First, Know Yourself

When it comes to career reinvention, too many people make a fundamental mistake: They don’t know themselves.

So when I talk to people about making a career change, I always suggest first doing a few self-assessment exercises. Career self-assessment is the process of getting acquainted with what you like — and don’t like — in a work environment.

You can do this by simply making a list of your skills and interests, and asking yourself questions such as “What type of work would make me sit in traffic for hours just for the privilege of showing up?” and “What energizes me at work?” Increasingly, though, career changers are drawing guidance from more sophisticated tests.

Entrepreneurial Bent

After getting laid off from an investment bank in New York, 25-year-old Alan Katz worked with career counselor Claudine Vainraub to determine his next steps. He completed a 360-degree survey, in which he collected feedback about himself from friends, co-workers, and family, as well as assessments about his work behaviors and career interests.

“The assessments helped me understand my skills, specific roles I play effectively and career interests,” says Mr. Katz, who paid a total of $2,500 for the tests and professional consulting over a six-week period. “The results prompted me to investigate entrepreneurship, and I’m now developing a start-up company in manufacturing.”

Many experts agree that assessments are best used in conjunction with an experienced career counselor who can hand-select tests for you — and help you interpret the results. Ms. Vainraub, who is based in Miami, chose the 360-degree questionnaire for Mr. Katz to better define his work priorities. “We found that his personal vision of leading an enterprise forward was, in fact, quite different from his current career in finance,” she says.

People described Mr. Katz as enjoying managing and motivating others, and driven when involved in a project. “Those are very much the qualities of an entrepreneur,” Ms. Vainraub says.

Online Tests

If you can’t afford or aren’t sure you want to invest in a personalized assessment, start with free assessments online, including the Coach Compass Assessment (coachcompass.com) and the CareerLink Inventory (www.mpcfaculty.net/CL/cl.htm). Most take around 10 minutes to complete.

Ms. Vainraub recommends starting with free assessments from O*NET(online.onetcenter.org),a source of occupational information, and from Rutgers University (careerservices.rutgers.edu/OCAmain.html).

When completing these, make sure you keep your expectations in check. It’s unlikely that one test will result in career fulfillment, so take several and see if you can detect patterns in the findings. Should you need something more precise, it may be in your best interest to contact a professional.

Mr. Katz says he would go through the self-assessment process again. “Self-assessment is great for people who are unsure of the correct career move to make,” he says. “I now have a lot more confidence that I’m headed in the right direction.”

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Alexandra Levit (reinvent@wsj.com)

CAREERS - www.online.wsj.com

Filed under: Business , assessment, recession, yourself

With Jobs Tight, M.B.A.s Head for Home

After working in public accounting for three years, Joe Fusco, wanted to become an investment banker. So he invested more than $70,000 and two years into an M.B.A.

But as he prepares to graduate from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana next month, Mr. Fusco, 27 years old, hasn’t had any luck landing a position in finance. The only solution he has is to go back to his accounting roots. “It’s a tough pill to swallow, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t sit and wait and cross my fingers,” he says.

The majority of students at top business schools attend the programs as a way to boost their skills to change careers. This year, making that happen has turned into a nearly impossible task. And that means a significant number of soon-to-be grads who entered school back in 2007 are being forced back to their pre-M.B.A. careers in the hopes of finding a job.

“Career switchers are getting hit the hardest,” says Kristen Lynas, associate director of career management at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Those looking to switch fields make up the majority of each incoming class at the school, she adds. “When the market is hot, employers are more willing to take the risk … [now] employers tend to go with the safe choice.”

Steve Canale, manager of recruiting and staffing services at General Electric Co., in Fairfield, Conn., says that with so many applicants, previous experience is getting a bigger emphasis when the company weeds out candidates. “That’s the sweet spot — people who have industry expertise in the industries that we’re strong in,” says Mr. Canale, who hires about 120 M.B.A. students each year for a sales and marketing program.

In past years, GE would have been more open to M.B.A.s who were less of a match. But applications for the program grew 30% this year and Mr. Canale was able to be more experience-selective, he says.

With firms like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns — which used to bring on upward of 800 M.B.A.s combined every year — now defunct, and fewer finance jobs around, more business-school graduates are leaning on their experience to get them in the door. For example, the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business has typically placed 50% of its M.B.A. alumni in finance, most at large investment banks. This year, students in all majors have been turning back to their previous fields to find work, says Char Bennington, Chicago’s senior associate director of career management. Ms. Bennington says other industries, like consulting and marketing, are also hiring fewer people and looking for experience.

After Johnson & Johnson didn’t extend an offer to Jareer Oweimrin, a second-year M.B.A. at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who worked as a strategic marketing intern with the company, Mr. Oweimrin is putting his plans to get a health-care marketing role on hold for the time being. He is now trying to capitalize on his background in pharmaceutical sales and is in talks about returning to a sales job at a former employer, a major drug maker. He hopes such a move will eventually help him move into marketing. “The motto here [at school] is ‘take what you’ve got,’” says Mr. Oweimrin, who spent about $70,000 on his degree. “You can’t be as picky as you want to be.”

Even consulting firms — known for hiring career switchers — are looking for M.B.A.s with previous experience to hire.

Brianne Shally, 29, who graduates from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management this spring, says she feels safer going back to a consulting job in Chicago for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, her previous employer, rather than make a career change. “I have a proven track record, if it comes down to names on a board” for a layoff or hiring, says Ms. Shally. She says consulting jobs haven’t been easy to land for fellow classmates, though. This year, she says, firms “were not willing to take a risk on students who did not have previous consulting experience.”

Patricia Phillips, executive director of career management at University of Rochester’s Simon Graduate School of Business, says students are beginning to recognize that these days, it could take two or three career moves to make a switch.

That’s how Abhishek Sunkersett is approaching his first post-M.B.A. job. Instead of landing a job in strategy consulting or finance, Mr. Sunkersett, 28, a second-year student at the University of Texas-Austin McCombs School of Business, says his engineering background and technical experience working in the Mumbai office of Deloitte helped land him a position at the Chicago office of Infosys Technologies Ltd., an Indian information-technology services vendor. For now, Mr. Sunkersett says he’ll focus on consulting projects involving technology, with hopes of pursuing more strategy-related projects in the firm. “My experience was a big advantage,” says Mr. Sunkersett.

But the idea of returning to an old career has some soon-to-be grads questioning the value of their degrees. A traditional post-M.B.A. position increases a degree-holder’s salary by 74% according to an annual survey from the Graduate Management Admissions Council.

Besides being unable to use his newly honed marketing skills, Mr. Oweimrin, says he is worried that he’ll be earning the same as he did as a pharmaceutical rep — about $60,000 — instead of the $100,000 marketing job he expected to land after the M.B.A. program.

And Mr. Fusco says he is less certain his investment in the degree was worthwhile. Many of the auditing positions that he is finding don’t require a graduate business degree. “These are positions that I was pretty qualified for even pre-M.B.A,” he says.

By ALINA DIZIK

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D6. (www.onlin.wsj.com)

Filed under: student , home, job, MBA, tight