Certification Magazine - March 2008 - (Page 22)

Nowhere does it require a master’s degree, and Michael Cho, who is manager of technical support and oversees his department’s college new hire program, said a master’s degree is by no means essential to working at his company. “Our hiring practices show that a master’s degree is not necessary to compete,” he said. “When we advertise, we are not advertising for a bachelor’s or a master’s, we are just looking for the best candidates. Also, at my company there’s an opportunity to get a master’s degree while working and have the company compensate you for that.” Cho said his department hired 40 employees with bachelor’s degrees in 2007 and 17 with master’s degrees. All 57 of the employees went into the same position, customer support engineer, but the difference was that, in most cases, master’s students received a higher level of pay. Certifications as well as performance play more of a role in getting senior-level positions as an engineer, but Cho said if an engineer wants to move from that track to management, a master’s may help them. A master’s degree could mean getting a pay raise, rising to a new, more creative position or assuming more responsibility, all of which could help lessen the drudgery of graduate school bills. speculates that about 75 percent have bachelors’ degrees and 25 percent have masters’ degrees. “It’s good to get some work experience prior to going for a graduate degree,” he said. “It’s always good to have some practical work experience so that you can draw upon that in a master’s program, and it also will allow you to get a better idea of what you want to focus on. If you go right from a bachelor’s to a master’s, you’re not really having that opportunity to grow and to figure out what it is you want to do.” Keith Auer, a Microsoft college staffing consultant, said he doesn’t go out and specifically seek master’s candidates. “What we look at is the experience that the candidate would bring to the table,” he said. “A master’s isn’t going to make or break a candidate. The expectations would be that a master’s candidate is going to have a bit more solid of a foundation in the concepts, but in terms of the output expected, there’s not going to be much difference there.” Auer said Microsoft hires about 1,000 college graduates for core tech positions each year. Of those, Auer A Graduate’s View Jorgen Hesselberg, a senior project manager at a small IT consulting firm in Chicago, graduated from Northwestern University with an MSIT last year. For him, it was well worth the effort. 22 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE March 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Certification Magazine - March 2008

Certification Magazine - March 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Data Stream Tech Careers Academic Connection Dear Techie Virtual Village Mastering IT: Choosing Between an Immediate Job and Higher Education Inside Certification Virtual World Administrators: Service Requests in Cyberspace Interface Boomers in IT: Will the Talent Shortage Affect Techies? Ad Index Endtag

Certification Magazine - March 2008

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