By Beth Tripmacher (LTXD) 

Many students who start one of the programs in ECT have returned to school to get their graduate degree to transition to a new career. I spoke to a few of these current students and ECT alumni to hear what is exciting about a career transition, the drawbacks it can bring, and - most importantly - advice they have for other students along the same path.

Many of the students I spoke to felt that the promise of doing work they love makes this career transition exciting. 

Lindsey Du, a LXTD student intending to move to product design after a background in applied math and psychology, said, “I think the most exciting thing is that this field I know for sure is the field I love. So…I have a positive mindset compared to my previous experience…. I have the motivation.” 

Maria Seo, a LXTD alumni now working as a user experience designer after being in tax accounting, agreed: “The most exciting part was I didn't have to do the tax work anymore…. There is…no redundant work, every product is super different, very unique, and I like the aspect of live problem solving all the time.” 

Anita Ke, a full-time LTXD student moving from a career in illustration to UX/UI agreed: “I think the most exciting thing for me, I would say, whenever I finish the project with a team or just by myself, is the sense of achievement when it's done. I feel like I'm really loving that right now, because I think it's a really huge motivation for me.”

For other students, it’s the process of getting the degree itself. For Anjila Lim, who moved to NYC from Singapore to join the G4L program after several years in the music industry, “the exciting thing is that it's new, and a huge part of that is the fact that…I am in a place away from home that I've always wanted to be in. Being able to be in this space alone is really huge thing, and just the prospects for what's to come is at least really exciting.” 

For Lauren Lutz-Coleman, a graduate of the program who is now a Director of Education for an EdTech start-up after being a middle-school teacher, the excitement comes from the broad exposure that a degree through ECT can bring: “I think the most exciting thing is just being able to build out a more well-rounded set of strengths.” She found herself pursuing opportunities she was never open to before. “Being able to take my K-12 background and…position it to say like, ‘Hey, now, I know quite a bit about gamification’ and ‘Now I know quite a bit about adult learning’” has, in a way, “future-proofed” her career. “That's been what's been most exciting for me about the career shift…. In the event that I find myself searching again, I think the number of things that I'd be able to move into would be incredibly beneficial.”

For all the excitement, moving into a new career path has its drawbacks. The competitive market came up for both current students and alumni. 

Lindsey said, “[F]or the product roles, lots of companies are only looking for MBA titles. But we are Master of Arts. So this is a hard part.”

Anita agreed: “I think the hardest thing is that you will always see people that are more experienced. You even are maybe the same age. Or in the same program. Because they have more experience than you, you might feel like, oh, am I able to step into this industry? Because there's so much more people there more advanced than me.”

These career transitioners had a lot of advice to share to help with this journey. To start, they recommended doing research and having a clear view of the direction you’d like to move into. 

Anita suggested focusing on an area that might align with your previous experience. As she thought about going into the UX field, where someone could focus on UI or user research, she thought about how her experience could help her future career path. “For example, I'm an illustrator, so I know that I'll have some advantages when I step into the UI field…[knowing] that would sort of help you to shape your future career path or the future ways you wanted to go.”

Anjila suggests researching to understand what a new career path would look like. “I feel like we always come into things with this like maybe a slightly naive sense of what it could be…. Doing the proper research and having the understanding of what it's gonna come with - the good and the bad - I think, help people make better decisions in terms of what to change to.”

Internships are also a great way to test out a career path. Lindsay and Maria suggest doing an internship through the ECT program. Maria said, “I found that if I apply for external…opportunities the pool is much bigger because I have to compete with so many people from different schools.”

Everyone agreed that networking was a vital aspect of any career transition - and can be intimidating and challenging to know where to begin. The easiest way to start is within NYU. Lindsey said, “I go to the department events, and also I go to the big ALT Alumni events [and the] Wassermen Center. I schedule meetings with career coaches and go to those networking workshops. And then I just met lots of people, and those people recommend [to] me some other events, or maybe introduce me to other people. That's how I expand my network.”

Maria recommended talking to alumni from our program. “I actually got resume coaching from one of our alumni, and that was very helpful, and I also asked her to review my portfolio, and she was excellent…. Without this program, I'm sure it's hard to meet someone who's working in the field and truly understands what I’m going through. , But because she's from the program, she kind of understood me, because she went through a similar path.” 

Maria also recommended ECT’s Mentorship program, where current students get paired with experienced alumni and PhD students for an extended period to help students further their goals. “Mind to Mind” is another alumni-run program whose goal is to provide ad hoc support  - a one-time resume review or interview practice, for example - to current ECT students by connecting them with experienced ECT alumni via virtual meetings. Maria also recommended taking classes from other departments to expand your network and your view of different career paths. 

And finally, try to keep a positive mindset. Everyone acknowledged the difficult job market and the long process that can come with making a career switch, but, as Lindsey said, “it's really easy to get negative about all those things. So I would suggest that just make sure you are going into a field that you really love, so that you have the internal motivation to keep everything forward.” Anita echoed Lindsey: “Don't think too much. Just do it, because even though you see so many people [you think] that are better than you.” 

Lauren focused on keeping the right mindset around applying for jobs: “[A]pply to anything, and never self-select yourself out.” Seeing her husband’s experience, where he applied to many more jobs and had a more significant rate of return, “completely changed my mindset in terms of what you position yourself for. It's a numbers game in some ways, too…. Now that I've started hiring for some roles, [I know] you don't always get the perfect applicant. You're then looking at a couple of people where you're like, okay, the three contenders we have are all missing something. We're going to have to upskill them once they're here with our company, or we're going to have to see if we can maybe offload some of the responsibilities to a different team member…. And then, when you see that, and you're like, if that were me, I wouldn't have even applied…. Send your name in often and frequently.”