You lost your job. You’re tired of that field anyway, so now you’ve decided to go back to school for new skills and make a career change. It’s a wonderful idea to want to better oneself and a sound one that makes sense—in an ideal world. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to learn and advance in one’s education. But before you take out that hefty loan for a certificate program and have a debt hanging over your head with no job prospects, consider some valuable tips:

Make sure the school is accredited by your state education department and is on the Eligible Training Provider List of your state’s labor department website. This means that the school had to meet certain important criteria and be validated.

Don’t go by hearsay as to employment opportunities. National labor statistics tell you that certain fields are growing. It’s important to remember that these statements are overall projections for the entire country and often do not and cannot take into consideration wild fluctuations due to the economy at any given time. The local regional reality for your desired field may be much different from those reports. Talk to people employed in your desired field. They offer the best reality-check. While labor stats may say one thing about how the medical field is proliferating in opportunities, local hospitals are laying off all professional levels like crazy and closing their doors in some cases.

Make sure the skills for which you are training, are current and adequate to qualify you for reemployment or employment in a totally new field. To make a career change is tricky at best; learning a new skill without tremendous drive and energy to promote yourself to employers, previous background in a field—even in a lesser capacity—or having personal contacts who can introduce, endorse or facilitate your entry, may not make you employable in that new field. For example, did you know that for medical billing (contrary to popular belief remains a difficult if not impossible field to break into without experience doing it), the ICD9 billing system will be converting to ICD10 in 2013? Many of the vocational training programs have not caught up with this yet. The best return on your dollar, for example, is if you’ve held an IT management position or other project management position on your last job, and now need a formal certification to re-enter your field or updated technical skills for a field constantly changing as you read this. Weigh your choices carefully. I can’t count how many times clients have come to me after putting themselves through a vocational training and saying, “I couldn’t find a job in that field.” By the time I see them, usually years have passed and those skills are outdated or stale because they’ve never used them.

Find out if the prospective school incorporates an internship, sometimes called “externship” in your chosen curriculum. This forum is how you gain practical experience in your field by using your newly acquired skills. It’s much easier if the school obtains the internship than if you do. You will have something to add under Professional Experience on your resume that shows you’ve used your skills in a real business setting. It will also close any employment gap but mostly it will give you the experience because most companies and agencies want those with “experience” in those skills.

Most schools will assure you that they will “place” you upon graduation. You have to pursue them for assistance. The reality is that employers unfortunately are not banging down their doors in search of fresh, bright graduates—with exceptions for prestigious colleges—such as Harvard and the like—not for vocational schools and not in these lean times. Ask the school to see their placement records. See if your desired school has an active dynamo placement rep who labors tirelessly to actually ferret out and make relationships of trust with employers, to place you in your field. (At the same time, make sure you are a standout in the school, both in grades and personality.) Very often, placement today consists of sending you newspaper advertisements for $10-an-hour jobs—advertisements you see yourself—and pass up because you can’t earn a living that way—not to mention—pay off your new school loan debt. Unpaid loans are part of the reason the country got into financial trouble. Sadly, it is not unusual for vocational tuition loans to be given to those individuals, particularly welfare recipients who obviously will have no means to pay the loans back in a timely fashion or without surmounting interest rates that become a runaway train for someone starting out in a field—if he/she is lucky enough to find an entry level job without experience. Vocational training fees often way surpass those of a two-year community college. (Community colleges at least give you an Associate Degree if you fulfill the educational requirements and complete the credits.) Make sure you have a secondary income or other source of support (aka working spouse or are living with parents) and can afford to explore new opportunities in an entry level capacity in a new field entirely and work your way up to better positions. It may take years. Do it only if you have the drive and desire to do so, not because you “heard” it’s a good field to break into. If you choose to study new subjects and attend a school, you can add it to your resume while your attendance in that program is on-going. You can create a new resume category, Continuing Professional Development, and place the school and courses of study under it and put in parentheses, “in progress” or “anticipated graduation…” and the date.Don’t wait to investigate employment opportunities. Get a running start while your study is in progress.

Investigate funding opportunities for workforce investment grant training in your local One Stop Career Center. WIA grants come and go.  It pays to see if you are eligible and there is a wait list to which your name can be added as either a laid off worker or economically disadvantaged individual. There is a residency requirement first and foremost. For your particular One Stop that applies to you, tap in your zip code on www.servicelocator.org. You may be eligible to be funded by the government in new training. There is another grant available: If your company’s business moved out of the country to places like China, Mexico or India, and you lost your job because of it, find out if you can profit from the Trade Act Adjustment (TAA) grant. This grant is one that has not run out and is available nationally—and it’s a big one and has more flexibility in terms of training schools. Find out how you may qualify for that one if the situation applies to you.

Watch out for scams! CBS Channel 2 New York news just reported on school scams.

Despite these reports, many schools are bonafide, genuinely interested in your success and offer worthwhile, comprehensive, state-of-the-art, state education department accredited training programs. Be cautious and know the difference to spot red flags. Check with the local office of consumer affairs and the Internet for any complaints.

Probably the most important thing to remember is that regardless of your past, current or future skills and regardless of how many formal “certifications” and certificates of completion you feel you must dress yourself with, getting a job depends on your attitude and how you present yourself—even if you have “certificates.” Make sure you aren’t looking for certificates to mask a lack of confidence. Getting the job offer you want depends on your openness to new people and willingness to network and what strategies in which you want to invest yourself in terms of job searching. You need work Linked In creatively and employ strategies such as targeting companies and introducing yourself for those in which you want to work. You have to bring something to the table. Unfortunately, many people think that all they need is a new certificate proving that they’ve studied “something” and a job will magically fall into their laps. Not so. You still have to be proactive. There is no room, unfortunately, for the passivity we were taught in grade school. It’s a brand new work world out there and sometimes it is daunting for all of us. There is always a huge “gap” between the intellectual, ideal “spoon-feeding” of a classroom and lofty textbooks of how things “should be,” vs. the gritty, soullessness of a ruthless business world that only cares about profits and saving time and money – and will sacrifice human capital and their own “mission statements” very often to stay on “top.”

 Be a standout in your field! Be memorable! Be fantastic!

-By The Job Enthusiast

art by The Design Surgery on Behance