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Hiring Based on Skills Instead of College Degrees is Vital for the Future, IBM CEO Says (gizmodo.com)
What does the future of getting a job in the tech industry look like? According to the CEO of IBM, Ginni Rometty, it's important that tech companies focus on hiring people with valuable skills, not just people with college degrees. From a report: Rometty made the comments yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The CEO said that technology's fast-moving pace here in the 21st century makes it harder for people to find jobs and has led to disillusionment with the future. "With the new technologies that are out there, I think there is a huge inclusion problem, meaning there's a large part of society that does not feel this is going to be good for their future," Rometty said. "Forget about whether it is or it isn't or what we believe. Therefore they feel very disenfranchised."
[...] "So when it comes to education and skills, I think the government can't solve it alone," Rometty said. "I think businesses have to believe I'll hire for skills, not just their degrees or their diplomas. Because otherwise we'll never bridge this gap." "All of us are full of companies with university degrees, PhDs, you've got to make room for everyone in society in these jobs," Rometty said as other business leaders on the panel nodded their heads. She added, "We have a very serious duty about this. Because these technologies are changing faster with times than their skills are going to change. So it is causing this skill crisis. [...] We have to have a new paradigm. You would have to have new pathways that don't all include college education and you would have to have respect for that job -- not blue collar or white collar, I call it new collar."
[...] "So when it comes to education and skills, I think the government can't solve it alone," Rometty said. "I think businesses have to believe I'll hire for skills, not just their degrees or their diplomas. Because otherwise we'll never bridge this gap." "All of us are full of companies with university degrees, PhDs, you've got to make room for everyone in society in these jobs," Rometty said as other business leaders on the panel nodded their heads. She added, "We have a very serious duty about this. Because these technologies are changing faster with times than their skills are going to change. So it is causing this skill crisis. [...] We have to have a new paradigm. You would have to have new pathways that don't all include college education and you would have to have respect for that job -- not blue collar or white collar, I call it new collar."
Without degree HR will screen you out and you will never get a chance to demonstrate your skills. With a few exceptions of world-class experts that are already known, you need a degree. Degree is also necessary if you are mediocre, as at that point you are just a replaceable cog.
It's too expensive, both in time and money, for HR or hiring managers to test every single applicant to assess their skill level. Much easier and quicker to use education as a proxy or filter, then, if testing is necessary, you are only testing the skills of a few people.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I attended a private school. That school is now closed because it churned out the lowest quality product it could, flooding the market with under skilled employees.
A drop in college quality right now has a lot to deal with trying to run colleges like a business which cuts into the ethos of how a college is supposed to operate.
I have some college teachers who run their classes like businesses and I do have to say that they have a proper ethos in that, class is cancelled, but assignments are still due.
Granted my professor is the exception, not the rule, but that person left the business world because education was more fulfilling.
I am now in a public university and the difference can be noted between private for profit colleges and public universities. I would be far more willing to work with public university students. Teachers are more focused on making certain the students grasp the knowledge instead of trying to pass the student to the next course because tuition is everything. I think if we are to get quality students from quality public colleges, we need to properly fund our colleges so that they are less reliant on tuition and can focus on only passing students that put forward the effort.
Place something witty here
...that employers can take a glance at and as easily quantify as a stamp of approval on a topic as a college degree. Is there a better merit-based system out there? Or do we start going by IQ test results? Why not go to our genetic profiles (Gattaca-style)?
The problem isn't with the current system of looking at college degrees to judge someone's abilities. It's the devaluation of the college degree itself. People that aren't college capable are being pushed through the system for all the wrong reasons (universities are marketing to students harder than ever, student loans are being shoved down the throats of students that shouldn't ever be going to college, etc.).
Those students need to be given/shown another path to success, and the cheapest solution is to make high school diplomas matter again in real life - not just the college preparation, STEM world. High schools shouldn't just be a farm system for college recruiters; They should have more vocational skills introduced again - or at least make better connections with vocational schools to diversify what they have to offer. (My childrens' public high school - which is allegedly a "Grade A" school in a strong school district - has ZERO hands-on work classes like autos, shop, etc. The closest thing you can get is an Art class. You have to bus over to a vocational school for most of the day to get the hands-on work.
