- Brock - 1/30/18
I received notification today (10-27-14) at noon MST that my last assignment for my last class in my MBA program was graded and passed and with that notification I'm done with MBA program at WGU. I couldn't be more pleased with that. I want to share my experience and hope you enjoy.
I've always known education and knowledge was a good thing. I went to traditional public schools growing up. I had it pounded into my head that going to college and getting as much education as possible led to higher pay, but they didn't exactly explain anything about student loans and opportunity cost which in my mind is a huge thing that should be harped on.
For example, this past weekend I went to an information session for the worlds largest oil service provider and the recruiter said he'd stop the whole meeting if there was one person who was a diesel mechanic. Why? Huge demand for that skill set. Pay level for year 1? 100k out the gate. A quick perusal online and you'll find technical schools who'll certify you as a diesel mechanic for anywhere from 20-40k as far as I've been able to find. What's funny is these types of programs aren't really hyped as much as perhaps they could be for the amount of tuition they cost.
I think traditional school is dying and breaking under the stress of its own largess and lack of offering real education for the prices it charges.
About two years ago however I still believed in large part that getting an education was worth it no matter the price. Upon seeing that I wanted to advance in my career, but was getting passed up for opportunities I decided I wanted to pursue a MBA. At that time I did a bit of research on ROI on grad school and found that though higher ivy league schools had higher entrance/exit levels of pay for their students/graduates, they had a higher than proportional cost of tuition, which resulted in a lower ROI compared to lower tiered students/pay scales. I don't believe the studies I read factored in that should an ivy league student opt to not go to ivy league school, but instead prefer to go to a smaller, less reputable school, that they'd probably get a heavy discount on their tuition or perhaps even a full ride scholarship for their degree, which would then make the ROI infinite at that point aside from the opportunity cost of their time/working more at their job.
I signed up for a GMAT prep class at the University of Utah. I took the course and took my first test and bombed out on it. I wasn't even close to getting the minimum scores to get into the a low tier MBA program. I plugged ahead and went another six weeks or so of studying. After studying I decided to take the plunge again. My score improved quite a bit, but still wasn't enough to get into the program. At that point I decided that for the time being I'd put the MBA pursuit on hold even though I could have kept going to class for free for the next three years if I wanted.
Several months after putting studying on hold I did a few other things to improve my skill set and make more money. One thing was to be a pizza delivery driver. Another was to self-impose studying coding. Around that time we had a kid and for the last year or so we've been focused on that as a family and trying small business ideas on the side.
One idea was to call small business owners and offer to list their business daily on the local classifieds so that their business would surface near the top of the search results. This did produce some fruits, but didn't seem to be enough to warrant the amount of work that went into it.
Another idea was to help my wife in selling some maps that she designed and sold herself. Really this was her doing, and I just helped her with some packing, shipping, setting up of displays and what not. Nothing too crazy. She has made more money doing that then I did delivering pizzas or posting classified ads though.
We then partnered with my mother to buy a condo in a small suburb in Utah as a joint venture/rental unit. We'd live in the unit for the foreseeable future, which would allow us to move into a bigger place that could house our expanding family, but then once we'd outgrown it we'd manage it and ensure renters were in the unit. Then we'd split the rental income and any appreciation according to the agreed upon split/investment amounts.
Then June 20th at 10 pm. happened.
After we bought and fixed up some things in the house things slowed down a little bit and we were enjoying the new place. We played host to several family get togethers and game nights. One of these nights when people were over everyone started talking about school. My brother-in-law spouts off that he knocked out something like 27 or 28 credit hours last semester, which shocked me.
A typical college semester is 12-15 credit hours with 18 being crazy and also the max number of hours you can do without needing special permission to take that many credit hours. Anything beyond 18 and you typically need special administrator approval to do so. So when I heard he'd finished well over that amount I was naturally curious. Turns out his semesters were six months long and so really he wasn't too far off from the average number of credit hours done in a semester.
He did proceed to explain though that he could do as many credit hours as he could get done in a semester and still pay the same flat rate of tuition. I can't remember the exact transition to how we got talking about the MBA program, but I think it started with me saying that it'd be awesome if there was a MBA program like that. He said that he believed his school, WGU, did. I said that'd be cool, but that because it was an online school that it probably wasn't accredited to which he responded that he was almost positive that it was. I had to find out if it was or not.
While I was looking online he proceeded to tell us that not only could he do as much school as he wanted, but that he could do so and still pay the same amount for the whole semester, regardless of how little or much you get done, which of course gives an incentive to get as much done as possible to lower their overall cost.
By this time I had confirmed that the school was indeed accredited even for its MBA program. This part was crucial for me as I'd be told by the president of Questar gas back when I was studying the GMAT prep class that it didn't really matter which school that I went to as long as the school awarded an accredited degree once it was completed.
The next big selling point for me was the fact that I didn't have to take the GMAT to get into the program. I obviously had had difficulty previously in preparing for that test and so having that last barrier to entry removed got me really excited. At this time in the evening it was about 10:30 pm and my brother-in-law had to go home, but he said that if I was interested in applying that he could get me a code that night to submit the application for free instead of forking out the $65 application fee. I told him that I was going to apply and he said he'd get it to me that night.
Another reason I was stoked to do the program is that they start a new program every month and so I wouldn't have to wait the nearly year+ to start the program.
On top of that my brother-in-law stated that many people have completed the MBA in less than 3 months, which was a great motivational carrot for me during the entire program. This was/is possible because of the competency structure of the program, i.e. if you have years of knowledge or experience in the subject matter and can demonstrate as much then you're free to do so and once done you can move on the next subject matter.
About twenty or thirty minutes later he had the code sent to my email and I start compiling everything to apply. I gathered all my tax documents, applied to FAFSA, set up a login, and submitted my application that night. During that time we still had some people over and I was working late and they teased me saying, "Are you really doing this?" I replied that I was. I stayed up until I was all the way done applying, which was well past 1:30 am.
The next day was Saturday the 21st and I got a call from an enrollment counselor at noon. He just called to see if I had any questions and talk about my past school experience and thoughts on school and how I'd feel I'd do with an online structure and what not. It flowed very smoothly and didn't feel like a formal interview or anything though come to find out later that that was what it was. He proceeded to tell me that he just needed a couple more things to get me going, which I think may have just been a resume or something like that.
We then talked about a week later. In between that time I received a letter stating that I had been preliminary accepted into the program, which confused me and gave me doubts about whether I'd be accepted into the program or not. This was cleared up on the next call and I was told that it was a done deal. I believe that was June 27th. I asked if I couldn't start the program starting July 1st as I felt I was ready, but he stated I needed to wait a month to start, which I reluctantly accepted.
From there I had to wait two weeks or so until the orientation program opened up for me, which was July 15th. After that I was contacted by my assigned student mentor. This mentor is someone who is assigned to you throughout your entire experience to handle any issues you have, be an accountability partner, and they also approve pre assessments, tests, and additional courses once you've got your currently scheduled courses completed.
The last week of July I noticed that some of my classes were open to be looked at, or at least what I thought were the classes and what I could look at. With that info I decided to go ahead and start working on the course work for my first class. On July 29th my student mentor said that I indeed was green lighted and was free to work on the classes if I wanted and so the clock started.
It took me several weeks to get the first paper written, but towards the tail end of it I discovered the courses online community and discovered additional material that made writing the remainder of the paper a breeze and allowed me to write the second paper over the course of 2 or 3 days. From there it started getting crazy.
After getting those first papers graded I was able to focus on classes that had just a test to pass the class and then some of the classes had a paper and a test to pass the class. What follows is the breakdown for how long each class took me. Ethical leadership took me a while because I had family come into town for two weeks and so I really didn't study a lick and then I also started the last class, the Capstone, which was also part of the reason that class took longer to complete as I had to get up to speed on the Capstone to ensure I wasn't delaying other people in the group. Then starting September 29th I started the last official class, the Capstone, which is done in a group and isn't quite able to be done at such a fast pace as it requires collaboration and working on a schedule that fits with everyone, but that didn't stop me from getting another four classes done while doing the capstone class.
Managing Organizations and Leading People - July 29th - August 18th. - 21 days.
Global Economics for Managers - August 18th - August 27th. - 10 days.
Managing Human Capital - August 27th - August 30th. - 4 days.
Accounting for Decision Makers - August 30th - September 5th. 6 days.
Management Communication - September 5th - September 6th. 2 days.
Marketing - September 6th - September 8th. 3 days.
Ethical Leadership - September 8th - October 3rd. 26 days.
