Crash courses

Boost your marketability

While a new career makes sense for some people, you needn’t go for dramatic change to strengthen your recession armor. Courses and degrees that help you learn new skills or keep up with industry trends make you a better job candidate. They also show your current employer you mean business. “In the end, if the economy stays weak, the key to it is, why should your employer want you more than someone else?” says Michael Oberstein, chair of the Finance Department, Division of Business Programs at NYU-SCPS. Furthering your education, he says, shows everyone you’re a “career builder” who is staying on top of the trends in your field.

Certificate programs are a valuable way to boost your marketability without the investment of pursuing a degree. Oberstein points to several certificate programs at NYU-SCPS that can be a boon to people in finance—an industry that, with the collapse of Bear Stearns, became the poster child of economic bad times.

Oberstein says there are still plenty of jobs for financial professionals with technical skills, in areas like asset management and portfolio management. Certificate programs, including ones in financial risk management, international business and finance, and financial planning, can help people who want to hone their abilities in money management. Pace also offers financial planning among its many business-related certificate programs. Both schools’ programs prepare graduates for the exam for national certification as a financial planner—a niche that is growing as baby boomers retire, and that only gets stronger during recession, as we all search for a safe place to put our money.

Information technology is an area that continues to thrive and evolve. With IT now the backbone of every business seeking to go paperless, jobs are plentiful, says Sunil Kumar, dean of the graduate school at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU (formerly Polytechnic University; 212-547-7030, poly.edu). But education is key to staying current and to standing out from the pack. Here’s where certificate programs come in again; NYU-Poly, for example, has a five-course certificate in cybersecurity. This is a hot area, Kumar says, because as companies increasingly go online, there is already high demand for people who can keep electronic information safe.

You might find, however, that a degree program is the best way to move up and find more security. While there is certainly a demand for “nuts-and-bolts, bits-and-bytes” jobs, opportunities are also growing for managers, says Kumar. NYU-Poly’s programs include an executive master’s degree in technology management and, new this year, an M.B.A. program that focuses on all aspects of running an IT business. Likewise, Columbia offers an executive M.S. in technology management, which director Arthur Langer says is “designed for those who want to take the leap from a top technician to the executive suite.” Mid-level IT people, he explains, hit a point where pay and upward mobility stagnate, whereas management is “much more open”—not to mention higher paying. For example, the average national salary for a chief information officer has been steadily rising in recent years, to more than $211,000 in 2008. If you’re not ready to dive into a degree program just yet, you can also simply explore the option; NYU has a new two-session course this fall dubbed “Moving into Management for IT Professionals.”

Beyond specialized certificates and degrees, you can also look to more-general courses in areas like business and communications to enhance your workplace appeal. “Soft skills,” like sharp writing and public speaking abilities, can make you less dispensable when downsizing decisions are being made, says NYU’s Westerman—and you’ll take those skills with you to any job.Want to stand out at work but you’re more of the wallflower type? NYU career management has “Self-Promotion for Introverts,” while the New School has “The Confidence Course” and “Speaking to Motivate” among its general business offerings.

Familiarity with a foreign language is also an asset in many fields. In business, particularly finance, emerging markets in Latin America, China and India mean that learning Spanish, Chinese or Hindi could give a competitive edge, according to Westerman. Arabic is another “marketable language” in fields ranging from international relations to journalism.