Selling Your Career Change

Interesting article, partially excerpted below. As always, one size doesn't fit all. Curious about the Salmon book. It doesn't seem to be all that focused on pathways to graduate credentials but I'll have to actually read it before commenting.

http://www.experience.com/alumnus/article?channel_id=advanced_degree_development&source_page=home&article_id=article_1150381503888

Selling Your Career Change: How To Strengthen Your Grad Application
By Experience

In this era of corporate layoffs, evolving economic concerns, so-called downsizing, and the technology boom-and-bust aftermath, it's no surprise that people switch jobs regularly.

More than ever before, people are also completely switching careers--and that offers requires a new education. The reasons for this change are varied: there's more acceptance of "multi-tasking" careers (an actress or musician can also be an author, restaurateur, and clothing designer), more tolerance for career switches, more job skills becoming obsolete (due to new technology and/or a completely new skillset and education), and people are marrying and starting families later than previous generations, which in turns fosters more career experimentation.

Sell the Switch in Your Application
You need to make your unique experience shine on your graduate application, as well as be convincing about your desire and ability to switch the course of your professional track. Here are some tips for creating a successful grad application and forging past experience into a new career path.

Talk the talk. In their book The Mid-Career Tune-Up, Bill and Rosemary Salmon stress how important it is to research, know, and use the jargon of your new pursuit in your application. If you've researched trends, industry experts, future predictions, and the history of the field, you can include this knowledge in your application. For example, if you're a lawyer applying to UCLA's film school, you can mention the ways in which technology has changed filmmaking and mention night courses or seminars in this new technology that you've taken (or even books you've read on the subject). A medical doctor applying to law school could mention current legal issues in medicine that fascinate him, using the legal terminology and issues of current interest.

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