This article outlines an opinion that organizations either tried skills based hiring and reverted to degree required hiring because it was warranted, or they didn’t adapt their process in spite of executive vision.
Since this article is non industry specific, what are your observations or opinions of the technology sector? What about the general business sector?
Should first world employees of businesses be required to obtain degrees if they reasonably expect a business related job?
Do college experiences and academic rigor reveal higher achieving employees?
Is undergraduate education a minimum standard for a more enlightened society? Or a way to hold separation between classes of people and status?
Is a masters degree the new way to differentiate yourself where the undergrad degree was before?
Edit: multiple typos, I guess that’s proof that I should have done more college 😄
I could see it working for some roles, but I am an engineer and the degree is both required by my company and necessary to actually do the work.
That said, 80% of my job is not degree-specific and could be done by anyone who pays attention and asks questions, but the 20% is the kicker. Maybe I could do the job of five engineers and replace the other 4 with experienced technicians to cover the 80%s.
To believe otherwise, you must believe that business leaders and hiring managers don’t know what they’re doing – that they are blindly following tradition or just lazy. […]you’d need to believe that businesses have simply overlooked a better way to hire. That seems naïve.
IDK, Has the author ever worked anywhere? Talked to anyone who worked somewhere? READ SOME POSTS ON REDDIT ABOUT WORKING SOMEWHERE? The amount of times no one could understand why a business does what it does, seemingly to its own detriment, is staggering.
They are right that it’s wrong to believe that people with college degrees don’t have skills - some do. The issue is that it appears to practically be non correlated to each other. I’ve seen people with college degrees who clearly learned very little during that experience. I’ve seen people with no degree be very knowledgeable and skilled.
The other obvious question in regard to hiring is - if going to college was necessary to do a job, then surely the degree would matter. However, outside of limited situations, the thing they’re looking for is a degree, not one related to the job they’re hiring for. Also, degrees are stupidly expensive which at least has to drive up wages a little anytime there’s some competition in the labor market.
I’d argue the biggest obvious mark against a degree really doing much is that it’s relevant at most for the first job. After that, no one asks to see the degree, or cares what your GPA was, or whatever - because the much better skill assessment is actually doing a job in the field. At that point, while it’s tradition to require a degree, it’s literally a check box. If these companies thought about it better, they’d realize the hiring mostly ignores degrees for any position outside of literally the first one out of college. An obvious solution to this problem IMHO would be the probationary period. Set it for 6 months renewing for some period. You need some time having someone do the actual task to really know if they’re going to be a good fit anyway.
Has the author ever worked anywhere?
I wonder if having a degree is a hard requirement for journalism and writing/communication and that’s what the author’s world perspective is based on?
When coworkers sit around the lunch table and complain/vent about the state of the world, do you imagine that journalist complain about a lack of higher education, so when they see any evidence that threatens the model of college degrees (which = debt), they jump on it as proof of their own path?
while it’s tradition to require a degree, it’s literally a check box
This is a very good challenge to the requirement. If it’s just a check box (that you have A degree) and not a very specific one, does it diminish the credibility of the requirement?
Do people like the probationary period idea? It sounds functional and practical to me.
Just because I got A++ in college doesn’t mean I wanna go the extra mile for your stupid ass company or believe my coworkers are a second family, you corporate wastes of space. I’ll do the bare minimum as long as I get paid enough to enjoy life and have a family. College was fun, working is not.
Having a degree means you are docile, obedient and perseverant especially in the face of bullshit, welcome aboard.
Lmao, perseverant yes. The rest of that sentence sounds like sadness & jealousy masquerading as projection. Or is my challenging you too docile?
I don’t have anything to be jealous about. I learned a very in-demand trade and am part of a union. But I got sucked in to the bureaucracy and often meet degreed proffessional computer touchers. It’s just an observation of how they are
You’re using arguments my own grandfather heard, merely replacing paper with computers. We ride together on this tandem bicycle called society: some do, some plan, and some like me do both.
Don’t generalize, it’s foolish at best.
As much as I hate the higher education requirement, if I get another “boot camp” developer application I’m gonna puke.
Can you talk about this more?
- Does it mean that a boot camp coder is not skilled enough?
- Would that have those skills if they did a degree program?
- Would any degree in computer/IT suffice?
There are people who went to Boot Camps that are excellent developers. There are people who have a masters degree in computer science who are awful developers.
skilled enough.
For entry level? Honestly, not usually. They know one thing, and if they deviate from that, their quality breaks down fast.
degree program.
Well, there’s no guarantee right? But they’d have a more well rounded understanding of programming. Anyone can use a Class, but can you make one?
degrees
Any programming degree, along with an acceptable understanding of the technologies they need on day one.
For my job specifically, we need someone with PHP experience. Not just how to <?php echo $title;?>. My favorite interview question is, “explain to me your understanding of PHP magic methods and how you would use them, in a basic example.”
I get a lot of dumb looks, and wrong answers.
That being said, I hired someone who failed that test, but they had a good personality and a willingness to learn—and they have a CS degree.
I take the PHP, and I throw it in the trash.
And replace it with?
Python.
Is that because you’re more familiar with python than PHP? What framework do you use?
I built sites in PHP before I knew any Python.
All of my personal web stuff is now based on Flask. I basically just replaced the P in LAMP with Python.
For a lot of jobs that want bachelors degrees, people with lots of experience will do. But for jobs requiring masters and doctorates its a different story.
I work in IT. I majored I’m French and Linguistics. Yeah that degree is coming in way more handy than my experience lol
How do you write this article and not once reference I/O Psychology or the literature that examines how well various tests predict job performance? (e.g. Schmidt and Hunter, 1998)
I swear this isn’t witchcraft. You just analyze the job, determine the knowledge and skills that are important, required at entry, and can’t be obtained in a 15 minute orientation, and then hire based on those things. It takes a few hours worth of meetings. I’ve done it dozens of times.
But really what all that boils down to is get someone knowledgeable about the role and have them write any questions and design the exercises. Don’t let some dingleberry MBA ask people how to move Mt. Fuji or whatever dumb trendy thing they’re teaching in business school these days.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve interviewed with a contractor/headhunter and a few minutes in stop them to say “I’m not what you’re looking for, here, let me help you re-work those requirements so you’ll get the right people to interview”.
HR provides those requirements, which just shows how bad HR usually is.
I read about a study years ago showing that hiring via interviews was no better than pulling cards out of a hat.
This is an interesting observation.
In theory, the section/department manager should be providing those requirements to HR, not allowing HR to do it for them, right? I have to agree, if companies are letting HR drive the requirements train, it’s going to be a poor experience for everyone.
Clearly HR didn’t talk to the hiring manager, so I put the blame squarely on them. They want to “own” this element of business, they get the blame.
I’ve never once taken a role that matched much of what the ad said, except for some specialized stuff that no one likes to do.
Then again, what your role becomes is determined by you/your skills and the relationships that develop at work. Even for highly specialized roles, everyone I’ve worked with brought different perspectives and approaches to the table.
