What's your educational background?

[ardvark71]

Re: What's your educational background?

BBA in Computer Information Systems. Degree obtained in my 40's -late bloomer.

Welcome to the forums

Regards...

[GreyGeek]

Re: What's your educational background?

Even though you know that you have the experience and skills to do the job, you may be automatically eliminated from consideration if you do not have the specified education.

Which I feel is a load of nonsense. No offense, just an opinion.
....

Sorry ardvark71, I'll have to go with Detonate on that one. His experience closely matches what I've observed as I programmed for one man companies up to government agencies. At the last gov agency, from which I retired, jobs were always posted internally first. The reason is obvious: those who are familiar with the tasks and processes being used in the agency have a lower learning curve and their social skills are a known quantity. Where jobs cannot be filled internally the next step was to ask employees if they know of someone or can recommend someone. That's how my son got his job where I worked. Now, he's head of that department. Then, the stack of applications are filtered by a clerk in the HR dept who may know nothing about the job being offered and/or the skills required, (in other words, they don't know how to program or do system analysis, for example,) but they can compare the required skills and experience lists with those given in the resumes. Especially in today's employment climate where a single job announcement can generate hundreds of applications, and a lot of applicants get creative in padding their resumes . The applicant finally selected has completed a battery of personality inventory tests and a series of tests in the job area for which they are applying. Programmers have to submit coding examples, and they have to explain the purpose for selected code snippets.

The down side of small or one person businesses in hiring technical employees is that unless the proprietor is hiring someone to work specifically in tasks which the proprietor is knowledgeable they often have to consult an head hunting agency to recommend someone. That can get dicey too.

[ardvark71]

Re: What's your educational background?

Hi GreyGeek...

While I understand what you're saying, my point was taken from Wizard10000's post. If an employer is going to hire for a position in IT that is not entry level, and receives applications from two people, Wizard10000 (with his experience and skills now) and someone that just graduated from college with no practical work experience, it is absolutely ludicrous to me that because Wizard10000 did not obtain the degree that the other applicant did, that he should be disqualified from being hired. A piece of paper with fancy writing on it that says you took enough courses to earn it does not always translate into valuable experience in any profession. Field experience is always learned exactly there, in the field with real world applications, not theory taught in a classroom. I'm not saying the classroom doesn't help in certain ways, I'm just saying that the experience and skills learned from actually doing the work and learning from the inevitable problems and obstacles that come up in real life are far more valuable in my eyes.

End of rant :P

Regards...

[Qqmike]

Re: What's your educational background?

What counts in the work life is whether you know how to learn; importantly how to teach yourself things, but also if you know how to learn from others (OTJ). And then, of course, how well you can communicate with others is important. Reading a person's degree credentials (or lack thereof) off a resume can not tell that story. A good teacher will teach students how to teach themselves, then back off and let them do it. Knowing how to teach yourself is a trait of intelligence.


A few responses after reading above posts ...

Money and education ... I didn't have money to finance my advanced degrees; had to use scholarships, student loans (which I repaid dutifully on time without evasion or whining), graduate assistantships, and I always worked (work study PLUS one or two other jobs in town, including factory work, construction, parking lot attendant, grill cook, janitor, whatever I could get--dozens of jobs, actually).

Having a degree in something does not measure the person's enthusiastic dedication and drive for a subject, traits far more important than a degree. A degree is not a measure of intelligence. Sometimes it's a measure of ability to focus, or ability to endure (i.e., discipline?), or an ability to withstand a period of torture and humility (dealt by sadistic instructors).

Sometimes having an advanced degree signals in my mind caution! Like MBAs. Many of them have no clue why they want an MBA other than to be (1) cool, (2) have the credential, and (3) have a ticket to "getting rich." Many MBAs know just enough to be dangerous. (I know this because as a college prof, I trained MBAs). There's more bs in a business school than you can shake a stick at, far more than you see in the sciences, for example.

And, finally, whatever the philosophy suggests, when it comes to getting a job, you gotta play the game, just like any other game in society, and you better follow the rules, as laid out by Detonate and GreyGeek above. If you can't do that or do not wish to do that, it's fine, but that leaves you with self employment, a very good choice if you're nuts enough and brave enough and driven by some extreme passion.

[wizard10000]

Re: What's your educational background?

