Am I Using a Credential Fraudulently?

You may notice the “PhD” following my name on some of my book covers. I do hold a doctor of philosophy degree (earned, not honorary), but my use of these letters brings up an interesting question of when it is—and is not—appropriate to use work-related credentials. This issue is particularly timely because so many people are now working (or seek work) in fields that they did not prepare for formally.

What raised this issue for me was a question in “The Ethicist” column of last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. The query, posed by someone whose name was withheld, was this: “A Pilates-certification-program teacher uses the credentials ‘Ph.D.’ after her name in connection with the course description on the studio’s website. However, her degree is in finance, which is never mentioned on the site. Is this acceptable?” The core of the answer from columnist Chuck Klosterman was, “Anyone who includes an academic designation alongside the description of a class she’s teaching is implying that these things have a material connection. She is actively trying to make people misinterpret what she has to offer.”

I admire Chuck Klosterman for his often subtle parsings of ethical issues, and I believe he was correct in making this judgment. So after reading this column, I had to ask myself whether I am using my PhD credential ethically. And as I thought about how to answer this question, I realized that many people deal with a similar issue. Because of my interest in careers, I often ask people how they got into the line of work they presently are doing, and a great many of them describe a crooked career path that did not include the “appropriate” academic training.

As for me, it’s true that I am not teaching Pilates or any other course, but it could still be argued that my use of “PhD” on my books implies what Klosterman calls “a material connection” between my education and the contents of my books. And the fact is that although my books are about careers, none of my degrees is in economics, counseling, psychology, or education. My degrees are all in English literature. (In case you’re curious, my specialization was pre-Shakespearean drama, and my dissertation was about morality plays.) But the particular focus of my academic work, literature, doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that in preparing for and writing my dissertation, I learned how to do research and write about it, and these skills do have a material connection to the work I do now.

You might argue that research and writing skills are necessary but not sufficient qualifications to write about careers; the writer should also be well-informed about career development issues. I often joke that getting a degree in English guarantees that you’ll become informed about career development issues, and in my case there was some truth to this statement. Not long after I got my degree, it became obvious that I was not going to find a permanent job teaching at a university, so I had to decide what else I was going to do with my life. I read What Color Is Your Parachute? and did all the exercises. From my self-assessment, I realized that teaching was not what I liked or was especially good at; instead it was researching and writing, as I had done for my dissertation. The first opportunity that came my way for a job involving these tasks was developing career information for Educational Testing Service. This job led to a 19-year stint. During that time, I engaged in what amounted to an apprenticeship in career development theory, with Martin R. Katz as my mentor. In that setting, the world’s biggest testing organization, it was also inevitable that I would learn a lot about assessment. At Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey), I took three graduate courses from the counseling master’s program: an introduction to counseling and two educational statistics courses.

Therefore, the credentials I bring to my work are a combination of formal education (mostly the PhD) and on-the-job training (my apprenticeship at ETS), and I try to mention both of these elements on my book covers: The “PhD” appears on the front cover after my name, and on the back cover is a statement that I have been working in the field of career information for more than 30 years.

Many people, like me, are working in fields where their credentials consist, at least in part, of informal on-the-job learning. But most people present their credentials to the world mostly through a business card, which does not accommodate as much text as the back cover of a book. People who work in fields where certification is available as a credential have the chance to put certain relevant initials after their name on the card, but this is not an option in most fields.

If you are working in a field where you do not have formal credentials—perhaps because they do not exist—I would advise you to be hesitant about putting a degree after your name. But I would give you a lot of leeway for arguing (as I do here) that your degree really is relevant to your qualifications.

Don’t Let Schooling Interfere with Your Education

I owe Mark Twain the title of this week’s blog. His career makes an interesting case study and attests to the wisdom of his dictum, because the famous writer had little formal education. He never went to college but instead apprenticed as a printer. While working as a typesetter, he took up writing as an avocation, contributing humorous articles to a newspaper owned by his brother. He learned his next occupation, Mississippi riverboat pilot, again through on-the-job training, but eventually the Civil War put an end to most civilian traffic on the river. Next, taking advantage of his brother’s appointment as secretary to the governor of Nevada Territory, he spent a couple of years pushing papers in government offices.

