I’m honored to have been selected as a Top Voice on LinkedIn for 2015 in the Education category.
Based on shares, likes, comments, and interactions with my posts, LinkedIn calculated that I am one of the top contributors in the education category on the platform. I’ve long been a big fan of LinkedIn — for both publishing and general professional presentation — and have seen a great little community develop around the Pulse publishing platform over the last year.
My hope is that by talking about the role of schooling, education, and how the Internet dramatically changes both these and hiring practices on a platform frequented by professionals, that some people might actually change their minds about their hiring practices.
So many professionals tell me that their degrees were meaningless. So many recent college grads tell me that they really didn’t learn anything of use in college. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know this is true for the vast majority of people — especially for high-achieving young people who would otherwise be spending this time creating something in the marketplace.
Despite this common knowledge, HR and hiring managers are some of the least likely to remove degree requirements — forcing anybody who is even trying to get their foot in the door for their careers to blow a ton of money and opportunity on a signal. It’s these people whose minds need to change in order for the education landscape to really, truly change for those who want to be employees (if you want to be an entrepreneur, that’s a whole other subject).
I think that many of them are having this realization. At the same time, many are also turning to more credentials. That doesn’t end well.