What I am about to say in this article may seem contradictory, especially for any parent who has a child. However, despite conventional thinking, you do not necessarily need to go to university to become employable. In fact, some of the world’s largest companies don’t even care about university degrees.
Can you do the job? Can you take constructive criticism/direction? Will you be an asset to the company? These are the major questions that most companies care about. Skills can be learned, and there is no substitute for on-the-job training.
I recently read an article on Venture Beat which points out that Google gets multiple applications every day from students who boast impressive academic records. But as Google’s chairman and head of hiring, Laszlo Bock, points out, this does not guarantee employment. The article is America, so please excuse the term College.
YOU DON’T NEED A COLLEGE DEGREE TO BE TALENTED
“When you look at people who don’t go to school and make their way in the world, those are exceptional human beings. And we should do everything we can to find those people,” Bock said. The article points out that many businesses require a college degree; at Google, the word college isn’t even its official guide to hiring. With the rise of self-paced college courses and vocational learning, plenty of driven people can teach themselves all of the necessary skills to work at the company.
DEMONSTRATE A SKILL, NOT AN EXPERTISE
“If you take somebody who has high cognitive ability, is innately curious, willing to learn and has emergent leadership skills, and you hire them as an HR person or finance person, and they have no content knowledge, and you compare them with someone who’s been doing just one thing and is a world expert, the expert will go: ‘I’ve seen this 100 times before; here’s what you do,’” Bock said. The article adds that college degrees are, almost by definition, a certificate of expertise. A degree in journalism is a giant badge meant to tell the world that you know at least a little bit about the trade of telling stories and interviewing people.
But a degree really doesn’t say what a graduate can do. Can they present an idea in front of a crowd? Can they build a website? Can they think interestingly about problems, or did they just pass some tests?
LOGIC IS LEARNED, AND STATS ARE SUPER IMPORTANT
“Humans are by nature creative beings, but not by nature logical, structured-thinking beings. Those are skills you have to learn,” Bock said. “I took statistics at business school, and it was transformative for my career. Analytical training gives you a skill set that differentiates you from most people in the labor market.”
The article points out that logical thinking goes way beyond programming. For instance, back in 2010, Facebook put up a blog post claiming that political candidates with more fans were more likely to win their race, implying that getting more Facebook fans would improve their chances. In no uncertain terms, this was a phenomenally bad argument.
Maybe candidates who were already more popular just happened to have more fans. And what about candidates with fewer fans that won their races? In these cases, why did fans not matter?
The article adds that the Facebook employees who ran the statistics understood some basic logic, but they didn’t demonstrate analytical thinking. Sifting through data requires training in the latest techniques for understanding causality and creatively exploring patterns (FYI: Facebook has gotten a lot better about these types of political claims since 2010).
IF YOU GO TO COLLEGE, FOCUS ON SKILLS
“My belief is not that one shouldn’t go to college …most don’t put enough thought into why they’re going and what they want to get out of it,” Block said.
Bock is adamant that most people should go to college but that skills and experience are more important than the stamp of expertise. Bock says Google is looking for the kinds of projects candidates completed or what they accomplished at an internship.
“I honestly can’t remember the last time someone asked me what my major in college was. If you want a job at Google (or some other prestigious company), don’t focus so much on your major, and make sure you graduate with all the skills and experiences you need to do awesome things in the world,” said Bock.
SHOW VALUE
Getting a degree or a diploma is important. However, when answering the three questions presented at the beginning of the article, circle back to this point, show value in adaptability. Will you ever use the math’s that you learned at school in real life? There are calculators for that. However, the problem solving that goes behind solving a mathematical equation is what is important. Breaking down a problem into its bare parts and finding a solution. That is what companies care most about.
Think about it, business schools would never have taught businesses how to deal with the disruption caused by the Covid-19 Pandemic. Businesses that survive are those who have the cash to do so or are the businesses what have leaders who are able to problem solve. This is not taught at any institution.
