An MBA, or Master of Business Administration degree, can be an excellent stepping-stone to jump to any other career that might require this advanced administrative degree. Even if you might not want to go into business, an MBA can give you a serious professional advantage over other candidates in the job market. With the job market as competitive as it is, an MBA can be a little bit like your magic key to give yourself a leg up against other job seekers. Even if you are hesitant about obtaining your MBA, you can still switch to another career if another opportunity presents itself. Here is how to use your MBA to change careers.

Firstly, outline your advanced skills and competency in your resume or cover letter when you decide to transfer to another career. These skills might be in fostering interpersonal relationships, leadership, or analytical strength, which can make you a great leader and manager in a possibly higher paying position. Even if you don’t have any professional experience in the job position, it doesn’t mean you can’t convince an employer in your resume or face-to-face interview. These skills will be called your transferable skills and can only be acquired by studying and obtaining your MBA.

Next, you have to convince the new employer that your prior experience will give you a benefit or strength in your new career. Somehow you have you have to illustrate using the best of your ability that you can draw a conclusive line between your previous job position and the new one. For instance, how are your many years at a consultancy agency going to help you at a financing firm? These two worlds might be entirely different, but perhaps there was a certain detail about the position that could link the two. Maybe you were moonlighting or were learning from someone in the other industry and trying to build a bridge between industries in some way.

Another way to use your MBA to change careers is to play up your soft skills. Whether you’ve taken Seattle or Baltimore GMAT prep course and studied multiple days away to pass the certifications to acquire your MBA, you have to use it for something and not let it go to waste. Even if your next career choice is vastly different, you can still use your valuable soft skills or interpersonal skills to land a managerial position in a number of different industries. Employers are looking for these types of skills and they are quite valuable, so you could stand to make quite a high salary.

Lastly, take your MBA and get an even more advanced or specialized degree so that you can move onto a career with a much higher position. These careers can be in technology or engineering and many of them don’t need anymore than two years of additional schooling, provided that you already have your MBA. If you look at your MBA like your passport to success it will give you the confidence to do anything you put your mind to.