BetterLearningBetterEarning™ | Get Better Work & Income - Teach Yourself Higher Paying Skills

Receiving a degree doesn’t mean you’ve received an education. While a degree’s essential for some professions, the paper means little or nothing for other careers. How can you succeed and make good money without a degree? Well, you still have to get an education; just get it somewhere else.

When I finished college and moved to Denver, I thought I’d have a great job within a few weeks. I had solid work experience accrued throughout my college years and a respectable, non-technical degree in my pocket. But those two weeks turned into four full months before I landed my first job in the training industry.

Those four months without work took a terrible toll. I didn’t sleep soundly for more than a few hours each night. Stress and worry tear down immunity quickly. I got so sick with the flu I think I might have died. The few thousand dollars we had saved quickly evaporated and my wife was pregnant with our first child – no health insurance!

When I was unemployed a few years ago, a job digging ditches for $2 an hour would have qualified as a good job. I was lucky and got what I thought was a good job. It had a salary, some health insurance benefits, and a few days of paid vacation each year. Within a year or two, the good job somehow turned into a crappy job. So I looked elsewhere for a better job and got it. Would I consider my position now to be a good job? I plead the fifth. (By the way, how ya doin’ boss?)

What knowledge, skill or ability will be your next cash cow? Answering that question goes hand-in-hand with predicting the next big trend. It’s like speculating about high earning stocks but focusing on your own personal development instead. What will the next cutting-edge, high paying skill be?

I work at a large company’s headquarters in the HR department and sit right next to our corporate (and executive) recruiters. What I’ve learned about how jobs are actually awarded conflicts with what many job coaches advise people to do. Of course, this is how it happens at one big company, but I’ve also gleaned some myth-debunking information from working for an even larger company before this one.

If you’ve survived layoffs at your company then you’re one of the lucky ones who’ve inherited the workloads of two or three people. If you’re unemployed and received a job offer, then you’re also trying to forget that the salary’s only a fraction of what you used to make. If you’ve recently started a business then you now seriously doubt the mantra, “If you build it, they will come!” Just remember that as you consume a steady diet of these circumstances, the food is entirely organic and high in protein.

Seven hours yesterday on Facebook? SEVEN WHOLE HOURS?!? I’m all for signing in for a few minutes every other day to see what people are doing and give an update myself, but seven hours? What is it that you do for that much time? Mafia Wars? What the heck is that? What’s Fishville, some sort of job search service? No? Another Game? You know what I could do if I had an extra seven hours to burn?

Do you think it’s suspicious that the U.S. Department of Labor recommends which jobs will be most promising in the future? Does that organization know those things, or, is government hoping to steer future workers into roles they want filled? A surplus of qualified workers in a given industry drives labor costs down for these necessary but often unglamorous positions. If we’re considering new careers, we must realize many “good jobs” only pay the market rate and rarely offer opportunities for significant raises.

Have you ever wondered what the answers are to any of these questions:

• What do I need to do to get a better job? A promotion? Better income?
• Why do some people with degrees fail to get high paying jobs?
• How do some people with little or no formal education do so well financially?
• How do successful entrepreneurs learn to start and maintain their own businesses?
• Can I get a great career without spending lots of time and money for college?
• Why are some of the most successful people in history those who taught themselves?

It was a hard decision for me too. I changed my mind several times in favor of and against spending the time and money to complete a degree. What’s making the decision difficult for you?

I’m sorry – I won’t make the decision for you – but detailing my own experience may help you better consider your own options. The first thing you need to do is to make a long term decision about what your career goal is. College may or may not be a necessary step in achieving that goal, so you must determine direction first and then see if college is an appropriate step on that path or not.

A recent Forbes article highlights which types of jobs continue to offer increasing compensation despite the recession. They break the trend of decreasing salaries, bonuses, and suspended 401K matches because demand is high but qualified candidates are scarce. Interested? All of these positions listed in the article have one thing in common.

All of the jobs listed in this Forbes report require specialized education, training and/or certification. For the most part you must earn a bachelor's degree to qualify. Some of the positions don't require a four-year degree but do expect certifications to perform the work. Out of the fifteen positions listed, the highest paying include:

Did you receive effective career or job hunting guidance in high school? Any in college? Sure, we had to complete a resume for a course or two, and teachers often repeated the mantra to get good grades and go to college so you could get a good job. But anything I learned back then (not much) doesn't apply to today's job market and economy. Do you still look through classified ads in newspapers for open positions? How many hours have you spent on job boards like monster.com, careerbuilder.com or even indeed.com - the site that can search all the job sites at once? The rules have changed and you need to know what they are. While I was unemployed immediately after completing college, someone referred me to a book that effectively demystified the new job market and got me on track to getting great job offers.

The book recommended to me, and that I recommend to you is Richard Bolles "What Color is Your Parachute?" - now available in an updated 2009 edition. I'm not going to summarize the entire book here, just discuss some of the points that impressed me. If you or someone you know is out-of-work or desperately seeking a career change, buy the book. Really. I don't recommend things on this site that I don't really believe in.

What relationship is there between how much you know, how fast you can learn, and how much money you make? It’s said, “Learning opens doors to economic opportunity.” What skills and knowledge provide your income, and how have you acquired them?

When so much of our commerce consists of the exchange of information, hierarchies for based on individual knowledge and abilities to learn. Why does an executive make $500,000 a year while a custodian at the same company brings in $25,000. (See where your salary stacks up on payscale.com)

Does a degree really pay? Educators often refer to the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics that show a correlation between education level and income. The Bureau has also compared educational attainment to unemployment rates in 2008. If you have not seen these numbers or don’t feel inclined to follow that link, here’s the graphic that summarizes the data: