I'm worried my specialist Masters has boxed me in career wise

BigBouncyBall

as per title really.

I graduated in September with a masters degree in computer animation, but have found no work since. I'm now worried that the degree has really narrowed my options career wise - how can I apply for anything else even IT/tech related with such a specialised degree?

If i were to remove it from my CV how would I explain that to an employer, such a gap would be questioned.

If i leave it on any job application not related to my degree would be seen as someone who wasn't really interested in XYZ and would move on when he got bored etc.


Major Catch-22.

This isn't true. I'm just looking for any decent full time job with career prospects right now. I can't afford to retrain in anything else and really just want to get on with a steady job whatever it is. I've become so disheartened and demoralised with the animation industry and it's selfishness (everyone really is out for themselves) that I don't really care about finding work in it anymore! lol. sort of.

dmg24

What type of work are you applying for?

Have you asked for feedback on your applications?

Voyager2002

Plenty of people change direction; plenty of people complete a Master's degree that they do not use later.

You could present this degree on your CV as a fairly generic course related to computing, and/or could include a couple of sentences on your letters of application stating that you became disillusioned with the field but stuck at the degree anyway, and now hope to use some of the skills it taught you in a different context. The ability to stick at something that no longer interests you and see it through to a successful conclusion (ie getting a degree even though you don't want to work in the field) is something that would interest virtually all employers.

BigBouncyBall

dmg24 wrote: »

What type of work are you applying for?

Have you asked for feedback on your applications?

Yeh i've got feedback and things, nice feedback. But it's just such a small industry and you can't keep applying to places every 30 days so it's got to the stage where i've applied for an awful lot of jobs (mostly on spec) and 95% of them never even get back to you let alone the 1% that actually give you feedback.

I'm not sure I want to be in an industry thats as selfish as that towards people trying to break in! Maybe i'm just a bit nieve and take it too personally.

BigBouncyBall

Voyager2002 wrote: »

Plenty of people change direction; plenty of people complete a Master's degree that they do not use later.

You could present this degree on your CV as a fairly generic course related to computing, and/or could include a couple of sentences on your letters of application stating that you became disillusioned with the field but stuck at the degree anyway, and now hope to use some of the skills it taught you in a different context. The ability to stick at something that no longer interests you and see it through to a successful conclusion (ie getting a degree even though you don't want to work in the field) is something that would interest virtually all employers.

Interesting ideas. There are plenty of things i can take from the degree like teamwork, creative problem solving - all that crap and package them up. I suppose i'm just a bit worried that they'll look at me agog and think what the hell is he doing here?

DKLS

Have you looked at the more "non traditional" animation roles, I have recently used a company for a project that is animating the human body for clinical education purposes and they seem to be inundated with work.

Pm If you want to know more.