I know it's hard to imagine, but it appears at first blush they're actually walking the talk: I checked a couple of entry level posted jobs at IBM:
Entry Level HW Computer Technician/System Services Rep- Palatine, IL
https://careers.ibm.com/ShowJo...
and ..and BOTH required only High School Diploma/GED.
(Cyber) Security Services Specialist - Intern
https://careers.ibm.com/ShowJo...
That's great and refreshing.
-Styopa
Back in 1000s a bunch of aristocrats joined together and bargained for their rights and made John The Great sign Magna Carta. Its significance is limiting the power of the Monarch. Then the aristocrats ruled the country with their fiefdoms. Only they would get to be inducted into the Officer Corps of the army and all the teeming masses were consigned to "Other ranks" aka cannon fodder.
Renaissance, industrial revolution, the rise of mercantilism, colonialism all gave rise to new classes of wealthy people and they were inducted into the power structure by doling out aristocratic titles etc.
But the teeming masses, unseemly ungrateful bunch, made a power play and grabbed the hard won rights of the aristocrats for every one, suddenly the Old Money is on the back foot. They removed the power of the House of Lords, and The Commons had all the power, the Monarch a mere titular head, hereditary aristocratic titles have no meaning, the Heir to the Holy Roman Empire, Her Most Serene Princess someononeortheother is working for a wage in Economist or Tribune, ...
The remnants of inducting only the aristocrats for the Officer Corps of the armed forces, merchant marine, and Civil Service morphed into "Degrees from Top Universities". Eton and such schools in Britain, Ivy League in USA, where there is a significant quota for the Old Money in the form of Legacies. About 50% on merit, 25% for the minorities, 25% of the Old Money Legacies seems to be the current quota system. Once these degrees are awarded, the graduates with connections get on to the fast track and get very rewarding very light duty sinecures, risk free jobs sitting on boards and VP of Beer Analysis or Executive Vice President of Trivial things. The graduates with merit end up with ulcer creating tense difficult, but well rewarded careers. The token minorities with degrees from top school, their prospects depend on cultivating/developing connections with the other groups. The degree alone does nothing for the minority graduates.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The title says we must hire based on skills. The summary quotes Rometty as saying "...these technologies are changing faster with times than their skills are going to change". Said another way, technology is changing faster than the workforce can adapt, therefore we cannot hire based on experience or education -- we have to hire for the skills we need. Where do these skills come from? If the workforce is not learning the new skills fast enough and education is not providing the skills, then how are people obtaining these valuable skills?
"We want skilled employees!"
later...
*lays off skilled older employees*
At my company the party line is we hire the best and most distinguished people not the people who happen to be on hand for the job at hand.
At first this seems really dumb. A lot of jobs require some specific skills and it's hard to get people with less specialized experience to do them since they need to retrain.
But over the course of a career you see that the people who manage to stick around and succeed are the ones with a broad base and ability to shift and retrain.
THis is not exclusive from deeply experienced people who are good at one job. But the level of deep experience in new hires is nil. They have a few tricks they recently learned and maybe one great project they once did. But that's not deep expeince, it's more of a fad skill that could become the basis for getting started fast and developing, but it isn't deep experience yet.
Millenials however see jobs as more transitory in my experience. They are less career oriented. I don't know how that's going to work out for them. Maybe great.
But if you combine that with IBM hiring less degreed people and more for specific skills it's going to make people more disposable. It used to be the IBM was the pinnacle of developing career oriented workforces dedicated to the company. I guess not any more.
So what's so great about degreed people? Well especially for pHDs it proves they can take on a task and finish it. Postdocs show they can plan a job, and finish it on time. Undergrads show they can learn new things and if they have a masters, concisely reach for the right tools and apply them.
That's what degrees show. It's not just that you learned stuff, but you know how to learn, apply, and plan with new tools. Innovating, Planning the job and delivering on time are the real drivers and it's why senior people are actually worth their pay, at least the good ones are
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Disclaimer: I have an advanced degree.
That said, I've dealt with the job market a few times in the past ~5 years. I can tell you that most jobs with salaries > $75k (in the job markets where I work where this is well above the median and easily a comfortable existence for a single person) are posted in ways that are intended to filter our applicants as quickly as possible. One very quick and easy filter for HR to select is education. While it is not always a great way to find who is qualified it is probably the best that they can easily use and verify.
