No Degree = No Future ?

[JurgenG]

Last week we had this young western guy who applied for a job in our company. The problem is he just has a high school degree.

I like his personality, his short experience shows he is a risk taker. But in my company we hire only people with university degree and other colleagues disagree with me, say he won't fit in the company.

Actually, that's what I like. People in our company are a bit too complacent, I would like to bring something different, that make them uncomfortable and force them to rethink their job.

But that would be a very personal risk. If the guy fails, it will be my personal failure.

Do you think a western guy without a university degree has something to bring to a western company in Asia ? Or low qualification jobs should be kept for locals ?

[Soutpeel]

Go and have a look at some of the most sucessful people in the world and you will find not all of them have degree's, Bill Gates and Richard Branson spring to mind.

Having a degree proves nothing...doesnt actually mean you can do a particular job and be sucessful at it..Thailand is a pressing point in this regard

And generally a decent high school equcation in the west would be at the same level as most Thai degree's anyway

Have met many educated idiots through the years....

[DougLee]

For most people in common business jobs that require degrees. Their degrees are worthless.

1) Most people nowadays cheat on most test/essay

2) Even if they did not cheat, most people forget 100% of what they have learned, Most people could not remember what they learned in science or math class in 9th grade and would fail miserably any high school exam

3) Degrees don't give you experience/skills. Look at doctors.. They learn by heart a bunch of words, thats all they do. Then they practice for years.

Most of the richest people in the world had no degree before becoming rich, they later pursued it because of new regulations or as a personal challenge/feel good

My personal opinion is that people who are overly clever in a field/over logic are either: going to get PHD'S or gonna get too bored in school and find their own way to make it in the world.

Edited December 12, 2010 by DougLee

[IMA_FARANG]

It all depends on the person and the job.

I've met people with good University degrees...but no commom sense or any real ability to reason. They couldn't decide what the best solution was from the circumstances they were presented with at that particular instant. They were "book smart", but didn't know how to apply their knowledge to their immediate situation.

On the other hand I've also met people with only a high school education who had learned to instantly apply what they actually knew to a real world situation. For that reason, they could be counted on to get the job done. You could send them out on a job, and they would succeed whatever the situation was.

So if you were a boss, which one would you choose to handle a tricky job?

The answer is obvious isn't it?

But like I said, it all depends on the person and the job.

[slapout]

If you have the authority to hire, why would you consider colleagues opinions? Do you have a committee to vote on each new hire? The degree indicates the individual is capable of learning and satisfying the requirements for the paper.

As far as your concern that you will look bad if your new hire fails and it could/would be seen as a personal failure, I am speechless at this statement. I will not even make further comment as you may/likely take offense at what I would say.

Mistakes, setbacks and other terms are common in business, but failure indicates a complete wipe out of a company and thus the employees are jobless. If one new hire, trained/overseen, while the experienced/present work force is in place, could bring about a failure, I would question the feasibility of working for said company.

[jdinasia]

With the current availability of potential staff in Thailand (or anywhere else it seems) why would you pick someone that didn't have the personal dedication to finish a degree? No, a degree will not measure how good someone may be at a given job, BUT it does measure some things fairly accurately and dedication and determination are two of those things that can be measured.

To the OP --- a candidate without a degree may in fact be useful to the team, but I am guessing if you look at the guy's CV it won't show that he has stayed with anything too long and training etc of an employee are costs that you can often avoid repeating by getting people with a track record of sticking to things they start.

[IanForbes]

Soutpeal and DougLee beat me to it. It all comes down to work ethic. Degrees are most often only a something to separate two people of equal abilities... and even then an employer can get it wrong. Certainly, a doctor would need a degree, and a mechanic would need a grounding in performing a job properly, but much is learned while on the job. My degree certainly didn't help when I chose to be a logger or salesman. It helped me get a career working for the government, but didn't help for the actual job. A good manager is someone with people reading skills and understands what motivates people. It won't take long to learn if the person will work out well in the firm. I would hire on a temporary basis to learn if the person actually performs well.

[IanForbes]

With the current availability of potential staff in Thailand (or anywhere else it seems) why would you pick someone that didn't have the personal dedication to finish a degree? No, a degree will not measure how good someone may be at a given job, BUT it does measure some things fairly accurately and dedication and determination are two of those things that can be measured.

To the OP --- a candidate without a degree may in fact be useful to the team, but I am guessing if you look at the guy's CV it won't show that he has stayed with anything too long and training etc of an employee are costs that you can often avoid repeating by getting people with a track record of sticking to things they start.

That is also very true, and probably the most important criteria in the equasion. But, it doesn't take long to learn if a person is all talk and no go. There are some pretty smooth talkers who don't follow through on what they say. They can be weeded out pretty quickly.

