What can Private degree holders learn from Money Launderers

Throughout my working life, I worked with private degree holders of all stripes, some good and some bad. There are bad local degree holders as much as there are bad private degree holders but the good ones I am exposed to are often unfairly tarred by their qualifications. This is largely because educational qualifications in Singapore are signalling instruments rather than skills certificates. Our HR departments want a to use a shortcut to reduce the number of applications to a reasonable number so a local degree provides a convenient tool to make life easier.

So, I probably do not need to need to remind everyone that if a local degree holder play the Game of Life at Normal mode, a private degree holder plays it at Hard or Inferno mode. The salary gap between the local degree holder is over $1,000 a month bench-marked against a private degree counterpart with a much higher employment rate six months after graduation.

When I suggested to a colleague to launder his private degree ( because I think he's a great worker ), he couldn't stop laughing.

This is probably a good reason to do more research towards a blog article.

As it turns out, money launderers can teach private degree holders quite a bit. In fact, if you have a  third class or second lower local degree, the same lesson applies to you here as well. It's not that your degree is crappy - grade inflation just makes things so bad that an Honors degree is just not what it used to be.

As it turns out, money laundering is divided into three phases, all of which can point to useful and practical steps a private degree can do to improve his station in life. This article does not cover the situation whereby a private degree holder gets into a sales role or starts a business because these are options that are least dependent on educational qualifications.

a) Placement

The first step is moving money from the source of its ill gotten gains. In this step, money launderers typically find a way to smuggle the money out of a country. Imagine someone crossing national boundaries with a sack of gold.

When analogizing this process for private degree holders, the national boundary is the boundary between school and the workplace. Needless to say a private degree holder can face a lot of discrimination in a job interview. Here are some suggestions in the placement stage :

• Do a lot of internships so the employer can witness your actual work ethic. This makes the job interview unnecessary.
• Pull strings to get a job. Use your family connections to get something. Be shameless at it because us local degree guys will not fight fair anyway.
• Join the tech industry. Tech discriminates the least because the demand for IT support will always be there and skills matter more. Why so many private degree holders study shit subjects like business management baffles me when Tech is one industry that will hire anyone that can code or do system admin.
• If all else fails, lower your starting pay to get anything that pays the bills.

During the placement stage, avoid joining the gig economy unless you can developing deep tech skills. You don't want to be stuck as a Grab driver for an extra $800 a month even though that may be tempting.

b) Layering

When layering, a money launderer makes it harder to detect and uncover money laundering activity. One way to do this is to buy a material asset with your cash and then sell it away to make the money more legitimate. In the 1990s, I heard that some folks are offering cash to buy up winning lottery tickets at a face value higher than the winning value.

Layering is critical to a private degree holder. Once you have a steady job to pay the bills, you need have a plan to make your private degree stick out much less in your resume. This phase is not easy, some ideas I have include the following :

• Produce results that are so stellar that it overwhelms all your previous educational history. This is hard because a lot of job roles may not have clearly defined results.
• Get a masters degree from NUS or NTU. This works but local universities may also discriminate against private degree holders. 
• Get into a good MNC via a contract role and then work like a bitch to turn it into a permanent role.
• Create a stellar record of community service outside the workplace. Joining grassroots or Toastmasters may create something to talk about to an employer beyond work. 
• Earn a string of industrial qualifications that are recognized in your industry such as the CFA, CPA, CISA or even PMP qualifications.

Remember that you need to be a realist when you commit yourself to layering. I am fully cognizant that private degree holders actually pay more for their degrees and the temptation to emphasize it more will be there, but everything you need to do once you get a job is to take steps to overwhelm it with something better in your resume.

And for God's sake, do not use your hard-earn money to get another advanced qualification from a private university. If you do need skills, use a MOOC or get a graduate diploma from a local university.

c) Integration

The final stage of money laundering is integration where the money, once laundered get reintegrated into the legal economy. Launderers often employ shell money to buy properties where proceeds from these sales would then be 'legitimate'.

With a good resume and a job, it is now time for a private degree holder to improve his station in life. Getting to this stage probably means that this person may have done more career planning than the normal local degree holder so I expect this guy to be tough cookie. At this stage, the usual career advice matters but some common patterns exist :

• Develop a niche in your company to make it hard to retrench you. When I was in HP, the first managers to be retrenched are non-degree holders. Pink slips came so fast, a work record could not even be established. Doing something no one else wants to do is vital. During my time knowing how to operate a mid-range or mainframe server leads to years of job security.
• Build networks with other private degree holders to cover each other's backs. In my time in the legal industry, I know that the University of Tasmania lawyers cover each other's backs much better than local degree holders. They go back a long way when they were students in Temasek Polytechnic.
• Of course it goes without saying that this is the time to start building an investment portfolio.

Also, don't fall for the big lie that soft skills matter. People get better people skills as they get older. To think of soft skills as a competitive advantage is balderdash. Where two executives are equal in tech skills, of course soft skills become a tie breaker. Deliberately building up soft skills beyond just OJT thinking that they will boost your salary is hogwash designed to keep humanities professors employed. I work with a lot of low-EQ troglodytes because they have a mysterious power to keep things going. May of these trogs come from the legal department.

I think while private degree holders in Singapore do find life much harder than local degree holders, developing a stoic and realistic attitude can make a big difference in balancing out life outcomes at a later stage in life. 

While it may be unpleasant for some readers to review the approach used by money launderers to wash money from ill gotten gains, it forms a reasonable analogy to show us how to develop an action plan forward.