If an applicant says they have a college degree, it is pretty easy for the employer to verify this. But if they say they have worked on model ABC123 advanced frobulators for 7 years, that is more difficult to verify. Now if the applicant can point to something they have done - say a patent or a published article - relating to the ABC123 advanced frobulator, that becomes something that the employer can verify more easily again. Unfortunately the application processes at most large (and many medium or small) employers are behind the curve on doing this type of verification. At the same time it doesn't seem that companies want to put more than the minimum amount of human activity into human resources, so we're left with what we can do to either fit into the system or attempt to circumvent it. Tragically the latter works less and less well with many companies as time goes on.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
College (can) offer a great education - but that's not what companies want. Education offers the foundational theoretical knowledge of a domain - deep understanding of relevant principles that allow for faster and more flexible skill development. But companies want practical skills, not foundational knowledge. And practical skills are the domain of work experience and trade schools, not colleges.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Millennials make up possibly the most well-educated American generation ever. Suggesting that millennials value skills over education as a whole is counter-intuitive. In fact, millennials make up almost 50% of the workforce. Has this "millennial mindset" changed the makeup of the white-collar workforce in spades? Why would the IBM CEO feel the need to make this statement of opinion if it has already become a fact in HR? Finally, if you were in charge of hiring for a new project that leveraged a new technology, would you rather hire someone with two year's experience in this new technology or someone with a four-year degree that they received at a university whose curriculum did not include said technology?
A degree and experience isn't mutually exclusive. We require both for prospective employees.
The problem is how many skilled people might you be excluding based on your college degree requirement. A college degree should be a crutch, it helps you acquire new skills rapidly and should offer the foundational knowledge to give insight into why the various tools and processes behind those skills exist in the first place. Essentially it should be something the student elects to get on his own accord, not because someone requires it. Thus the cost/benefit analysis of a college degree can once again fall upon the person paying it, and he doesn't feel obligated to it (and perhaps universities can finally get around to reshaping themselves to fit the needs of the world, not existing to serve themselves).
Anyone who can learn a skill should have equal chance at the job, provided he can demonstrate competence with that skill in some fashion. Doctors have to pass their licensing exam, lawyers have the bar exam. It makes sense that to declare competence with a skill should require some meaningful demonstration of that skill.
A college degree has never offered that, and I spend a lot of time interviewing people and basically administering them a final exam, when I really should be talking to them about other things. However, if they can't pass my final, the rest is worthless anyway. They may have a great attitude and really want to contribute, but if they don't have the skills... I got nothin. HR makes sure I don't see anyone without at least a Master's degree, and precious few of them seem to have the skills. So I'm not sure the status quo is really working for anyone.
Personally I think the only solution to this problem is to forbid college degrees from being considered in employment. Obviously this is a huge grenade to throw in the field, but until we can come up with some better way, the system will continue to be broken.
Ah yes, the 'programming challenge' final.. i.e. the 'guess what specific niche that if you have a solid base can probably look up in 10 minutes but if you don't know it off the top of your head and solve it the way I picture it, that means you don't know anything!' test.
illennials make up possibly the most well-educated American generation ever.
No - they're the generation that spent the most time in schools. Education is related, but not the same.
Why would the IBM CEO feel the need to make this statement of opinion if it has already become a fact in HR?
Perhaps to emphasize their willingness to hire form diverse backgrounds. Diversity is all the fashion these days, after all.
Finally, if you were in charge of hiring for a new project that leveraged a new technology, would you rather hire someone with two year's experience in this new technology or someone with a four-year degree that they received at a university whose curriculum did not include said technology?
I'd rather hire someone who is "smart and gets things done", plus is not a jerk. New technologies are usually quick enough to ramp up on, and I don't care where someone picks up the tools of the trade: if they can both code and design, that's what matters. Design optional for entry-level hires.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
> Millenials however see jobs as more transitory in my experience. They are less career oriented. I don't know how that's going to work out for them. Maybe great.
I'm not sure they have a choice. Companies don't train any more.
If you train on your own, up to and including a new, verifiable, cert/degree/whatever, your employer has no obligation to recognize that, let alone give you a raise. Frankly, your employer would rather have your cheaper replacement, so why bust your ass to get the training?