[phaethon]

My degrees have no direct relation to my current occupation. What a degree used to show, if anything was that the holder had a proven ability to study and acquire advanced knowledge and skills, not necessarily that they already had the necessities for their first job in the real world.

Of course now anyone and their dog can get 'a degree' - in palmistry or nose picking - so a degree is proof of nothing other than their ability to fill in an application form for a student loan (which is probably worth a Ph.D. in Applied Bureaucracy alone).

[jdinasia]

With the current availability of potential staff in Thailand (or anywhere else it seems) why would you pick someone that didn't have the personal dedication to finish a degree? No, a degree will not measure how good someone may be at a given job, BUT it does measure some things fairly accurately and dedication and determination are two of those things that can be measured.

To the OP --- a candidate without a degree may in fact be useful to the team, but I am guessing if you look at the guy's CV it won't show that he has stayed with anything too long and training etc of an employee are costs that you can often avoid repeating by getting people with a track record of sticking to things they start.

That is also very true, and probably the most important criteria in the equasion. But, it doesn't take long to learn if a person is all talk and no go. There are some pretty smooth talkers who don't follow through on what they say. They can be weeded out pretty quickly.

I agree.

The issue then becomes (as it is for the OP), do you go out on a limb for someone that doesn't meet the hiring criteria for the company when doing so and having it fail reflects poorly on your judgement, when you can choose from a pool of people that ARE qualified and their success or failure doesn't reflect on you at all?

Since the company I work for provides services to Thais, as a director I do all the hiring of the foreign staff and the MD hires all the Thai staff. I CAN hire without consulting the MD or the other director I work closely with but I don't. We sit and talk over the plusses and minuses of each candidate for any given position and I make sure that the MD and other director meet each applicant that I am considering in a less formal way (I invite potential employees to an interview just before lunch and then invite them to stay over and eat with us. This gives a bit of insight into who they are in some significant ways surrounding social skills --- an extremely important thing for our company.)

Edited December 12, 2010 by jdinasia

[GuestHouse]

Bill Gates and Richard Branson might not themselves have degrees but go check the recruiting policies of the companies they run - They seek out and employ the very best graduates they can get their hands on.

[JurgenG]

If you have the authority to hire, why would you consider colleagues opinions?

Because the new hired will have to work with them. And if they really want to "kill" him, it's not going to be a nice experience for him

As far as your concern that you will look bad if your new hire fails and it could/would be seen as a personal failure, I am speechless at this statement. I will not even make further comment as you may/likely take offense at what I would say.

What is you point ? jdinasia completely gets it. If I hire him, for the next six month I'll have to support him, to make sue he succeeds. So what is most important for me? The success of the company because I believe hiring out of our comfort zone can bring great benefit to our company ? Or my personal comfort, don't rock the boat, and if it doesn't work as planned I can't be blamed because I followed company policy

[stander]

In my particular field it is good to have a balance of engineers who either have completed an apprenticeship, with a higher national diploma or certificate and engineers who have a good engineering degree.

For myself I obtained my degree after completing an apprenticeship, I was very fortunate that the company I was working for at the time had the foresight to invest their time and money, to enable all who were willing and able to further their education.

However if I was to chose one from the other, then on most occasions it would be all down to experience.

That said, I would say over the last few years I have hired more engineers with degrees than without.

[GuestHouse]

In my particular field it is good to have a balance of engineers who either have completed an apprenticeship, with a higher national diploma or certificate and engineers who have a good engineering degree.

For myself I obtained my degree after completing an apprenticeship, I was very fortunate that the company I was working for at the time had the foresight to invest their time and money, to enable all who were willing and able to further their education.

However if I was to chose one from the other, then on most occasions it would be all down to experience.

That said, I would say over the last few years I have hired more engineers with degrees than without.

Colleagues and I were discussing past Department Managers we'd worked for back at HO - The consensus was that despite the view expressed at the time of his stewardship the most effective manager we had, and the one with most positive long term impact was a manager who outwardly was a bit of a bumbling old man, but who in actuality recruited every single one of the Engineers who now hold key roles in the company - Almost all were guys who had completed apprenticeships and followed that with a university degree.

The idea that the choice is simply experience of degree is patently nonsense - There's a lot of very talented, experienced and qualified people in the job market, more so given the recession.

[jdinasia]

I think slapout is missing the premise. (Nice meeting you last night (in passing) slapout) The idea isn't that the company fails if you make a bad hire. The issue is the confidence from the corporate structure in a director that goes outside of policy and fails. If the company is huge, a single time won't matter at all. If the company is less than around 20 people and four or five foreigners then it is a 20-25% failure rate based upon your own judgement.

