NRR; When does a college degree 'expire'?

I graduated grad school in 2009 and until recently was out of the work force caring for a sick family member. I don't know when (if?) a degree "expires," but I hope it isn't in 2 years!

Seems like OP has two separate but related questions:

How much does a prospective employer care if in the time since you finished your degree you haven't had a solid, full-time job in a related field?

and

How quickly can someone's degree appear to be "outdated" to a prospective employer?

Your degree's never going to expire, and I'm not going to bother with the first part, but the second part's pretty interesting. And the answer depends upon two things: how closely the prospective job is related to the field in which you studied, and how quickly things change in that field. Were your degree in English Literature and you were applying for a position in a publishing house, no worries. If your degree's in a highly technical field in which innovation and r&d change the face of the discipline quickly and you've been completely out in left field for two years...that's not so good!

As long as you -have- a degree, and you say it's from a decent school, that will always be an asset. The vast majority of us are not directly using what we learned in our BA/BS at work - I believe there is another recent letsrun thread on this. Of course, they won't tell you that in school, because their focus is on the (somewhat artificial) academic experience, and not on the real world. Many of your professors have probably never had a real job - outside of academia - in their lives.

Read AskTheHeadhunter.com for a great approach to job hunting. If you have the slightest entrepreneurial interest, also read Tim Ferris's _Four Hour Work Week_.

Good luck. You'll do just fine.

just say no wrote:

As long as you -have- a degree, and you say it's from a decent school, that will always be an asset. The vast majority of us are not directly using what we learned in our BA/BS at work - I believe there is another recent letsrun thread on this. Of course, they won't tell you that in school, because their focus is on the (somewhat artificial) academic experience, and not on the real world. Many of your professors have probably never had a real job - outside of academia - in their lives.

Read AskTheHeadhunter.com for a great approach to job hunting. If you have the slightest entrepreneurial interest, also read Tim Ferris's _Four Hour Work Week_.

Good luck. You'll do just fine.

As long as you -have- a degree, and you say it's from a decent school

Similar to that, yes, I have. And I think you will be just fine.

i finished my MS in civil in May 2009 and was unable to find work due to the economy. I worked for Americorps for a year before starting a job this past September 2010. Most people didn't seem to notice the gap year, or didn't care, or were interested in what i had done but didn't seem to view it as neither an asset nor a problem.

I do understand where you're coming from with feeling like you "forgot" everything you learned in school. I forgot a ton of stuff, but after 5 months back working, my mind is back in the zone. Have you taken the FE? If not, start studying and it it will help things to come back to you, maybe

You have 90 days after graduating college to get a job in your field, otherwise your degree expires and you have to go back and earn one again.

It will take a lot longer than 2 years for pretty much every field. I don't think most people are considered to be unemployable by major corporations for at least 3-5 years unless they were doing stuff that was unexplainably stupid during that time... but if they are too dumb to not figure out some creative lie about what they were doing, they are probably too dumb to be employed anyway.

target. wrote:

Similar to that, yes, I have. And I think you will be just fine.

i finished my MS in civil in May 2009 and was unable to find work due to the economy. I worked for Americorps for a year before starting a job this past September 2010. Most people didn't seem to notice the gap year, or didn't care, or were interested in what i had done but didn't seem to view it as neither an asset nor a problem.

I do understand where you're coming from with feeling like you "forgot" everything you learned in school. I forgot a ton of stuff, but after 5 months back working, my mind is back in the zone. Have you taken the FE? If not, start studying and it it will help things to come back to you, maybe

Working for Americorp isn't considered a gap. That's a lot different (and better to prospective employers) than just not having a job or drifting between part time jobs. For most companies, that actually adds to your resume.

In other words, that's a much different situation than the OP's.

Bumping this back up.

I have never taken the FE.

I guess the real issue I am trying to get at here is how does being long term unemployed look coming straight out of school?

It seems that it was easier to bum around for a two or three years after school and get away with it in years past.

lie about what you were doing. 2-3 years is a long time, though.