Let's say you get the training anyway. Your current gig (probably) won't value it, so your only viable option is to tout your new skills at a different employer, hopefully getting enough cash to justify the loss of stability. Lather, rinse, repeat until you find some position/situation/lifestyle you actually want to be.
Then start praying it lasts. In many modern situations, it won't. I don't know whether companies are going bust at historically high rates, but it sorta smells that way to me.
Anyway, I'm not convinced that the next generation eschews stability, so much as lacks a path to it.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
Experience has virtually no correlation with understanding or even skill. Concrete skills have a half life of about 2-3 years.
A senior engineer is someone who has that 2-3 years of depth, multiple times, and thus can generalize and form best practices that aren't specific to a given tech stack (and thus may be useful for the latest thing).
. We need to be fast, correct the first time, and our projects need to be easy for others to use/manage
Uh huh. Good, fast, and cheap: pick at most 2, and you're probably getting 1. But it's easy to deceive yourself about quality.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
They did what the boot camps for those certs do they pound it into their head in a short time and test them quickly before it falls out again.
Students that can read a few chapters in a book and retain the info for only a short time just long enough to pass a test isn't a new thing I did it all through high school with my History classes. Pissed my history teacher off to no end because he knew exactly what I was doing reading through the material twice the night before acing his tests and then forgetting everything I read a few days later.
In my country, public universities are the norm rather than the exception, and they are free. Yes, free.
The caveat? Well, that it feels like a million students enter every year with about 100 graduating.
This basically means that nobody, really nobody, gives a shit about you. Nobody cares, and there's also not any reason to give a shit, too, since where you come from, there's plenty more. If you're good, study hard and put yourself behind it, it's very doable. If you don't, well, move aside, there's like 500 people who want your slot. NEXT!
So what eventually graduates is really, really, REALLY good. These people are perfect in self organization (because without, they wouldn't survive a day, let alone a semester or even graduate), they are perfect in the field they studied (because the profs don't give a shit about anyone not making it, the general sentiment is that if have a drop out rate of 90% in your course, at least you don't have too much dead weight to haul around) and they are in general quite capable of holding a sensible and polite conversation with a customer or supplier without compromising their position and without being unreasonable (because basically if you're either a pushover or pushy, your chances of getting anywhere with the department secretaries are zero).
And yes, these people are in high demand.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Second or third attempt to find an interesting entry point to the potentially meaningful discussion. At this point I can't pretend to remember why I should have such expectations for Slashdot. So let me try to formulate a cohesive response so I'll have better ideas what to search for on the last attempt...
What IBM is actually doing is trying to find and leverage the best solutions so the work of the top employees (which could be defined in terms of the highest productivity and maximum profitability) can be leveraged over entire industries. I do NOT believe that IBM is worried about all the less-than-very-best employees with less-than-very-top skills who become unemployed as a result. IBM just wants to sell the best results, and the REAL business problem (as IBM sees it) is that not enough corporate cancers are buying what IBM is selling.
What employers REALLY want is NOT degrees NOR experience. What the employers want is the cheapest employees who can accomplish the work to produce the maximum profit. Transient employment? Perfect. If IBM can deliver the necessary skills for the 37 minutes it takes to get the job done, then that's great. Don't let the door hit you on your way out.
Disclaimer called for? Or should I just AC it? Long story there, but Slashdot isn't worth the time. And why am I even wasting the keystrokes on an AC branch?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Instead of asking for perfection or H1-b, perhaps it might be better to build such inhouse.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
^ The reason for the alleged talent shortage in a nutshell.
Linux/Unix admin to devops is a great example of this. You have thousands of highly experienced people floating around who are perfect candidates to shift into devops but overnight all of what is essentially performing administration with some new toolchains listing are looking for software developers with the same prejudice toward high degrees the software development field is plagued with. The big problem? Administration was not plagued with this prejudice.
The need to get familiar with git/jenkins/and an automation framework should not bar you from hiring someone with 10-20yrs experience managing enterprise systems into your enterprise. A degree certainly shouldn't. You don't need someone who can spout impressive theory you need someone who has experience with those massive loads and critical operations and who knows where design choices will block you in a few years down the road. Those tools are easy and a degree really makes no difference one way or another the skill at play here is just coding. It's takes longer to get familiar with the specific environment in any large organization than it does to pick up a new toolset.