After failing in his attempt to strike it rich as a miner (later detailed in Roughing It), he fell back on journalism in Virginia City. Then, while working as a journalist in San Francisco, he published his first big commercial success, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” and over the following years he evolved from a journalist with a knack for travelogue writing to the novelist who now ranks among America’s greatest. He had a parallel career as a lecturer that grew out of his travel writing. He also pursued an avocation as an inventor, perhaps an outgrowth of the technical skills he had learned in his boyhood, but he had only mixed success. As an investor, he was particularly inept and at one point had to declare bankruptcy.

Nowadays, a career path like this would be hard to follow. Nevertheless, we can learn certain important lessons from it.

First, many skills can be learned informally, perhaps through leisure-time pursuits, and these can later be the basis of a career change. Although formal educational credentials (and the technical skills they represent) are more important now than ever before, employers often express frustration at being unable to find job candidates who have the right soft skills. Therefore, although I recognize the importance of a college degree, I urge young people to round out their college educations with activities that will cultivate soft skills. These may be part-time jobs, internships, student organizations, or volunteer activities. Probably the most important characteristic to look for in these extracurricular activities is collaborative work, because it builds people skills and communication skills that are rarely central to academic coursework. This is the core of the message in the title of this week’s blog.

Second, be ready to take advantage of unexpected opportunities. Growing up in a small riverfront town, Mark Twain became aware of the opportunities that being a riverboat pilot offered for high pay and the chance to escape small-town life. But when that livelihood dried up, he was ready to use a personal connection to shift to a new occupation that led him to unanticipated career opportunities. These did not always work out, but because Twain had a fund of skills and the resilience to recover from setbacks, he eventually found his way to his main claim to fame. He was able to reinvent himself several times. In fact, he even reinvented his name from Samuel Clemens to Mark Twain.

Finally, if you change from one industry to another (whether willingly or from necessity), try to find ways to use your accumulated fund of knowledge in your new field. Mark Twain based his jumping frog story on an anecdote he heard while working as a miner in Nevada. He drew on his riverboat experience when he wrote Life on the Mississippi and Huckleberry Finn, and the mechanical knowledge he acquired as a printer’s apprentice figures in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Few can achieve the immortal fame of Mark Twain, but we all can benefit from emulating the traits that allowed him to grow and advance from his initial job as a small-town printer: a constant love of learning, alertness to opportunities, resilience, and the resourcefulness to exploit what he had already learned.

The Recession Has Ended?

By now you’ve probably heard the news that the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009. That’s the verdict of the economists on the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research. This means we have already been in a recovery for 15 months. Why doesn’t it feel like that? And what does this mean for your job prospects?

Many of the indicators of recovery that the economists examined show that this recovery is weak. For example, the gross domestic product in the second quarter of this year advanced only 1.6 percent, a slowdown from the 3.7 percent of the first quarter. In July, existing home sales were at their lowest level in a decade.

But not all indicators show weaknesses. To me, the most startling figure is that corporate profits last quarter ($1639.3 billion) were only 1 percent lower than they were at their pre-recession peak ($1655.1 billion). They have risen steadily for the past six quarters. In other words, companies are sitting on a mountain of cash.

That’s why it’s all the more startling that job creation has been so dismal. In fact, we have actually lost more jobs than we have gained since the recovery began.

You may be wondering how corporations can be making such big profits while economic growth is tepid and so many people aren’t working. The reason is productivity gains. American workers who are still employed keep on producing more output relative to what they’re paid. It’s important to understand why this is happening. Some of it is because the workers are putting in longer hours. Some of it is because businesses have invested in machinery and computers that increase workers’ output. And much of it is because we have a leaner, meaner workforce. So many low-skill workers have been laid off. The work that they used to do has either been shipped overseas or is being done by machinery and computers operated by high-skill workers.

