My wife has a JD from a top tier school, but has had a rough time in the legal job market (out of work for over a year). What she really likes is EEO work (studying employment law in school and interning at the EEOC). No business degree for her undergrad, though. She’s looked into MBA programs with an emphasis in HR work and HR masters. The problem is, we don’t live near them. We also don’t want to invest a lot of money as we feel the JD will always be her terminal degree, in a sense. We don’t want to add to her debt load in a significant way, especially since she is out of work, and we don’t want to get in a situation where we have to live apart so she can go to school. We’re really looking at eCornell’s certificate program. She’s leary about online stuff, and more so of certificates than straight out masters degrees. But, it is quite attractive for several reasons. It is reasonably cheap. It is short (around 6 months it would seem). Plus, it is connected in name to a good school. Under these circumstances, could this be just what she needs to segway out of being pegged as just a lawyer and into an HR/EEO specialist? She really likes the work, and wouldn’t mind focusing more on it with an educational boost, but it can be difficult to convince people you aren’t going to jump ship as soon as you can find an attorney position. So she’s also hoping the certificate will at least demonstrate a commitment to heading in this direction. Any thoughts would be appreciated. She’s very, very eager to return to work asap, though we are tied to our current, rural location due to my working situation as I just took a good job back in November of ‘08.
Her JD is actually better preparation for a job in EEO/compliance than would be a generalist HR degree and much better than an MBA.
The MBA is a generalist management degree and that’s not the career you’re explaining she’s interested in here. If she wants to do a master’s then an MA/MS in HR Management (not HR Development) would be the way to go.
She might also want to look into mediation. Good mediators are hard to come by in HR. Generalist ‘Employment Law’ positions will be more plentiful than will be specialist EEO positions.
Most HR people have no issue with “online stuff” – we train our own employees that way these days. The issue is the quality of the “online stuff” – not too many question Cornell’s quality or reputation. The eCornell certificates are suitable for what she wants to do if she’s wanting to learn general HR. Know too – HR is the social science of business. We don’t usually have an undergrad in business or HR (though some do) – most have non-degree training in the field or moved in from OJT.
As an EEO specialist, she’ll be applying at places that are fairly large and usually have top-notch HR managers. The good HR managers know all about what eCornell is and isn’t. They also know that a good JD in EEO or Labor Relations is golden.
She might benefit by joining SHRM http://www.shrm.org/Pages/default.aspx and engaging in some networking.
Consider too: if you’re tied to a rural location, is there an employer there large enough to specialize their HR functions? EEO as a full-time specialist is among the last HR staffers we add. She might benefit by that eCornell certificate and then marketing herself as an HR Generalist (that happens to have a JD).
She could always take the route that I did when I couldn’t find a specialist position with a single employer – she’s well qualified by virtue of that JD for compliance consulting. She might consider her own practice as an HR consultant and just spread “the job” around a bunch of “employers”.
Good luck – do look at SHRM for some more ideas. And don’t worry about the utility of an eCornell certificate.