Financial Management - October 3rd - October 9th. 7 days.
Data-Driven Decision Making - October 9th - October 17th. 9 days.
Operations Management - October 17th - October 18th. 2 days.
Capstone - September 29th - October 24th. 26 days.
So what are the things that I did to blow through a lot of these classes so quickly while working full time and having a wife and kid and church responsibilities, never really doing anything on Sundays and a lot of Saturdays off and not doing anything for two weeks while family was in town? Well for starters I got my bachelors in business. Truth be told there were only a few concepts that were new to me in each of the classes and so to get up to speed and show competency in each of them wasn't difficult. If you didn't get your bachelors however in business beforehand it'd take a little bit longer to get through the material, but even then the structure is so great and the flow of the course material is so smooth if you were to follow the schedule they provide you for what you need to study it should go much quicker than what even the schedule indicates.
I focused on one class at a time where possible, which was all the time except for when I was juggling one class at a time while also doing the Capstone class. Only once with Data-Driven Decision Making and Operations Management did I take the pre-assessments back to back. Else I just took one preassessment at a time and focused solely on that class.
Preassessments
It goes against your intuition, but I took the first preassessment for each class before studying one word of the course. This serves two purposes. It shows you exactly where you need to study and which competencies you need help in via the coaching report that is generated after each pre assessment/test. Secondly it gives you a confidence boost to know you're mostly there on the material in most cases. I believe it was only two cases where I scored in the 40% range on my first preassessment. After studying the answers for the preassessment I'd retake the second preassessment. If it happens that you're not comfortable with your results and you still want to study you've still got one preassessment banked to see if the additional studying is needed. I never took a third preassessment and passed ALL of my objective assessments on the first try. I'll say that on average I'd see my score drop 10-15% between the second preassessment and the actual test results throughout my experience at WGU.
Screenshots!
You can take screenshots of the pre assessments and then study the questions you think you got wrong. Don't get too excited though because none of the pre assessment questions were exactly the same in the assessments as far as I can remember. They would have a handful or so of the questions though, but with slight variations on the answers and so studying the pre assessment questions was very helpful to me.
One thing I did during tests is I'd write down any questions I thought I'd probably get wrong to try and study those afterwards, but since I never missed on getting the right cut score I never ended up studying any of the questions I wrote down, but it is something you could try as I'm sure it'd help direct you to specific or general areas that you need to study.
The preassessments also tend to follow the book material in a linear path. For example your first 5-10 questions on the preassessment will directly correlate to the first chapters/sections. The next 5-10 will correlate to the next chapter and so on. They intersperse some questions from other sections every once in a while, but generally I'd say 80-90% of the questions follow a linear path like this. So if you can't find an answer just stick with it.
Supplemental material wasn't really any use. I'm sure there were some answers hidden away in some of them, but honestly I think I read maybe one or two supplemental things/case studies throughout the whole program (remember I didn't really read much of anything).
I would also very much recommend keeping everything online. This way if you're at your family's place visiting, doing some school during work, on your break, or during your lunch, at the library, or at home you don't have to carry around a flash drive or keep your laptop with you wherever you go. Once you're actually ready to submit a paper you'll of course want to import it into the word processing program of choice and edit it accordingly and then submit the polished copy.
What I wished I'd done, but didn't pick up until the very end of the program was just putting all my screenshots from preassessments mainly on a google doc and then adding comments to what I thought were the answers or if I thought an answer was right to each screenshot. Prior to that I'd put all the screenshots on a word doc and because of the hastle of saving/uploading/downloading/editing/reuploading/etc I got lazy and just wouldn't work on the preassessments when I had the chance to do so at work and other places and trying to find the right answers because it was too much work to download it whereas once I started putting the preassessments on google (btw I still saved the preassessments on Onedrive from microsoft and on a separate word document on my local hard drive just in case google or some other thing crashed on me) I actually had motivation to do the work cause it was right there and it auto saves for you, which is excellent.
I used One note somewhat. It is free from microsoft and is nice when you save a change on your work computer's one note it'd be there for you on your home computer or laptop. I'd save some screen shot definitions, but didn't really use it as much as I thought I would because I'd just use the google docs.