...A piece of paper with fancy writing on it that says you took enough courses to earn it does not always translate into valuable experience in any profession.

Well, since I got mentioned in this post I figure I'd better throw in my .

Although I'm not one now (thank God) I have been a hiring manager in the past. If everything else is equal the guy with the diploma gets the job as the degree brings with it a measurable skill set. If you've got a diploma it means that you can most likely communicate effectively (although I'm beginning to have my doubts about this), that you can do research, that you can be expected to display reasonable attention to detail, that you have experience sticking to long-term projects and if I hire you to write code that you're most likely up to the task, albeit at an entry level.

Education complements experience, it's not a substitute for it. Most of what I do (riding herd over three dozen support technicians with varying skill levels) is a result of direct experience and all formal education would have done was got me in the door.

I work for Your Federal Government. At my salary level it's reasonable for my employer to expect that I can manage an enterprise-level project, spend a million or so of your tax dollars every year buying hardware while minimizing the amount of support that hardware requires, that I can conduct briefings where the target audience has stars on their collar and that I can support the agency while remaining on task and on budget.

To be completely honest at this point in my career a degree wouldn't help unless I was to go into management and I'd retire before I'd do that - but at the entry level, given the choice between three folks - one with two years experience, one with a fistful of MS certifications but no experience and one with a CS degree and no experience, guess which one I'd hire?

The fact that a degree is irrelevant now doesn't mean it wasn't relevant earlier in my career - as I mentioned in my first the reason I'm not flipping burgers or working for Geek Squad right now is that I was *lucky*, not that I was good. Good came much later

[Detonate]

Re: What's your educational background?

My last post on the subject of job hunting. If any of you are now job hunting, or think you may be soon, please educate yourself on the subject of job hunting. There are lots of good books out there. Remember that the purpose of your resume or application and cover letter is to get an interview. Very seldom is one offered a position based solely on their resume. You must get the interview, that is where the decisions are made. For most positions there may even be several layers of interviews. So find a good book on interviewing skills and prepare yourself. You may be the best qualified candidate for the position, but if you don't interview well you won't get the job.

Contact me by PM or email if you want more info.

[Detonate]

Re: What's your educational background?

Wizard1000 reminded me of one more thing I want to mention. Sometimes the person hired might not be the best qualified, but has a degree. Personnel and Human Resources people, who may not actually know anything about the job, will favor the person with the degree. This is a CYA action. If the person does not work out, they don't want to take the blame for hiring the wrong person. The fact that the person had the required degree gives them cover. If the person hired did not have the degree, then the blame falls on them.

[wizard10000]

Re: What's your educational background?

Got one more (lengthy) thing to say on this.

I'm not exactly disagreeing with Detonate on this, but I certainly have made hire decisions based on a resume alone. The interview was mainly a formality to insure the applicant didn't have any serious personality or hygiene issues

I don't know a hiring manager who reads past the first page on a resume when making the first cut. Your experience needs to be relevant and I'm not gonna give a $50,000 a year desktop support job to someone who can't be bothered to run a spellchecker - or who sends me a generic resume. At this salary level I expect the resume to be targeted to the position and punctuation, spelling and grammar to be perfect. Your resume is what gets you the interview.

Several years ago while I was still a contractor for this agency our company wanted everyone to redo their resumes - and I offered to help the folks who worked for me fine-tune theirs. I asked everyone to bring just the first page of their resume to a meeting.

At the meeting I took the first page of everyone's resume, stacked them up, cut them in half and handed the top half of the page back to them, telling them that's all the space they got to convince me to call them in for an interview.

Although folks may not make a hire decision based on a resume they can and invariably do make a decision on who *not* to call in for an interview. Your resume is the only chance you get to get your foot in the door and you only get one shot.

My own resume is probably nine or ten pages long but I never send more than two pages plus a cover letter - I paste in the relevant bits, massage it a little and send it off. My resume is targeted for the position for which I'm applying and addresses everything in the job description - or at least everything I can address without lying, and *all* the relevant information is on the first page.

A generic resume will get you a job at Burger King but it won't get you much of any position in information technology.

[Detonate]

Re: What's your educational background?

Actually, you seem to be agreeing with me perfectly.

[jeremy1701]

Re: What's your educational background?