I would certainly be looking for diverse experience (a handful of shops vs sitting in one seat for 10-20yrs) but a proven track record is more valuable than a degree any day.
One big thing, is they have all the people who made the last successful product still on staff, who think a particular way. So the next product will be made with the same type of thinking and basically look like and act like the older product,
When did we start talking about Google?
Diversity brings in a new way of looking at the problem.
Absolutely. At least, if you're talking about diversity of technical background, instead of diversity of physical appearance (of all things).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
A proven track record working in the field with success at at least a handful of different locations over time (not decaying in the same seat the whole time) is worth more than a degree any day. A fresh college graduate doesn't really seem to do better than any reasonably intelligent individual hired from anywhere.
We proved it at one of our workplaces. Instead of the college grads we normally hired for entry level we hired the guy who did our water deliveries. In six months he was one of the best entry level people we had and while I'm not there anymore I know he has gone on to have a solid career. He just needed to get experience under his belt to edge through hiring processes.
Citation needed. I call bullshit. I've seen many 'coders' quit the industry after a year or two, they were very rarely the 'good ones'.
The best metric for coders I've found remains 'number of languages proficient'. Not perfect, but posers are quickly found out.
Six months to be up to speed, no programming experience. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I had a similar experience, but came to a different conclusion.
I was at my first employer (a Dow 20 company) for 13 years. During that time I received the maximum raise corporate policy allowed (1.5x the average) almost every year and was promoted 4 times. I also led some awesome projects, always on time and budget, but more importantly, that exposed me to a tremendous range of knowledge in my field. At the end of those 13 years, a local company offered me 50% to leave, and I finally took it. I went on from there a few years later to another company that offered me a bit more.
It was that second move that was my big mistake. It turned out to be a bait and switch in which they stuck me in management and started raising my salary even more. I'm great at business and management, but it isn't my passion, and I'm honest to a fault. Turned out honesty is not the best policy when getting negotiating government contracts. An ex-marine heading up a government facility tried to get me to make a promise I couldn't while attending our corporate Christmas party and asked me to go outside with him when I wouldn't mouth the lie he wanted.
In short, moving ended up souring me to the whole career which I abandoned.
A friend that I started with in '86 is still at that original employer though he was as talented as I was and could easily have asked for a similar raise to leave. I wish I'd stayed with him. He's much happier and more relaxed, and, he hasn't done so bad. His 401K and investments are in the multi-million level now since he saved 25% from day one in '86. But, he still lives in the same apartment. I now understand that.
That's why you _always_ include the job description right back at them, in 2 point white on white text in the margin of your resume. Duh. Along with a super long list of skill keywords you might or might not actually own.
I don't know why everybody doesn't do it. Aren't you supposed to be smarter than some HR moron?
I wouldn't hire anyone that wasn't smart enough to work that stupidity for their benefit.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Well, affirmative action privilege is great, right up until it hits the wall of meritocracy and skill :)
Now, if privilege == skill, well, that's a great position to be in. Skills don't care about your feelings :)
Ah yes, the 'programming challenge' final.. i.e. the 'guess what specific niche that if you have a solid base can probably look up in 10 minutes but if you don't know it off the top of your head and solve it the way I picture it, that means you don't know anything!' test.
If that's what you get, the interviewer doesn't know what they're doing. Programming tests should test your ability to solve problems and write code. They shouldn't require any knowledge beyond basic algorithms and data structures, plus, of course, a knowledge of the syntax and idioms of the language you're using.
And if the interviewer is expecting you to solve the problem in the same way they would, that's bad, too. Any correct solution should be fine. I had one candidate who created a better solution than the one I had in mind, which is pretty impressive since I'd already had several of my colleagues and a few dozen interview candidates give it a shot, plus spending a fair amount of time on it myself. Yes, he got the job, and has excelled.
Further, if the interviewer is doing the job right, it shouldn't even matter that much whether you solved it correctly! That's not the point. The point is to see how you think your way around the problem. Someone who blunders around blindly and happens to stumble onto a good approach is not going to get as high marks from me as someone who methodically and intelligently works through the possibilities and can clearly explain their rationale, even if they happen to miss something. (Though the best programming challenges don't rely on the candidate getting any flashes of insight, and can be solved fairly quickly by anyone competent.)
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.