For all of my classes that had a performance assessment except for data-driven decision making I did literally NO reading to prep for the assessment. All my assessments passed either on the first submission or the second one. The only one that didn't was the Data-Driven Decision Making one. It did pass the third time around. I'd just take the directions given in taskstream, add any text from the rubric and any supplemental documentation added in the communities, which for me was only the Managing Organizations and Leading People class and then space everything out. Using the communities, tasks, and rubrics and their recommended length for each section within the paper is excellent and provides all the outlining you'd ever need to do for your paper.
APA formatting.
This is much more daunting then it needs to be. I would highly recommend you use WGU's online library. For the MBA program you'll want to access the EBSCO library. If you're in there just use peer reviewed articles/books only for your papers. When you bring up the resource it will have an option to the right side that asks if you'd like to copy the citation for your paper and in which format. Just copy that! Then just follow the APA format for citing the work correctly inside of your paper.
As for length needed for citation you don't need to include this long complex citation. You can literally cite 2 words or a sentence or two and even meld it into your commentary and that is a sufficient amount of citing needing to be done.
I would recommend getting a second monitor as many before me have mentioned. It makes it much easier to study the preassessments on one screen and then have the book you're studying on the other screen.
For most of the classes I didn't do any reading at all. I'd just review the chapter summaries and the flashcards and if those didn't get me the answers to the preassessments then I'd do a little bit more digging, but otherwise I didn't read everything they recommend you read.
The webinars....eh. Take em or leave em, but I left them. I listened to the recorded one for the very first class, which was a waste of time since it just copied the slides put up for the course anyways. I also went to the very last class webinar, which also wasn't anything too special, but is good to go to to show teamwork within your group and there were tidbits here and there that helped with the simulation.
I only reached out to the course mentors 4 times total. Twice by phone and twice via email to answer some basic questions. They were somewhat slow via email at times, but knew the answer and so I'd recommend only calling them if you're not afraid of doing that.
I didn't use the writing center once or any external grammar/spell checking site and my papers turned out fine. They want the papers to be readable, but if you've received your bachelors and gone through traditional schooling simple proof reading ought to be enough for your papers. Overkill would be to read your papers out loud as that often highlights weirdly structured sentences and lines of thought.
Honestly I wouldn't read any of the class/community questions or anything. The complaints are distracting and the questions being asked are 99% likely not to be answering what you need an answer to and so instead just reach out directly to the course mentors instead of sifting through the excess that is in the forums. I think generally we just drift into social media mode and binge read forums because it soothes us even though generally they don't provide any real value/substance that helps you progress in the program (or in life in general on regular social media if I'm being honest).
So to recap here is how long 87 days is.
Date difference from Jul 29, 2014 to Oct 24, 2014
The total number of days between Tuesday, July 29th, 2014 and Friday, October 24th, 2014 is 87 days.
This is equal to 2 months and 25 days.
This does not include the end date, so it's accurate if you're measuring your age in days, or the total days between the start and end date. But if you want the duration of an event that includes both the starting date and the ending date, then it would actually be 88 days.
If you're counting workdays or weekends, there are 63 weekdays and 24 weekend days.
If you include the end date of Oct 24, 2014 which is a Friday, then there would be 64 weekdays and 24 weekend days including both the starting Tuesday and the ending Friday.
87 days is equal to 12 weeks and 3 days.
The total time span from 2014-07-29 to 2014-10-24 is 2,088 hours.
This is equivalent to 125,280 minutes.
You can also convert 87 days to 7,516,800 seconds.
87 days...shooo. Now the easy part is done and now I just need to get a job in this crap economy. I'm gonna need to be a nazi about my time like I was during my program as it pertains to applying to a new gig. I figure that I'm missing out on anywhere from $50-$70 everyday that I don't have a better paying job.
As soon as I get one I'll have to do an update.
UPDATE 3/17/17
Happy St Patricks Day! (for anyone who is into that ;) And yes i did forget to wear green today.)
Soooo...I didn't do an update since I got the new job, but here is the update nonetheless.
After I finished the MBA I didn't go full bore into applying for jobs for a couple weeks. When I did though I applied to just over a hundred that were mba/finance related. My wife and I co-did it and we kept track of postings we applied to on a spreadsheet hence why I know it was over a 100. The bad news...I only got a call or two just to verify I'd applied and if I was interested if they were interested. Duh of course I am that's why I applied. Needless to say blindly applying to jobs without networking or having more relevant experience got me nowhere.
