Career Advice -- Money Making Potential

Like you said, it depends on the industry, job, and region. Salaries will vary wildly as those three variables change.

I actually have a similar background:

B.A Linguistics
Fluent Russian
ESL in Kazakhstan for 2 years

In Washington, D.C I was making about 22k a year working at a private ESL school, although that was technically part-time. It's hard to find a full-time ESL job outside of public schools. If you get state certified to teach in public schools, in Maryland you could get a starting salary of around 40k to 50k.

I don't have much experience with international affairs jobs, but I'm pretty sure your chances of landing anything over 35k are slim with no experience and only a bachelor's degree. Of course, if your Mandarin is truly fluent (i.e nearly native) you might be able to leverage that into considerably more. Again, that will heavily depend on your location.

I'm currently working for a government contractor doing proposal development for 35k a year (which is just barely above livable in the D.C area), which is completely unrelated to my background. The only reason I got this job was through a friend. I'm doing my masters in Applied Linguistics now because I'd like to go back to ESL teaching, but without at least a masters the jobs and salary just aren't there.

Probably less than you think you'll make.

Hmm, US military perhaps? With a degree, you could get a commission - a new 2nd LT makes around 36k in salary per year, plus a shitload in basic allowance for housing and other perks. That ratchets up quickly too over your first 4 years or so. With that fluent mandarin, pass the Defense Language Proficiency Test and you get paid extra for that as well. The military is hurting for Chinese speakers (and Arabic speakers) and has been for years. Plus you really will get into the circles of people that could enhance a career with your degree.

Of course the military isn't for everyone. But its a good jump start, especially with that particular foreign language skill.

Man thats tough.

No experience, weak degree and tough current hiring climate. The language skill is great though, but it is so specialized. What area of the country are you in? With no experience i would say you have little to no chance up jumping in to marketing or consulting. I would say your best bet is to find some local manufacturing company that does business in china and try to get yourself an interview doing just about anything. You are going to have to almost create a job for yourself.

Military would be awesome though, and you would have to beat contractors off with a stick once you got out.

I would contend that military officer pay for someone with no experience and a bachelor's degree that isn't engineering or computer programming is close to the best there is, up until the 10 year mark or so. The rest of what you said about it, though, probably outweighs that and I understand that military is not an option for you; I just wanted to argue that the pay is definitely not weak compared to most BA-level positions.

Its tough these days, man...with the rise of online education, having a master's degree has become the new bachelor's degree.

become a registered nurse
if you're an artist, try to market your art and become rich
go to dental school
start a business

Sell drugs.

eVasiege_sl said:

I'm still in China. Currently nowhere in the states. Doing some random unrelated job basically means the downfall of my Chinese. Anyone who has studied a language before knows what I mean.

Wouldn't say no experience. Teaching ESL in a university is much different than a kindergarten. And I'm still trying to figure out what constitutes a weak degree. Considering the majority of students have absolutely no on-job skills upon graduation. I was in my schools business program before and was confident 90% or more of the students were retarded drones. Especially in accounting. It was basically cramming for tests three or four times a semester, and never interacting with the instructors at all. So I jumped ship. Were my math skills up to par I might have opted for something else, but IR was the best of all other options IMO.

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If your only real work experience is teaching ESL in China, whether it's at a Chinese university or a private language school, then you might as well have no experience. Overseas ESL teaching experience means exactly jack and shit to anyone outside of chain ESL schools in the USA (i.e Kaplan, International House, etc.), and those schools are almost always part time work and pay terribly. I just managed to land a part time ESL teaching job at a local community college, and even they require at least a Masters degree. I was fortunate that they're desperate enough to take me despite still being in the middle of mine.

Like someone else said, you should try to get an entry level job pretty much anywhere in any field that even remotely interests you. Once you've got a solid year or two of business/marketing/whatever experience under your beltin the USAit will be much easier to start focusing on increasing your salary and moving into a more attractive field.

Weak degree meaning a BA in international politics does not qualify you for much of anything. This is the reality that so many graduates are facing now. College these days is more about building relationships, getting to know the people in your field and getting internships are worth a lot more than the degree. Especially international politics, that just screams "connections". I don't want to make you feel bad or anything, but I'm going to say if you haven't already got a job in that field at this point in your life you won't ever.

Thorne_sl said:

Weak degree meaning a BA in international politics does not qualify you for much of anything. This is the reality that so many graduates are facing now. College these days is more about building relationships, getting to know the people in your field and getting internships are worth a lot more than the degree. Especially international politics, that just screams "connections". I don't want to make you feel bad or anything, but I'm going to say if you haven't already got a job in that field at this point in your life you won't ever.

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No shit.

Why do people even get these targeted degrees? A degree in "International Politics" is the last thing you will need to enter that field. Learn a second field where you can apply your hopefully advanced knowledge of Mandarin. A language is a skill, not a career.

PS: Learning Mandarin sucks dick. Fiance and I are hoping to move our careers to Shanghai sometime in the next 10 years.

I honestly think college entrance requirements need to double. Keep the cost the same but make it much more difficult to get in. There is way too much emphasis on "you have to go to college" by society as a whole. So many people end up tens of thousands of dollars in debt and end up with nothing that will help them in the real world.

Yup, you are exactly right. I have no idea how to realistically change it for the better though.

What are suggestions towards my situation?
:
Working an entry level position with near abysmal pay, I schmooze up the right person (Finance Director) that has inside scoop that a department relevant to my goals, expertise, and degree is opening up early upcoming February at the research center where she works. She asks me if I have a business card or any information on me; I don't. She asks me to bring my resume to my work the next day and she'll pick it up. The next day she tells me she has talked to both the relevant director and the HR director about me and that they'll contact me sometime late January.
This was at the end of December.
I've seen her twice since then and both times were marred and imperfect due to current work obligations (she arriving as I was shutting down within a specific timeframe, etc)
I tweeked the resume I gave her and tried just walking into the research center and handing it in personally and maybe scoring some facetime. I was shunted and it felt like a bad idea - but one that I doubt will ripple much past the front desk as I didn't give the receptionist my name.

Do I sit by and wait?
I think I'm about to ding at my current job. I'm grinding as much as I can until I get the call.
My fiancee wants me to be more proactive. I'm not exactly sure what that entails nor do I want to spoil my welcome - especially since this is an inside scoop, not even posted on their website yet.

It sounds like she's well aware of who you are and thinks you'd be great for the job. I'd just wait till late January and see if you get contacted. If you don't hear anything from the director/HR director by early February I'd shoot her a quick e-mail and mention it.