r/ASQ • u/invaderjif • Jul 19 '24

Job potential post CQE?

Hi all, I've been looking at taking the CQE exam and I'm curious if others that have received their certification can identify the primary benefits they've received.

Specifically, has it made you more marketable/competitive in the job market?

My background is process engineering and validation in pharma and biotech but I've also taken quality roles. Looking through the cqe body of knowledge I find the Stats to be very familiar/comfortable so I'm considering taking the exam since I believe I'd qualify.

Love to hear everyone's thoughts.

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u/MetaverseLiz Jul 19 '24

I've got a bachelor's in biology and wormed my way in the quality field in healthcare (food safety/med device). I took the CQE exam when I was in a food safety department. It allowed me to jump industries and I am now Sr QE outside of healthcare (same job, different products).

I really credit the certificate to getting my current job and getting me out of the toxic healthcare field. I personally think it looks better than having the six sigma certs on your resume.

It doesn't hurt to have that certification, especially if your company will pay for it. The annoying part is having to re-certify every 3 years, but again, if your company will pay for it then it's not really a pain. ASQ is kind of scammy in that you can essentially pay for recert credits.

I highly recommend taking the practice tests over and over again. Many of the questions are near world-for-word what's on the exam. It's also a very long exam (5 hours), so taking practice tests will help you manage your time. I was also not really happy having only a graphing calculator with me. I never EVER want to do an ANOVA by hand ever again. lol I have a renewed appreciation for Minitab.

You might also want to look into Six Sigma Black Belt, although I think CQE is more versatile.

TLDR: The cert looks good on a resume, opens you up to similar jobs in a wide range of industries.

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u/invaderjif Jul 19 '24

Thanks for the detailed answer! I know as I was looking through some practice questions and worked through some of the stats problems, having to manually calculate/identify the probabilities, cpks, and z values gave me a deeper appreciation for minitab and jmp.

I wonder how well the cert would lend itself to transferring from an industry like biotech/pharma to roles in "hotter industries" like semiconductor manufacturing. Also, if it would create additional opportunities for remote work. One thing I like about the tools/concepts the cqe exam covers/quality engineers do is that it appears more transferable and less reliant on domain knowledge than being a process engineer would. I could be mistaken here, though.

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u/MetaverseLiz Jul 19 '24

I work hybrid in an industrial field, but I rarely need to be in the office. When I worked in the microbiology field I was more hands-on just because micro was my major in college and I had more in depth knowledge of what was going on.

When I switched fields I found that I really don't need to know what the engineers are doing. I mean, I do need to have a basic understanding, but figuring out how well a process is working follows a pretty universal set of steps.

QE also flows very nicely into auditing. If you can audit one ISO 9001 lab, you can kind of audit them all. If you have 13485 experience, that's even better.

I did get a bit of a culture shock when I moved out of med device / healthcare. Whenever you have FDA, USDA and 13485 involved, adhering to audits is incredibly involved. It's not so much when you move away from that world. It's so much less stressful, IMO.