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0 pointsjschwartzi10y ago0 comments

I've been with teams who wouldn't hire anyone who couldn't finish a degree. It doesn't matter which kind, but they had to have proven they could do the degree.

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bengale10y ago

That's a double edged sword I guess.

I chose my school and degree based around staying close to home to help with my disabled brother. It turned out to be a poor decision, academically that is, as the course combined software engineering students with business I.T and we weren't covering anything I didn't already know. I got a summer placement writing code and realised I was learning much more during that time, so when they asked if I wanted to stay on, I accepted.

It could be viewed as not being able to complete the degree, on the other hand would it have been a good choice to persevere with a bad decision just to prove I could? I'd be concerned with working with people who couldn't admit to making a mistake, then making the best of it. Or those who refused to see the grey areas.

jschwartziOP10y ago

I happen to agree with you, and I think we passed on some good candidates because of it. Frankly if I hadn't gotten lucky I would still be temping in warehouses or worse, and I actually finished an(arguably worthless) degree. I think it would have been interesting to explore the candidate's sense of prudence in not finishing school, because I suspect that it was a prudent decision for him.

woah10y ago

It's not about the hiring team looking for anything specific that a degree could give you, it's that they've bought into the old idea that the piece of paper is a hard wall that separates them from the homeless guy outside. The corollary of "I'm superior and secure in my position because of this degree" is "someone without a degree is inferior". Fear and self-doubt are the only reasons that anyone requires unrelated degrees.

ziegmeister10y ago

No, it shows that that individual is capable of sticking something difficult out through the long term. Are there people without there with that quality that don't have degrees? Certainly, but you don't know whether someone without a degree possesses that quality or not (and yes, false positives are a thing, there's always a risk).

Admittedly the value of a degree has likely been diluted in recent years given that college standards seem to be getting more relaxed, but that doesn't mean that it's not still a somewhat useful signal, especially when you have to filter hundreds (if not thousands) of resumes for a single position.

Just like nobody ever got fired for buying IBM, no one got fired for hiring the candidate with a degree. Believe it or not, there may be more reasons behind this than 'self doubt' and 'insecurities'.

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