Community colleges really are underrated. In a world where increasingly a bachelor's degree does not guarantee a job, university education is super expensive, and especially in fields where a bachelor's degree is not necessary (I've never had an interview where they asked about my college education), vocational schools are the place to be.
Four-year universities put big emphasis on well-rounded educations, so you're taking humanities and physical education and biology and math classes in order to achieve a business degree. Community colleges cut away the "well rounded" part and often just tech the skills necessary to get a job at a local company. Oftentimes the instructors actually work at these local companies as their day job, so they know what to teach to.
If your goal is to get a job that leads into a career, go to a CC. If you need continuing education past that, many CCs have programs that let you transfer your credits into a local state university at extremely generous rates. My local CC has a 3+1 program where you can take 3 years at CC and one year at the state university and get a bachelor's degree from the university. The cost per credit hour at the CC is literally half the cost for the university, so you're paying $35k for your bachelor's compared to the $50k you'd be paying for four years at the state university. It's a no-brainer.
I’ve been involved in many interviews in my jobs, and we haven’t thrown an Software Engineer application out because they don’t have a bachelors.
Many of my friends and I don’t have a bachelors, and we haven’t noticed this issue. I have been asked if I have a degree, and I am honest about it and tell my story.
While not everyone agrees, I think it matters more what you’ve done on your own and on the job than what degree you’ve got.
I didn't have my bachelor's degree until very recently... three jobs and nearly 10 years into my career. When I got my degree, no one seemed to care. I didn't get a pay raise or anything.
I don't think you'll get a pay raise for it but not having it might prevent you from getting jobs.
I've definitely been asked why I didn't go to/finish my Bachelor's in many interviews. Who knows how many jobs I was skipped over because I didn't have it. Could be 0 for all I know but how would I know?
That being said, after a few years of working nobody cared about it anymore.
Like I said, some fields care. Some don't. YMMV. Getting an interview depends on a million and a half factors, it's hard to say one is more important than the other.
If you're a dev, my impression is that boot camps have changed this a lot. 10 years ago, someone without a bachelor's had a larger chance of fitting the 'lone hacker' stereotype than they do today. Of course, work experience trumps all.
> They don’t ask, but many places throw your resume without a bachelors into the trash at the first step in the hiring process. Ask me how I know.
I'm very understanding of this sentiment. I have suggested to people to get around this by simply lying about having a bachelors degree on their resume. If the employer verifies, you're out nothing. If they don't, you have a job you otherwise wouldn't have had. You have to be able to do the job though.
Don't do this. I have a client who did this, and he now wonders how many interviews he _missed out on_ over a 3-year period because the employer was interested but the college screening came up lie-positive.
Many, many employers public & private do verify. And some people will start rumors if you are in a small community, or if they know someone you know. And if the employer later finds out that you lied, the lie will cost you the job, not the lack of education.
IMO if you are low on experience like education, your best bets are things like formal networking events or informal events (parties, concerts with friends, etc.), or even informal walk-ins to companies where you want to work. For some, the biggest problem is that they won't talk about wanting a job around their friends, for fear of appearing incompetent.
There are services which verify education - for instance, the National Student Clearinghouse (US) provides degree verification through affiliated schools for $15 plus a varying school surcharge.
For non-US schools, there are services that will provide an evaluation of foreign academic credentials. I know someone who was reviewing a candidate from Poland for a position requiring specific credentials and used a service to find that the listed education did not meet US standards for the position credentials.
Best not to lie. When I hire, education is last on my list of criteria, but if I select a candidate and the HR background check turns up an outright lie, it is out of my hands.
What is your suggestion for OP where their resume is immediately discard because of no education? Networking and meetups won’t get you passed HR filters and corporate requirements.
As I mentioned, even if you don’t get the job or lose the job, you’re still ahead of not trying. And you now have experience to put towards your next employer (and your old employer will only verify employment dates, as they don’t want to be sued).
This is the unfortunate reality of an asymmetric labor market where employers can make demands with no cost to themselves. Fake it until you make it.
"Fake it until you make it" is completely different from "lie until you are caught." Speaking from experience, lying is not a good idea.
OP is competing against people who have put in work that he/she hasn't. That's just the reality. The best way in is to show the employer that they are a qualitatively superior employee. Networking and filters are _very often_ surpassed by leadership, sometimes even by creating new positions that are an exact fit for that person's experience. I have a few clients who were hired this way, and had better opportunities because of it. I even got a job that way myself long ago, when a CEO friend-of-a-friend hired me in a low level role but then re-read my resume and moved me to corporate offices to work more directly with leadership.
Lying about your past is not a good idea in this case, and it's far worse than just faking a role until you get better at it.
Here's another anecdote: I'll take four experiential-subjective anecdotes from a professional any day, as compared to macro-scale analytical-subjective theories from an analyzer-theorist.
Dodging around relational morals like "don't lie to others" or "be a good human being to others" is a typical blind spot of a game-analyzer-type logician. "I beat the game, don't I win the prize?" are famous last words in these cases; I suggest you choose your audience very carefully if you wish for your cognitive gifts to be celebrated in the context of such a strongly-recognized developmental target as being an honest person. Perhaps sporting or hostage negotiation or other "bluffing"-oriented domains are better suited for such advice, where some variant of "outright lying" is given a little bit more leeway.
> As I mentioned, even if you don’t get the job or lose the job, you’re still ahead of not trying.
I fail to see how poisoning your own reputation comes out as "still ahead"; that is absolutely guaranteed to get your résumé silently discarded. The tech community isn't that big, even in the tech hubs, and word does eventually get around both among engineers and recruiters.