I actually do sit down with 2 other senior members of the company and discuss all of the applicants that I am considering. I make the decisions but I certainly ask for opinions. Additionally, I will terminate a new hire before 90 days with absolutely no regrets (and without consulting anyone else) should they not prove to be up to my standards.

Again, with regards to the OP --- with the potential field of foreign applicants in Thailand, I simply wouldn't go out on a limb. There are way too many people looking for work that should meet company criteria without bothering with someone that doesn't.

[stander]

GuestHouse

I could not agree with you more, an engineer who has "come up through the tools" will almost always be my first choice.

[manarak]

No degree = no future as a lackey.

People without a degree can be hired by businessmen with risk-taker mentality and can do very well.

But they won't be hired by people who are themselves employed (i.e. human resources), because employee decision-making is based on avoiding mistakes and preserving one's image (cover your ass). Who would take the risk of recommending an applicant without a degree?

[gregb]

Unless you require a specialist who would need to have attended university in order to acquire specific skills, there is really only 1 reason to demand a degree. That is simply to prove that the person you are hiring is willing and able to complete a job, even when seeing it through is boring and tedious. Beyond that, a degree means very, very little.

Sometimes every job simply sucks, but we need to know we can depend on someone to do what needs to be done even when they aren't having fun. That is what the degree tells you about the person, because it is impossible to get one without doing a whole bunch of useless crap that you don't enjoy. (Whether they will do the same for you still remains to be seen, but at least the paper proves they did it once.) If you feel that you can find evidence of these qualities in the candidate even without the degree, then go for it. On the other hand, if you can't convince yourself with certainty that he is the kind of guy willing to plod through the muck even when things look ugly, then you would be foolish to go out on a limb for him.

You have to use your judgement with this guy. How confident are you?

[IanForbes]

This discussion certainly points out the importance of a child getting a good education and going as far as they can with their schooling. The competition is too strong in the modern world to be lacking in education. About the only field where an advanced education is NOT always important is in the field of sales where good personal skills is more important than mechanical or scientific skills. And, it's been my experience that good salesmen are born, not made.

[TAWP]

If you can motivate why a person should get hired over another it doesn't matter if he has a degree - unless he is fighting another applicant with a GPA of 3.8 or higher.

(Hired one that had over 3.8 in GPA, she was fired after 1.5 month for not doing her job properly and being on MSN most of the time...so...no guarantees.)

[kurnell]

I don't have a degree and I bet I earn more than you

[jdinasia]

This discussion certainly points out the importance of a child getting a good education and going as far as they can with their schooling. The competition is too strong in the modern world to be lacking in education. About the only field where an advanced education is NOT always important is in the field of sales where good personal skills is more important than mechanical or scientific skills. And, it's been my experience that good salesmen are born, not made.

and yet again I concur ----- The exception being that technical sales often should require the basics of the field and that ay require an education. (Selling engineering/computing/scientific testing etc) Then again some of the time it is only vocabulary that is missing and a good salesman will have that down before he ever interviews for the position.

TAWP-

GPA doesn't much matter to me. Seeing some balance between study and social life does. I look for well rounded individuals this the ability to stick to something.

[IanForbes]

I don't have a degree and I bet I earn more than you

The very top money makers of this world seldom have degrees. They are too busy wheeling and dealing while creating wealth. I was GOING to say, wage earners" but money makers seldom work for a wage. They hustle for capital to invest in money making schemes, and then move on to other schemes. They are gamblers and risk takers, but wise in business sense. They also know when to get out of losing situation.

Those people are entirely different from those that start careers in some job market.

[Forethat]

and yet again I concur ----- The exception being that technical sales often should require the basics of the field and that ay require an education. (Selling engineering/computing/scientific testing etc) Then again some of the time it is only vocabulary that is missing and a good salesman will have that down before he ever interviews for the position.

Sales...arrgghh, the scum of the earth if you ask me. Usually completely incompetent in any area other than the art of scamming and tell utter lies. Usually moves on to another position when their cover is blown. In my opinion, sales staff are made up of people who lack talent to do anything but BS others.

Finding sales people who are well educated AND awho aren't prone to BS, lie, lie and lie is not easy. I'd rather take the one who doesn't BS and tell lies and then train the person in question. If he happens to lack a degree is not important at all, really.

[Tonto21]

IMHO having a degree is not a sign of intelligences, or suitability over someone without for a lot of positions. I think what having a degree shows is an ability to study, learn and retain information. This can at the end of the day amount to no more than a hill of beans if the individual has no practical ability. I have met so many very clever degree holder, but they have absolutely no common sense. I'm not knocking having a degree, looking back if I had my time over I would have studied for one. But way to much is placed on having a degree.

