Let’s say you are an employer of a fast-paced, growing, interesting small-to-medium sized organization. Every person you hire has a huge impact on your organization, and they can make or break the team with which they are placed. You put a lot of effort and resources into guaranteeing that those you hire are the right culture, skills, and interest-fits for your organization. One fluke and you have to fire them quickly or watch the disproportionate problems they may bring with them.
You put an opening online and wait for applications and resumes to come in. You sift through these trying to find the right candidates. Hypothetically, you should have some sort of mechanism to weed out the serious candidates from the non-serious candidates. For many organizations, this is what the degree requirement is supposed to do. You put “A BA is required to apply for this position,” on the listing, hoping that will help you solve your problems. It may, to a certain extent. Some of the people just churning resumes out to companies after just completing high school and doing little more for a few years may be weeded out. “Aha! This will surely signal to me the serious candidates!”
But think about your own time in college. Think of how, even if you went to an elite university, there would be days when more than a few students would show up hungover for class, if they showed up at all. Most students were primarily concerned with what social activities were happening that weekend — studies were an afterthought. Even at liberal arts colleges focused on teaching, many professors hadn’t changed their curricula in years, and treat their students like children (if not openly, then with other professors or on social media).
Your own BA is worth just as much as the kid who showed up drunk to class twice, nearly failed into econ, and just did the bare minimum to get on by. It signals to employers that you are a minimally acceptable candidate at his level, not that he is at yours.
All those applications going across your desk now are at least at that level. Who are you leaving out?
You’re excluding the entrepreneurial young person who dropped out of college at 20 to go found his own company, or to get experience — maybe even in the field you are hiring for — in the workplace rather than in the classroom. You are excluding the person who is a creative problem solver, who has learned-by-doing, and who has thought quickly on their feet. You may even be excluding one of your very own employees who wants to come on in a fuller capacity. In short, you are excluding exactly whom you are trying to hire.
“Okay, maybe I am excluding that person, but the nobodies that I am excluding surely outnumber him.”
Maybe. And if there were no other way to differentiate this person from those people, that would be a very good reason to require the I-showed-up-for-four-years-and-was-minimally-acceptable signal (i.e., the degree). The good news is, with the advent of the Internet, with sites like LinkedIn, WordPress, a digital track record, and open-sourced learning, you can check these people out very quickly. Even better news: you don’t need to do that much work.
Let’s imagine you have a candidate apply for the position you are hiring for. She has more experience than any other candidate, has golden references, and has a track-record of creating value in the workplace. She’s your ideal candidate. Except she never went to college.
What do you gain from excluding her? What do you gain from hiring the next-best candidate — who may be considerably worse — who just happens to have a degree?
If you’re a large company that looks to bring people on, groom them, make them senior employees over time, and put lots of resources into them, you probably do want somebody who can signal that they can put up with arbitrary rules and patterns for four years over the person who signals they may not.
But if you’re a company that values entrepreneurialism, risk-taking, and the ability to take ownership for one’s actions, then a lack of a BA should be a good sign, if anything. It could show this person is willing to take ownership over what they do, their life, and their ability to create in the world.
Being a credentialist (requiring a degree to apply for a position) only hurts one person and group at the end of the day: you and your company. Be a credentialist at your own risk. You don’t know who you are excluding.