True that. The community I work with all know each other, and one's reputation is paramount. If anyone found out I lied about my degree, I'd be finished. I wouldn't work with a cheat, either.
I’m not advocating lying, but there’s no way this comes up, at least not at startups. Do you think we sit at the bar and discuss potential hires university degrees? If someone told me “watch out man, Stu lied about his uni education” my response is likely to be, “why would you tell me that and why would you think I cared?”.
The gabber is going to look worse than the candidate by a long shot.
Startups involve a lot of trust between the members of the initial group. I wouldn't have anything to do with trusting my future to a professional liar.
It's like marrying someone who cheated on their spouse. They'll cheat on you, next.
Rumors are a quick way to get sued. Are you ready to pay a settlement as an employer because someone’s resume has an inaccuracy on it? Sometimes there are benefits of living in a litigious society when it works in your favor.
> I’ve seen lesser cases win. You’d be surprised. Your tight knit industry community isn’t the general public.
[citation needed]
Court cases are a matter of public record and, given your, ahem, open advocacy of falsehoods, it's unclear why we should believe your unsupported assertion.
>What is your suggestion for OP where their resume is immediately discard because of no education?
Eh, I don't have a degree. My own strategy? I just apply until I find a place where that isn't a hard requirement.
I personally don't mention my education at all. Let them assume what they like. I mean, if they ask, I'll tell them, (they ask like 20% of the time, and it has never been a problem at that phase, as far as I can tell. At least once, the interviewer acted super surprised and I got the job.)
Note, a lot of places claim to "require" degrees. Treat that requirement like any other "requirement" on the job description; in my experience, you need something like 3 out of 5 of the requirements to get a chance at an interview; the degree is just one more I've gotta make up for, no different than not knowing Java.
>Networking and meetups won’t get you passed HR filters and corporate requirements.
This hasn't been my experience. Someone on the inside with pull has a lot more influence than HR, in my experience. It's very rare that we technical people approve a person and HR blocks them; the only cases I know the details of in my own experience have to do with serious (and obvious) lies turned up by the background check.
I mean, certainly, there are jobs that will bin my resume right off... and I'm sure there are some jobs that will bin my resume even with a good internal recommendation, (I could tell stories there, but they all have to do with trying to get work outside of the USA.) but my experience is that most places? A good internal advocate is worth a thousand pieces of paper from the university.
The other thing to keep in mind is that a technician who misleads is about as useful as a salesperson who can't deceive without crossing that line in the way that good salespeople can. A lot of the startup advice is fine if you are management-track, but if you are looking for individual contributor work, being honest and straightforward in ways that don't really work when you are management/sales is the order of the day. I've seen a lot of technicians fired for lying about a screwup (or because management thought they lied about a screwup) - I haven't seen many technicians get fired for actually screwing up.
B.Sc. Computer Information Systems, Wahresleben University, 2014.
(Wahres Leben = “real life” in German)
If they actually check they won’t find the university but they can’t discount the fact it might exist. So HR is more likely to follow up with you then throw your resume out, and you can take that chance to explain you being more to the table than a university graduate.
Employers don't care to hire a liar. What you'd "bring to the table" is a lack of trust. What else have you lied about? Would you lie on expense reports? Would you betray confidential information? Would you lie about the quality of the work you'd do?
If one person in the hiring chain knows German, you're out of luck. And more than likely, if they can't find a university, you are probably lying. Universities are big, kinda hard to not be able to find one.
You should not lie on your resume, but if you're going to lie, just find a way to make it harder to verify. Presumably the for-profit schools that got shut down in the last few years would be hard to check with. Obviously they aren't accredited, but that's not your fault. It'd be, at least, a believable lie.
The point is if they knew German they’d get the joke... you’re not trying to lie. You’re trying to get past the crazy HR driven mandate that EVERYONE have a 4 year degree, even when it has zero relevance to the job.
> If they don't, you have a job you otherwise wouldn't have had.
No, you have a job for as long as you're able to keep your lie secret. Once the lie comes out, even if it's X years down the road, you're terminated for cause, and if a prospective new employer calls they will be told you are "ineligible to be rehired." There are possible legal consequences as well.
GP, do not lie. In the long run, the world works out to be pretty fair, and liars are revealed for what they are.
But if your goal is an undergrad business degree (looking for a marketing job at Dunder Mifflin), you've already set your educational goal well below unlocking the universe.
A few years ago I did the rounds of a bunch of schools in the Bay Area giving talks to CS departments. By far the most passionate students and the smartest questions came from a community college I spoke at in the East Bay. They had so many questions that the planned 1 hour talk ended up taking 2 hours, and nobody left even though it was the end of the day. They had also set up their own after hours meet-ups to teach themselves parallel programming. It helped that their teacher was highly inspiring and passionate too.
In contrast, the university students just felt a lot less interested, and in one case they had to be promised credits just to get them to show up.
My university had some 1 and 2 credit hour classes in physical education. It maybe required 3, I don't remember. But people took those classes for fun, to fill out a schedule, etc.
Four-year universities put big emphasis on well-rounded educations, so you're taking humanities and physical education and biology and math classes in order to achieve a business degree. Community colleges cut away the "well rounded" part and often just tech the skills necessary to get a job at a local company. Oftentimes the instructors actually work at these local companies as their day job, so they know what to teach to.
If your goal is to get a job that leads into a career, go to a CC. If you need continuing education past that, many CCs have programs that let you transfer your credits into a local state university at extremely generous rates. My local CC has a 3+1 program where you can take 3 years at CC and one year at the state university and get a bachelor's degree from the university. The cost per credit hour at the CC is literally half the cost for the university, so you're paying $35k for your bachelor's compared to the $50k you'd be paying for four years at the state university. It's a no-brainer.