I feel it a bit of a cop-out some times by recruiters, and they are selling there company short by not looking at other routes of employment, of course if the job is for an astrophysicist....best get someone with the book smarts, but, if it's practical, I would also short list individual with good life experience and a good practical track record, maybe a 10 minute logic test at the interview.

Well done me! never though I'd post more than 50 when I started, bugger me! 500!

Edited December 12, 2010 by Tonto21

[jdinasia]

I don't have a degree and I bet I earn more than you

The very top money makers of this world seldom have degrees. They are too busy wheeling and dealing while creating wealth. I was GOING to say, wage earners" but money makers seldom work for a wage. They hustle for capital to invest in money making schemes, and then move on to other schemes. They are gamblers and risk takers, but wise in business sense. They also know when to get out of losing situation.

Those people are entirely different from those that start careers in some job market.

Most of them make and lose millions more than once (they don't always get out in time). That doesn't stop them from making real money again!

That being said. On the internet anyone can claim anything

[StreetCowboy]

and yet again I concur ----- The exception being that technical sales often should require the basics of the field and that ay require an education. (Selling engineering/computing/scientific testing etc) Then again some of the time it is only vocabulary that is missing and a good salesman will have that down before he ever interviews for the position.

Sales...arrgghh, the scum of the earth if you ask me. Usually completely incompetent in any area other than the art of scamming and tell utter lies. Usually moves on to another position when their cover is blown. In my opinion, sales staff are made up of people who lack talent to do anything but BS others.

Finding sales people who are well educated AND awho aren't prone to BS, lie, lie and lie is not easy. I'd rather take the one who doesn't BS and tell lies and then train the person in question. If he happens to lack a degree is not important at all, really.

We were buying a piece of equipment and we had to get three quotes; so we had the three salesmen round.

One was the same bloke I had dealt with at a previous company; he left the kit for us to sample for a week

The others expoused the benefits of their equipment and demonstrated its higher spec, but in the couple of hours available, we couldn't get to grips with the greater functionality.

So Bernard got the sale (again) because he trusted us, gave us what we wanted, and his little box acted and behaved exactly as we expected.

I can see that for new customers, though, he would have benefited from a double-breasted jacket.

Anyway, my point is that a good salesman is not necessarily a fly-by-night pattermerchant, and if that is the person to whom you turn for your important purchases, perhaps the problem is in the buyer, not the vendor...

SC

Anyway, all of those salesmen would have needed a technical degree to get anywhere, and we would have been embarassed on their behalf had they not.

Your degree is there to get you to the interview table; after that, you're on your own. A degree also makes it easier to get work permits and so forth.

SC

[jdinasia]

and yet again I concur ----- The exception being that technical sales often should require the basics of the field and that ay require an education. (Selling engineering/computing/scientific testing etc) Then again some of the time it is only vocabulary that is missing and a good salesman will have that down before he ever interviews for the position.

Sales...arrgghh, the scum of the earth if you ask me. Usually completely incompetent in any area other than the art of scamming and tell utter lies. Usually moves on to another position when their cover is blown. In my opinion, sales staff are made up of people who lack talent to do anything but BS others.

Finding sales people who are well educated AND awho aren't prone to BS, lie, lie and lie is not easy. I'd rather take the one who doesn't BS and tell lies and then train the person in question. If he happens to lack a degree is not important at all, really.

Integrity is an issue in ANY job. Salespeople are no different than others in that regard. Lying is not an inherent trait in sales people (and in fact creates more issues than it solves in sales). Sales is done best when it identifies or creates the feeling of "need" in the consumer and then satisfies that need. Like with anything, being an informed consumer is the duty of the consumer. (caveat emptor)

[emsfeld]

What business field is your company operating in and what responsibilities would the new role encompass? What qualifications/ skills other than a degree does the applicant bring to the table?

Without knowing it'd be difficult for people on a public forum to give an informed opinion.

For instances, in my company we have a young guy working without a degree. He does a great job and generally is very bright. Without going into detail, there are problems at times though where the lack of a degree/ experience shows - coupled with youthful ignorance/ arrogance can be extremely annoying! In my field it is not possible though to go beyond a certain level without a degree.

[Forethat]

Anyway, my point is that a good salesman is not necessarily a fly-by-night pattermerchant, and if that is the person to whom you turn for your important purchases, perhaps the problem is in the buyer, not the vendor...

In my case the problem with the lying cheating sales staff is within OUR company. Cant seem to find decent sales people. All liars with or without a degree. It seems like a universal law which applies to all sales. Creates huge problems.

Edited December 12, 2010 by Forethat