Here’s an indication of how lean and mean our workforce has become: Workers over 25 who have a bachelor’s degree or higher had an unemployment rate of 4.6 percent in August, while those with only a high school diploma had a rate of 10.3 percent. Compare that gap of 5.7 percent to the gap of only 2.6 percent when the recession began. Figures for the duration of unemployment tell a similar story. In August, the median duration of unemployment for the college grads was 18.4 weeks, compared to 27.5 weeks for the high school grads. Three years ago, there was only about one unemployed day of difference between the two groups.

There’s little reason to think that this lean, mean workforce will be able to get fat and lazy anytime soon. A report this week from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco says that "capital utilization" (i.e., investment in machinery and computers) has been one of the main drivers of recent productivity growth but notes that the level of investment has been below historical averages. The report concludes that businesses will be able to squeeze still more productivity out of the employed workforce through increased capital utilization rather than through increased hiring.

What is the implication for your job prospects? To be part of the leaner workforce, you need to be meaner. By “meaner,” I don’t mean more ruthless (although you do need to be aggressive in your job-hunting), but rather that you need to be one of the high-skill workers. You need to aim for the highest-skill work that you’re capable of and--better yet--you should plan to upgrade your skills. If you’re still in school, plan to get a higher-level degree than you might have had in mind originally. If you’re out of school, think about formal or informal training to upgrade your skills. And be sure to do more than thinking and planning. Commit to some specific action.

This is the central theme of my latest book, 2011 Career Plan: The Best Moves Now for a Solid Future, and it’s why I take a rather pushy tone in that book. It’s also why so many of my recent blogs have been about the theme of improving your skills. Your job survival in this economy depends on taking action to be one of the highly skilled workers.

Improving Your Skills, Part 1

This blog is a departure from my usual focus on career information. It’s about career advancement. Many people who want to get ahead in their careers think their only option is to get an additional college degree, certification, or other formal credential. In my book 2011 Career Plan: The Best Moves Now for a Solid Future, due out in September, I explain some other strategies for getting ahead.

You advance in your career by improving your skills. Degree programs and other formal courses are not the only way to do this.

Let’s face it, nobody knows exactly what to do on the very first day at the worksite. Every new worker needs at least a little informal on-the-job training from experienced workers. Why should this end once you’ve learned the job? When you see co-workers using a skill that you don’t have, ask them to show you how. Most co-workers will be happy to teach you, if it doesn’t take up too much of their time.

Another way to learn informally is through independent study. In fact, this may be your only option if the skill is so arcane that local classes are not available. A few years back, I was involved in a project for a university in Saudi Arabia and realized it would be useful for me to learn some Arabic. This was before 9/11, and it would have been difficult for me to find an academic course in the language, so I undertook a self-instruction program using a textbook and homemade flash cards.

I managed to teach myself a smattering of Arabic, but the program eventually ran aground because I lacked a study partner. Study partners help reinforce each other’s learning and keep the learning program on track. Without a study partner, you’re more likely to give up quickly.

In 2011 Career Plan I include a checklist of characteristics that are good to have in a study partner:

Characteristics of a Good Study Partner

__ This person is interested in learning the same skill that I want to learn.

__ For the skill that I want to learn, this person is now at roughly the same level.

__ For the skill that I want to learn, this person has roughly the same aptitude for learning.

__ This person is as committed as I am to keeping the study program going and staying on task.

__ This person and I can agree on what book (or other learning resource) to use in our program of study.

__ This person and I can get along reasonably well.

__ This person’s schedule and mine allow time to meet regularly for study sessions.

__ This person is able to find time to do the homework required between meetings.

When you’re filling out this checklist, it helps if you know which statements you feel positive about. However, you may be unsure about some statements. For example, you may not know how committed the study partner is until you have started studying together. If you feel neutral about some statements, you may choose to give the person the benefit of the doubt, start studying with this person, and eventually decide whether the arrangement is working out.

On the other hand, if you already feel negative about several statements, maybe you should consider finding someone else as a study partner