To elaborate more on the job market/requirements/etc... Some jobs require a certain level of education per Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). One over the top example would be a position as an RN. It doesn't matter how much on-the-job training or how many years of experience you may have, you will never be promoted to the position of MD, simply b/c CFR's require the degree for the position (for good reason). This example can be applied really to any job where a human life is at stake. Relating this to the IT field, the code you're writing may one day save (or take) someone's life. The degree in this case is a requirement for liability sake.

However, I agree that eduction != smarts. Some of the brightest, most educated people I know have a hard time using a microwave.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What's your educational background?

....
it is absolutely ludicrous to me that because Wizard10000 did not obtain the degree that the other applicant did, that he should be disqualified from being hired.
...
Regards...

I agree, it is ludicrous, but that is exactly how things are handled, so one has to go with the way things are, and not how they should be.

I can take your premise a step farther. When I took FORTRAN in grad school in 1968 there were FEW formal college programs in computer science. Most universities and colleges did not initiate their CS programs until the mid to late 1960's and their first graduates did not appear until around 1970. Most were, like me, majors in science or math and happened to have taken FORTRAN or, after 1965, BASIC. A COBOL compiler did not appear till 1960 but wasn't part of most science or math programs. I bought the first Apple sold in the state of Nebraska in 1978. In 1979 & 1980 I taught Apple BASIC programming to teachers for college credit during night classes and summer classes. Imagine being asked by someone if I had a "degree" in CS when I presented my proposal for a computer solution to their business problems. I often said, "no, but I taught those who do", and then explained to them about the history of computer science.

[Detonate]

Re: What's your educational background?

I agree, it is ludicrous, but that is exactly how things are handled, so one has to go with the way things are, and not how they should be.

Exactly. And not only in job hunting, but all aspects of life. The Serenity Prayer.



"God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change,
courage to change the things we can,
and wisdom to know the difference."

[dibl]

Re: What's your educational background?

The Serenity Prayer.

... and the dibl disclaimer:

"It's an unfair life, and then you die."

[GreyGeek]

Re: What's your educational background?

....
A good teacher will teach students how to teach themselves, then back off and let them do it. Knowing how to teach yourself is a trait of intelligence.

And your students KNOW a good teacher when they sit in his or her class. My first teaching assignment after grad school was chem, phys and math at a small mid-west college. I was still excited about my research work and seemed to find ways to pull it into my teaching. One of the better students sent me a letter stating, "Mr Kreps, you are a smart man and very excited about science BUT, you are way over everyone's head."

I needed that letter. It was the best thing that could have happened in my teaching career and, thankfully, it happened in the first semester of my first year. Two years later I was voted runner up Teacher of the Year by the student body.

Money and education ... I didn't have money to finance my advanced degrees; had to use scholarships, student loans (which I repaid dutifully on time without evasion or whining), graduate assistantships, and I always worked (work study PLUS one or two other jobs in town, including factory work, construction, parking lot attendant, grill cook, janitor, whatever I could get--dozens of jobs, actually).

Ditto. I was a newspaper circulation manager, a paid lab assistant, then instructor, and was awarded a Welch Foundation Research (the grapes people) grant three years in a row. I made more money per year doing graduate research than I made in my first teaching job!

......
Sometimes having an advanced degree signals in my mind caution! ....

In addition to the leaches you mentioned I'm sure everyone has encountered the PhD who forgets to brush his teeth or keep his clothes clean, and has zero social graces. I worked with one almost that bad who had a PhD in Math for several years. He was a terrific guy, once you got past the eccentricities, which included B.O. and green teeth. Wrote fabulous code. After a while you ignored those lack of social graces.

[rfakhrai]

Re: What's your educational background?

This is quite an active discussion. I've taken a lot of what Detonate has said to heart because I'm in my last year for a B.S. in Geology. Finding a job after graduation is an enormous concern of mine especially because I do not understand the fundamental innards of networking and I have seen that it plays a very important role in getting a job (for better or for worse).

Luckily, I think my field will hold some opportunities but there's a common situation that plays out in the job hunt: if I don't have experience, and the potential job could give me that experience but at the same time requires experience to get the job in the first place, where do I start? I've considered just working on a master's immediately following the bachelor's for this reason.

I hope this provides some insight into how a 20-something is thinking right now, in this job market. We are all stressed about the future.