Who Cares If You Have A Degree - Can You Do The Job?

I do not have a degree; in fact I left school at 15 without many formal qualifications as all. I set off after a brief flirtation with being a trainee chef into the murky world of sales where I stayed for the next 20 years or so and was successful in terms of hitting quotas and earning good money.

I worked with many people that had incredible academic qualifications and many that had almost zero. In my experience formal schooling and qualifications are rarely an indication of how successful somebody is likely to be. I have seen many academically brilliant people unable to translate that knowledge into real world living and success in their job. In fact I would take this a stage further and say that more often than not the more academically gifted somebody was the more likely they were to struggle to adapt to a ‘real job’ with ‘real people’. Of course that is a huge sweeping statement and there will be many contrary examples, I am generalizing to make a point.

When I talk with life coaching clients about career issues they often tell me that they would need a BSC or MBA or whatever other qualification just to APPLY for certain jobs. I am not just talking about jobs where of course you need a certain amount of academic knowledge just to be able to do it (I’d want a surgeon that intended operating on me to have done some form of medical training), I am talking about almost everything from sales to nursing and administration to marketing.

I understand that if somebody has earned a degree that should give a potential employer an indication of their intelligence and level of ability to learn but frequently I don’t think it even does that. Some of the most academically brilliant people I know would struggle to boil an egg or hold a social conversation but they can breeze through an exam regurgitating facts and figures. What real world use is that?

By demanding people have been schooled to a certain level you immediately rule out an entire group of people. Oftentimes these are the people that are most motivated, the ones that are a bit ‘out there’ and looking to make an impact in business So what if they weren’t mature enough at 16 to make the decision that they needed further education? Isn’t it more important to find out where their head is at now than 5, 10 or even 20 years earlier?

I am not against further education; far from it I think it is a wonderful opportunity for many people. However, I am against judging people’s effectiveness or likely effectiveness in the work place based upon whether they went to university. That was then, this is now.

So if you are looking to employ members of staff by all means insist your candidates have a degree but I wouldn’t recommend it and I certainly wouldn’t pretend to yourself that it will guarantee you get the best fit for the job. Personally I would say in the job application that you are prepared to interview two outstanding candidates that have NO formal qualifications and then see how they stack up against the more traditional applicants at interview time. You might be surprised at the results.

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