead you to a career that you will enjoy. Life is too short to be working just for money without enjoying at least half of your job.

Sometimes work experience is the most useful thing to have to decide what your true passion is. Every job has tasks which you enjoy or hate. This can help point you the direction you should be going. If you grin and bear it, take the job, stay for a year or so and then decide what you really want to do and if the Masters is worth it. Just don't jump out of the frying pan until you know what you are jumping in to.

I feel for you. I have been in your shoes before and it's a tough choice. I chose to quit and do my MA and it was the best decision I ever made but that was because I found my calling.

Thanks for the response. All my logical brain cells are telling me it's insane to give up the job, especially in this economy.

Just curious, what did you do your MA in? And your previous and current jobs?

My bachelors is in mass comm, but I don't enjoy the media industry or marcomms/pr related work, which is where many mass comm grads end up.

Am considering switching to psychology (organisational psychologist, counsellor or hr/training/devt roles) or information science (to work as a librarian/archivist/data analyst etc)

not sure if it helps, but i know a history master working as NUS librarian now.

data analyst could be difficult given ur background, due to the lack of quantitative training from ur deg. i know u may have taken some stats module from ur course, but if wat i heard about the new media mod from NUS is true... i think a year1 stats student will do a better job teaching the module.

yeah the point is i lack the academic/research/quantitative/stats skills that's required for some of the fields i have an interest in, hence my thought of doing a masters to gain these skills.

you might ask why didn't i do that in my degree? young and stupid i guess, made decision of what uni/faculty to go to based on stupid criteria like popularity and friends' influence.

I'll say go for the career switch but stay in singapore (unless money is not a problem - then go overseas!). there are many options locally such as
SMU's HR grad cert ://.smu.edu.sg/programmes/professional/hrgradcert
NTU MSc Info Studies ://.wkwsci.ntu.edu.sg/ProspectiveStudents/Graduate/MasterofScienceinInformationStudies/Pages/MasterofScienceinInformationStudies.aspx

self study UOL international masters -
://.londoninternational.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/birkbeck/human-resource-management-msc-postgraduate-diploma
://.londoninternational.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/birkbeck/organizational-psychology-msc-postgraduate-diploma

how do you know that you will like HR/library/archive work? I worry that you will regret just like you have regretted your degree choice. My suggestion is to go do an internship and get a taste of it before jumping into it. in fact, there are many HR/library/archive work which does not require a relevant degree. have you tried?

data analyst is very broad. what exactly are you looking for?
for example, would something like this interest you?
://.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/12262212

You will probably not like to hear what I say, but here goes my honest opinion.

There is a huge mismatch between what you say you are interested in doing and what you intend to study.

Organizational psychologist – Not going to happen, companies will not take in some engineering guy who just happen to spend 1 or 2 years studying some masters overseas. If you look at most organizational psychologist out there, they are pretty much very well established professionals with >15 years experience in a related field.

Counsellor – Possible, this is one avenue that studying that masters might help, but do note that it is likely you will end up in either some stat board subsidiary or NGO or VWO which means limited pay and long working hours. Think through carefully first.

Training – Very much an administrative and lowly paid role taken up by at most some generic bachelor’s degree / diploma with experience, you are just wasting money and time to get a Masters in order to do such menial jobs. Most HR folks in training are either ladies with very little interest in climbing the career ladder or old uncles relaxing for retirement.

Organization Effectiveness / Learning & Development etc – Specialized and highly paid roles that are very hard to break into. People who get there are either young high potentials / management trainees who are recruited by mega MNCs (only mega companies can afford to pay for such roles) or high performing mid career HR folks who have chalked up many years of experience in either operations HR or training.

By the time you finish your masters, you will be a early/mid 30s guy without any stellar academic or internship records and largely irrelevant previous work experience, chances for you to get into HR specialist role is very very slim as it is too competitive.

Then we go to your other interest, that is “information science” (whatever that means), you mentioned 3 jobs librarian/archivist/data analyst.

Librarian – Pretty much a job taken up by diploma and below, you will just end up over qualified

Archivist – Possible, but I do not see how a masters in psychology helps. Might as well try and apply with what you have now

Data analyst – I assume its just generic junior level data crunching for either private/public sector. Again you might as well try and apply with what you have now.