Comments: Experience versus Education

Lots of good/interesting comments to my piece on Experience versus Education where I asked what makes more difference in your career -- having great experience or having a good education. Clearly, there's not a "perfect" answer (that's the life when you talk about personal finance) but there are certainly a lot of opinions on the issue.

We'll start with this comment:

I have to take a bit of exception with this article, as it is not really comparing apples to apples. Candidate "A" and "B" above would probably not be competing for the same job.

A more fair comparison would be if both candidates were at the same point in their careers (had risen to president) and were both looking for a different job. All else being equal, you would probably pick the candidate with a degree.

The education is just one more advantage in a competitive job market. I agree that education does not matter in your CURRENT job, but it very well may matter when you are looking for your NEXT job.

I didn't think this was a fair comment and responded as follows:

But in reality, all else is NEVER equal (at least that's what I've experienced in almost 20 years in business). If two people are applying for the same job, they always have different skills, abilities, experiences, personalities, and on and on.

I'm not saying education is not important -- far from it, just check out all the pro-education pieces I've written in my "education" category. What I am saying is that as a person gets into his/her career, a degree means less and less as time goes on. Business experience and performance means more and more until the degree is really marginalized.

Where the degree does help is at getting your foot in the door initially -- to help you get good experience at good companies.

Next, another commented chimed in with these thoughts:

I work as a software developer, making bleeding edge network security products. I got my bachelor's degree in computer and electrical engineering and  my master's degree in electrical engineering. All the degrees came from a top 10 program nationally. That educational background has opened a lot of doors for me and I have a very nice career going. When I'm interviewing, candidates with advanced degrees from top programs get a little bit of extra credit.

But the sheepskin isn't everything.

My company does technical interviews, in which we give candidates technical problems to solve, so that they can demonstrate that they can really handle the kind of high level work that we do. Plenty of people with top-notch educational backgrounds fail at this.

Similarly, my last two managers have been college dropouts. As it happens, they're two of the most technically excellent engineers I've known in more than a decade in the business. Even if their educational backgrounds aren't as impressive on paper as mine. If I were a hiring manager and either one of these men came to me looking for work, I would hire them on the spot.

Here's one tip, though. Education is important. Your resume is important. But as you move further and further in your career, both pale in importance next to your network. That's what's really key.

I agree with this commenter mostly. His example (experience trumps education as you get into your career) is one that I agree with. However, he somehow concludes that your "network" is more important.

Our next commenter added the following:

I'm a manager that has done some recruiting to hire employees. The reality is that when you are hiring, you have to sift through a stack of resumes. Typically you get over 100 resumes. You MUST narrow the field down to a reasonable number to interview; about 10 is the most I can interview; typically about 3-4. How do you narrow down the field from 100 to 3-4? It's unfair, but the biggest criteria for narrowing the field is education, and of course, 
obviously relevant job experience. If you graduated from MIT and you have experience doing exactly what we're looking for, you're going to get interviewed. If you don't have masters degree (or even college education), then you better have a very specific experience that we want to hire (i.e., you are currently working with the client, doing the exact thing we're hiring for). Otherwise, you won't get interviewed. Its sad, its unfair, its stupid. But its 
practical and easy.

So he says that both education and experience are used to hire people. I agree with this, though my experience is that the higher level person you're looking for, the more emphasis on experience and the less emphasis on education. I've hired people for Director-level positions making over $100,000 a year, and believe me, experience was MUCH more important than education in these cases.

Here's another person's reaction to this comment:

If you're in the position of the candidates MikeK is referring to (your resume and letter land on the desk of the hiring manager or -- far, far worse -- the HR department, along with 99 or 999 others that look more or less just like them) then education matters. Or at least, it matters in the sense that the lack of it will kill you in the first culling, as opposed to the second or third, which is where you'll probably end up getting killed if you've got the degree.

Candidates with track records and networks don't get jobs by sending a looks-like-all-the-others resume to a hiring manager, and HR doesn't often learn about them until they've gotten offers. Which is why education doesn't matter anywhere remotely close to as much for us.

Yep.

