In a generation where there are a ton of jobs emerging that required no sort of college degree, this would certainly be hardly but a surprise. If you’ve always aspired to work at bigwigs like Apple and Google, now may be a good time to rejoice as it has recently emerged that these companies no longer require you to have degrees to work here. Glassdoor has listed 15 major organizations who don’t require employees to have a college degree for certain positions. Other organizations on the list include IBM, Ernst & Young, and Penguin Random House.
Companies have begun moving towards hiring employees whose experience and skill set match the job more than their degree does. A few years ago, Google stated that it is college degrees are becoming irrelevant as skills shine through on a resume. “When you look at people who don’t go to school and make their way in the world, those are exceptional human beings. And we should do everything we can to find those people”, former Google Senior Vice President Laszlo Bock said in a report.
Bank of America, Chipotle, Lowe’s, Home Depot, Nordstrom, Starbucks, Publix, Hilton, Whole Foods, and Costco Wholesale, have also featured on Glassdoor’s list. In 2017, IBM’s vice president of talent Joanna Daley told CNBC that about 15 percent of her company’s U.S. hires don’t have a four-year degree. She said that instead of looking exclusively at candidates who went to college, IBM now looks at candidates who have hands-on experience via a coding boot camp or an industry-related vocational class.
However, this no way means that you do not need to study post high school or that college degrees don’t have any value. It is important to note that college is where you first acquire the skill sets that make you employable. Maggie Stilwell, Managing Partner for talent at Ernst & Young said, “Academic qualifications will still be taken into account and indeed remain an important consideration when assessing candidates as a whole, but will no longer act as a barrier to getting a foot in the door.”
Currently, companies that look to following this agenda are only US-based, but it is certainly hopeful that companies in other countries, too, stop mandating college degrees as a prerequisite.
