• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

The Professor Is In

Guidance for all things PhD: Graduate School, Job Market and Careers

  • Home
  • Courses & Events
    • How To …
    • The Art of the Academic Cover Letter
    • The Art of the Article
    • Unstuck: The Art of Productivity
    • On Demand Courses
    • Upcoming Live Webinars
    • Free Productivity Webinars
    • Gift Certificates
  • Personalized Job Help
    • Document Editing
    • Quick Reviews
    • Specials
    • Interview Prep
    • Personal Negotiating Assistance
    • One on One Career Consults
    • Testimonials
    • Interview Testimonials
    • Graduate School Application Assistance
  • Productivity
  • Coaching
    • Productivity Coaching
    • Private Coaching
    • Pre-Tenure Coaching Group
    • Leaving Academia Coaching Group
  • The Professor Is Out
    • It’s OK to Quit
    • Our Art of Leaving Program
    • Prof Is OUT Services
    • Our Prof Is OUT Team
    • Prof is OUT Client Testimonials
    • Ex-Academics: A TPIO Support Community
  • Workshops
  • Blog

Certifications You Can Use for Post-Ac Employment – Robert Oprisko (3 of 3)

By Karen Kelsky | September 21, 2015

by Robert Oprisko

Dr. Robert Oprisko

One of the largest hurdles that a non-STEM Ph.D. will face moving into the Post-Ac environment is perception, both their own and others of who they are and what they do.  Successful transition into a non-academic environment is assisted by practical production of post-academic passion and performance.  In today’s white-collar service economy, one of the very best ways to prepare for this transition is to acquire a credential or two that emphasizes your skill-set and is recognized across disciplines:  elite certifications.  My favorite one-two punch for all post-ac job seekers is to become LEAN and Agile.

LEAN certification is used in business analytics to reduce waste and increase efficiency in processes.  For anyone who holds an analytic mind, increasing your skill-set by getting the premier LEAN cert, Six Sigma Black Belt, will pay dividends.  LEAN methodologies follow systems of empirical review to control process improvement.  Often these process improvements utilize the Deming Cycle, or a revision of it, including Six Sigma’s and Motorola’s.  Effectively, these methodologies present processes as problems and the task of the quality manager or quality analyst is to use statistical tools to measure the impact of alterations to the process.

First and foremost, there are a number of credentialing bodies because there is no overarching certifying body, so purchase with care.  If you’re still in graduate school, there is a good chance that a class (likely housed within either the business or management school) will be designed around Six Sigma and may result in certification.  Perhaps the best known credential can be earned through the American Society of Quality, which helpfully provides deep discounts to students and requires passing an exam.  If you have no familiarity, you can enter into Six Sigma with the lower certifications before progressing to the Black Belt level.  This progression can be helpful for improving your mastery of the processes as you gain Post-Ac experience.

Project management is a growing sector of the economy and is moving out of technical fields, such as software development, into other areas, including higher education.  The most sought after certifications are the Project Management Professional (PMP) and the Certified Scrum Professional (CSP); the former is used primarily for static teams while the latter is essential for teams that shift and change based upon the needs of the project, hence it is Agile.  The Project Management Institute issues PMP certifications while CSP certifications are provided by the Scrum Alliance.

Similar to Six Sigma, project management certifications have accessible points of entry, with the Certified Associate in Project Management and the Certified Scrum Master available for individuals to formalize their interest in project management and to provide mastery of the terms of art needed to succeed within the field.  Agile methodologies, such as Scrum, are premised on versatility and translate more readily into non-technical fields and environments.

I’ve seen both LEAN and Agile methods employed within universities to manage ad hoc projects and it’s becoming a norm within non-profits and academic publishing, including for e-journal publishing.  My experience with E-International Relations (E-IR) has emphasized both over the past year.  Using teams of three to seven academics, E-IR has been able to move into academic publishing of open-access textbooks, monographs, and edited volumes, has been selected to start a peer-reviewed journal of record for the International Association of Political Science Students, and has increased its site traffic and income substantially.  Utilizing LEAN principles, E-IR is able to accomplish all of this at less than 10% of the cost incurred by traditional publishing houses.

Although no credential can guarantee success or employment (if it did, you’d already have a tenure-track position and wouldn’t be reading this post), elite certifications can provide an effective means of transitioning from academe to industry.  As valued credentials, they may also increase your potential salary range.  Within higher education administration (Alt-Ac paths) there are a number of credentials available based upon specialty.  The only limiting factors are interest and cost.  It may be worthwhile to earmark the money you would have spent going to an academic conference hedging your bet and credentialing yourself for Plan B.