About the same time as applying though I was considering moving into tech via doing a coding bootcamp as coding was something I'd dabbled in a couple years earlier just doing free coding stuff around the web on teamtreehouse.com and codeacademy.com. Before doing a coding bootcamp though (they're more expensive then even my mba was at 4.5k vs 2.5k after receiving the tax credit for higher education) I called a friend/mentor who is/was a venture capitalist to get his opinion. I didn't know at the time, but he and his comrades invest in tech companies and he thought it'd be a really good idea for me to do a coding bootcamp and then to couple my MBA with it to get into a product manager role. So with that nudge I interviewed several bootcamps and ended up going with devmountain, which is locally based here in salt lake city.
Between finishing the mba and the coding bootcamp I came across a much better way to get jobs through networking with...linkedin. I can be shy and this way of networking is much better for me. It is very simple. Sign up for all the job alerts you want on monster, careerbuilder, resumerabbit, indeed, glassdoor, linkedin, your local classifieds, etc, but before you just go guns a blazing and apply please do yourself and the world a favor and FIRST go on linkedin (this is all predicated on you smartly having one and two maintaining/growing your connections) and see who in your connections one either works there or two knows someone who works there. Now of course not everybody who is a connection really knows everybody that is a connection (just look at your own IG, Twitter, FB, etc friends list), BUT...this is WAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYY better than just blind applying. And what I mean by way better is you simply send the person a simple message, "Hey I saw you work at XYZ company or you know (fill in the hr person/hiring managers name with whom this person is a connection with) and I was thinking about applying to XYZ position. I thought I'd do the smart thing though before just blindly applying and first see if I knew anyone who worked there or knew anyone that knew anyone that worked and saw that you do or you know XYZ person who does and was wondering how you'd recommend I proceed or who I should talk to or if you could just introduce them to me?" Something to that effect will yield you waaaaaaaaaay better results. After doing it this way I got way more calls, interviews, and jobs. Please don't blind apply unless there is simply no connection at all on linkedin and even then that is questionable because you can always ask to be a contact with someone who works where you want to and then you can apply after you're connections. So with that rant now done we can move on...
So where did I land after England Logistics? Insidesales.com as a web developer. I started there I think May of 2015. And guess what? My sister worked there and that was my main foot in the door plus there was already someone who was in that department that had done devmountain as well (NETWORKING....please don't ignore it...linkedin is your friend...you are getting very sleepy...it is almost the weekend........unless you're reading this mid week then...you're screwed).
So at EL I was making about 45k/year. I landed at IS.com making 50k/year. I didn't know till being at IS.com for a while that A LOT of weight was put on my having my MBA getting into the company. They very much valued the higher education within the company. They had a bunch of phd dudes doing big data and AI stuff and the founder has his masters in philosophy etc etc. So within 6-ish months of finishing my MBA it paid for itself via a new job with an ROI of 200%.
I actually didn't stay very long at IS.com because the workload was so low that it drove me crazy. A girl I sat next too would just sit at her computer almost all day everyday with a minimized screen of youtube playing videos of video games. She's since moved on as well to another department and I imagine is not watching so much youtube these days, but I could be wrong.
I was only at is.com for about 5 months when I landed another job through, gasp, networking. I'd told my mom that I wasn't really engaged in my job, but I wanted to keep learning and growing and she'd mentioned that to a friend who worked in another tech company and I landed there at 60k/year starting in October of 2015.
So now at this point we're up from 45k/yr to 60k/yr in less than a year, or based on my 2.5k MBA investment a 600% return on investment.
Through my own lack of experience and not a great fit I moved on from that last job to the one where I am now in January 2017 at 64k/yr plus full health insurance paid for and i get to work from home twice a week, or now up to about 700% roi on my wgu tuition investment.
What's more important I think to tell people who are more interested in the business/entrepreneurial side of their mba...in my opinion...it is only mildly preparatory to working on a real business.
As I'd mentioned that my previous job wasn't a great fit I was feeling super restless and under valued and wanted to capture more of the value I knew I could bring to a venture. This is in part due to my nature, but also blasting myself with content from sites/podcasts like eventualmillionaire.com, foreverjobless.com, and affordanything.com. One podcast in particular was about a painter who almost shut down his business after getting punched in the face and funds drying up due to not being online in an online age and losing his market share to those that were online and just using better practices in general and I thought to myself that ya I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but certainly i'm not so clueless as to get punched in the face running a business and if that guy turned it around in a few short years and was now a millionaire, then surely I could do it.
