Joseph Said:

SAP –FI/CO WITH FINANCE DOMAIN EXPERIENCE OF 14 YEARS?

We Answered:

Have you the zeal of taking a new challenge? If yes, then you can go for it.

Edward Said:

I am planning a career change from investment banking to psychology. Any ideas, opinions, suggestions?

We Answered:

No sense in staying in a career that you do not like. If I were you, I would consider an MSW rather then a master's degree in psych. With and MSW you open the possibility of billing insurance. It is a quick, easy and interesting degree to obtain. If your ultimate goal is private practice, you would really need a PhD if you went the psych route (unless you looked into counseling or school psych). Your background in finance and your MBA coupled with an MSW would make you a great candidate for a position in nonprofit management. You would likely find a job very easily while building clinical hours necessary to bill insurance for a private practice.

I have a master's degree in Psychology (clinical) and I am currently pursuing a PhD in School Psychology. Prior to going back to school for my PhD I worked first as a case management supervisor serving adults with mental illness and then as a family therapist working with adolescent juvenile delinquents and then as one of the supervisors in that program. All in all I have 7 years of ft experience in the psych field, not including 4 years of pt experience while I was getting my BS.

Although the work is very meaningful it becomes fairly repetitive. Most jobs that I have had were flexible to some degree, but you have to be willing to work nontraditional hours (i.e. be available on weekends and nights), but you can often comp your time and come n late or take off another day. I did not like being on call 24 hours a day which would likely be the case if you had a private practice. After working with clients for over 7 years I decided that I hated my job. That is why I am back in school for the ol' PhD...I want to try out academia.

Psych. related jobs typicaly have a high turnover. You likely will not mak a terrible amount of money, but you can certainly live comfortably. I was earning close to 95k between a ft job and a pt job when I left to go back to school. In the beginning you may take a pay cut (my first job out of college paid 26,500), but I am not sure because you also have an MBA and might be eligible for management positions, but a year or two of work experience might benefit you.

My best advice to you...before you cash in your chips and switch careers, try volunteering a couple of days per month to see if you like the human service field. There are a ton of different settings that you can work/volunteer in and you might find out that you really hate listening to people's crap (like I do).

Best of luck. If you have anymore question feel free to email.

Darrell Said:

career change from business to pharmacy?

We Answered:

I hope you didn't send out the above letter to any Pharm schools.

You need to realize that when applying, you need to keep everything strictly business, and focused on Pharmacy only. That means omitting anything about family pressuring you to do this or that, and omitting the part about Dentistry. Nobody cares- they want to know how strong of an applicant you are to Pharm school!

You also need to take the PCAT. Based on your scores, a pharm school will be able to make a better evaluation of your skills. Everyone's taken the courses you mention- some even more that you have. That by itself isn't remarkable. A good PCAT score is.

Jorge Said:

Career Change to Accounting/Finance?

We Answered:

It takes about 2 years (about 18 classes) to get an AA or certification is those fields. Unfortunately, that's really not enough to land you a job. There's plenty of people with 4 year degrees (or even more education than that) looking for jobs in those fields. Even if you were to find an entry-level job with an AA or certification, the pay would be nowhere near 45k, more like somewhere around $20k (if you're lucky).