Similar Posts:

  • EnGendering Confidence: Part 2 – Cardozo
  • Working With a Developmental Editor (A Guest Post)
  • Breaking Into Government: The Pathways Program – Fanetti 1
  • #Dispatches: How Many Jobs In Your Field & What Will You Do? (Part II)
  • Always Have a Side Hustle, and Other Lessons I Learned from Academia – WOC Guest Post

Filed Under: Post-Ac Free-Lancing and Small Business, Post-Ac Job Search, Quitting--An Excellent Option, Resumes & Postac Docs

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Philip says

    September 27, 2015 at 7:22 pm

    Perhaps we’re referring to different subsets of industry, but my experience and understanding of the software and technical consulting fields is that credentials are worth much less than people think. However, this is an important sentence: “I’ve seen both LEAN and Agile methods employed within universities to manage ad hoc projects and it’s becoming a norm within non-profits and academic publishing, including for e-journal publishing.”

    Learning about Lean or Agile and then gaining experience deploying it would be a huge advantage in the labor market. But it’s the experience that makes this combination so powerful, not the credential.

    Again, other industries may differ, or the market may have changed since I’ve been out of it.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Buy My Book!

4.8 stars on Amazon!

The_Professor_Is_In.indd

Get Immediate Help

In addition to our blog and book, we have upcoming live webinars, pre-recorded webinars and other programs that you can get started on right away:

The Art of the Academic Cover Letter
The Art of the Article
Unstuck: The Art of Productivity
Quick Reviews
Free Productivity Webinars

Categories

  • #MeTooPhD
  • Academic Job Search
    • How To Choose and Manage Recommenders
    • How to Interview
    • How To Write Academic Job Cover Letters
    • How To Write CVs
    • Landing Your Tenure Track Job
    • Major Job Market Mistakes
    • Negotiating Offers
  • Adjunct Issues
  • Advising Advice
  • Alt-University Critique
  • Black Lives Matter
  • COVID19
  • Dispatches
  • Goodbye Ivory Towers
  • Graduate Student Concerns
    • Bad Advisors and Good Mentors
  • How To Do Conferences
  • How to Get Grants and Fellowships
  • International Perspectives
  • Intersectional Analyses
  • Makeup
  • Marginalized Voices
  • Mental Health and Academia
  • Ph.D. Poverty
  • Podcast
  • Post-Ac Free-Lancing and Small Business
  • Post-Ac Job Search
    • Careers Outside
  • Postdoc Issues
  • Productivity
    • Book Proposals and Contracts
    • Publishing Issues
    • Writing
  • Promote Yourself!
  • Quitting–An Excellent Option
  • Racism in the Academy
  • Rearview Mirror
  • Resumes & Postac Docs
  • Sexual Harassment in the Academy
  • Shame
  • Stop.Acting.Like.A.Grad.Student
  • Strategizing Your Success in Academia
  • Teaching and Research Statements
  • Teaching Demos
  • Teaching Portfolios
  • Tenure–How To Get It
    • How To Build Your Tenure File
    • Surviving Assistant Professorhood
  • The Campus Visit
  • Unstuck
  • Webinars
  • What Not To Wear
  • Women of Color in Academia
  • Work/Life Balance in Academia
  • Yes, You Can: Women in Academia
  • Your Second and Third Jobs

Footer

About Us

  • Who Is Dr. Karen?
  • Who Is On the TPII Team?
  • In The News
  • Contact Me
  • FAQs
    • Why Trust Me?
  • Testimonials

Community

  • #MeTooPhD
  • Peer Editing
  • PhD Debt Survey
  • Support Fund
  • I Help With Custody Cases for Academics

Copyright © 2023 The Professor Is In·

We Are Redefining Academic Community

That’s why we upgraded our private
Mighty Network.

We are committed to building a community with a focus on productivity support. Every day, in a dedicated space, we offer free coaching advice and encouragement. And the couple thousand people who have already joined are steadily building a supportive and interactive community devoted to that elusive idea of work-life balance.

Learn More

Get on Dr. Karen's Schedule

Get on my schedule to work on your tenure track job cover letter, CV, grant applications, book proposals, interview preparation, and more.  [si-contact-form form=’2′]