So since last summer I've partnered up with my father in law running his painting business and we've grown it over 60% last year in the 4 months we were involved and this year we should easily double last year's growth. Bottom line for my portion after expenses I'm up another $420/month there, which is great and I think at least in part is due to my experience/education I got from my MBA experience at WGU with building teams, improving processes, better/more marketing, ethical leadership and on and on.
So I guess if the projection from regular income and side hustle is annualized i'm closer to 70k/year vs 45k when I just finished my mba 2.5 years ago. Now I know that I'm still under performing in my opinion and where I want to be, at the same time I do acknowledge that Utah has a highly educated work force, driving down the cost of hiring an mba, but on the flip side it also has a lower cost of living compared to other parts of the country so my money goes further (I'm the only income provider in my house and my wife stays at home with our two kids), i.e. last year we bought a house, and currently don't have any debt aside from interest free payments on furniture we could pay off, and a little bit on a car we owe, which we could also pay off. We did finish some electrical that we're going to use a line of credit to pay on, but again we could also pay that off if we wanted, but would prefer to keep more cash in case we need it.
So morale of the story...education is guuud. Real knowledge AND SKILLS are what will result in you getting the job or business you want. A MBA is a good foundation, but continuing to improve and get more knowledge and skills will ultimately lead you (and me) to earning more via the additional value/capabilities we bring to the workforce/business place. And if you've read this far you're likely the "get more skills/knowledge" type so good on you. You're heading in the right direction even if you aren't doing wgu or a coding bootcamp or even any traditional school.
Let me know if you have any other questions and I'll have to do another update once the painting business has become my full time gig!
Cheers (st patty's day)
Update:
As of a week ago I started full time into the painting business. There is still so much to get done and I may even go on my own and start another one so I can capture more of the profit for jobs I bring into the company and also make it more profitable.
I also removed the google drive content and link since I needed the space on my drive for the business so that isn't available anymore. Keep up the good work and just be persistent and you'll do well in the program and it'll happen fast for you!
Brock - 1/30/18
UPDATE 3/11/19
So I actually did do the painting business full time for about 6 months. I also did end up starting my own, Enterprise Painters, and it is still chugging along. I got it up and running, but until we scale it up it won't be able to support the financial commitments we currently have. My mom is working in the business and we've got a handful of painters. Last year we did over $300,000 in revenue and we backed out of a big contract valued at $414,000 cause the numbers in the ended up being too tight.
As I dived back into looking for a job last summer we started flipping houses and we'll be continuing doing that going forward since we're now having contractors do all the work and we can still make a profit on them.
I did land a job after further certifications earned in becoming a scrum master and product owner. Base pay is pretty good at $87,500 with the potential for a 7% bonus split paid out twice a year for a current max of around $93,000. Add in benefits and HSA matching and I'm well over $100,000/year in 'pay' so that is fun, but really flipping houses and the painting business income comfortably put us over $100,000/year. With those funds we're paying off all of our debt and we're starting to learn about investing in multifamily real estate, i.e. apartment investing, which should really change how things go for us going forward financially. I'm excited about it and will possibly update here if we get into it.
UPDATE 1/2/24
I just shared this post with a friend and thought I might as well do an update.
Since landing that previous job/update I have since been laid off from that job along with three others for a total of four layoffs since march 3rd of 2020. My pay went from that base of 87.5k in 2018 (layoff) to 75k in 2020 (left for career growth/compensation bump) to 95k in 2020 (layoff) to 110k in 2021-2022 then with a cost of living increase to 114k (layoff), then 150k in 2022-2023 (layoff). I'm currently working as a senior product owner for a startup making $130,000/year with full health insurance benefits paid for by the company along with unlimited pto. It'll be a hybrid position after I finish working the first couple months.
We did end up flipping 5 houses all profitably thankfully. We did stop once the fed started raising interest rates as I wasn't sure what would happen to housing prices because of that.
I would say in conjunction with my mba, continuing to get certifications relevant to my field along with paying for professional resume writing and what not has enabled to survive the layoffs and find work relatively quickly and so I hope this encourages you and ya that is about it. Till the next update!