And here's one final perspective on the issue:

Like the woman in the article, both my father and the head of our corporate compliance department do not have college degrees. They all worked their way up and received on the job training. But I also think they're a dying breed. I can't think of even one person younger than 35 in my department who doesn't have at least an associate's degree. Outside of the corporate context, it's a whole different scenario. On the one hand, as documented in the 
Millionaire Next Door, you could be a small business owner and do quite well for yourself with or without a degree. But on the hand, if you want to be an attorney, physician, nurse, pharmacist, etc. you can't just apprentice yourself to someone anymore. You absolutely have to have that degree under your belt. It really just comes down to what you want to do in life. A degree just gives you more options.

Here's my experience and bottom line on the issue:

1. Overall, education versus non-education is a financial no-brainer. Statistics show that you'll make tons more money in your lifetime by getting an education.

2. For entry level positions, education is vital. Why? Because you don't have any experience and the hiring manager has to base his/her decision on something. As such, as one of the commenters said above, a college education is becoming a minimum requirement to get your career off the ground.

3. As you progress in your career, education means less and less with every passing year. This is because companies hire people that perform. They don't care (for the most part) what the educational background is as long as the person can deliver results (which usually means making money for the company).

4. So my advice is to get your degree, get your foot in the door, then manage your career so that you maximize your experience (and thus your earning power).

Comments

[Shadox]

Clearly, as you advance in your career your education becomes less relevant. This happens primarily because your education ages. Just like a candidate's experience from 20 years ago is not as relevant, his education from that long ago is also less relevant.

I also agree that experience in most cases trumps education. However, there are certain industries and professions in which it is very tough to get ahead without a specific degree. For example, and investment banker without an MBA will find it very tough to move his career forward.

Similarly, as your career takes you up the corporate ladder, how your bio reads on the website also becomes important. That is why you see so many execs who haven't done so before pursue some kind of executive MBA.

Your education serves primarily as a signal to the market that you have certain skills, and more importantly that you went through some sort of "competitive vetting process". Hence, the more prestigious your school and the tougher it is to get in, the better your chances of starting out your career well. While education is especially important as you start out - there are certain situations or positions in which it regains its importance.

[Pete J. Baylis]

I have read the above information and I would like to provide an objective response. I am in a relationship with a woman who has a Master Degree plus 30 credits as an educator. She also has several certifications BUT she is grossly underpaid considering her degrees and her many years of schooling. I am a prevention/ intervention counselor by trade for more than 20 years now. I moved to her home in Jersey City and immediately my 20 years experience was considered worthless because I did not have sixty college credits to qualify for an entry level job. I went from making a comfortable 30,000 to 50,000 annually in Pennsylvania to a $10 per hour job as a teacher's assistant in Jersey City. Degrees are definitely the new form of discrimination or "eliteism". Are they important? Yes. Should they determine who is better qualified to work with our hurting youth? I don't completely agree. We should work together with equal opportunity for hire as well. Because "children don't care how much you know until they know how much you care". This generation of children are not suffering from lack of education only but the absence of caring adults to lead and love them. College has its benefits, especially to us African Americans. We are actually a generation who have enjoyed education and prosperity without hinderance. Couple that with our love for family and you can realize some great stories of success as well. However, as a black man with no college education but twenty + years of successful interaction with the community, single moms, fathers, families (including my own) this is another form of segregation. This woman feels that she is better (or in a better class than I am) because of her "education". But I have clearly more experience in urban areas and I have even annually earned more money than she has in recent years. But my concern is for the youth. Establishment are not hiring people that are truly qualified because they are "discriminating" with degrees or the requirement for them. I believe it is a move to make up for affirmative action, at least to some degree. Children need me in the building, so proving her wrong is not my goal. Education vs. Experience needs to be looked at in a more serious light. Our children need life skills as well as education. One can't be more important than the other. I have over 20+ years of successful experience but what is worth in today's market? Our country is ran by "degreed" people, but who really speaks for me in the political realm? Who speaks the for children that we work with after all the votes are tallied? I have worked with several college grads who assumed that I had degrees because of my experience and quality of work. This has been my experience. I am good at what I am "called" to do. I know this, but how can employers know this if there first glimpse at our resume "disqualifies" us because there is no degree posted. I will work to change this as well. There should be a choice to avoid thousands of dollars of debt to sit in classroom and listen to teachers making thousands of dollars. While people like me "work with and in the locations" of these students, develop a rapport and an understanding of them that results in a "balanced" education. What can we do to level the playing field in an "elitist" America? Please respond.