The college degree is rapidly becoming obsolete. Employers are considering other means of qualifications to find the right employees and they’re getting rid of the degree requirement. This decision isn’t exclusive to low-skilled jobs but high paying careers at places like Apple, Google, and IBM recently got rid of their college degree requirements.
Employers realize in order to stay relevant in today’s rapidly changing world they must accept that college degrees don’t translate to skillful workers. Anyone can get a bachelor’s degree these days and the majority of college graduates are ill-prepared for the workforce.
Another reason why degrees are becoming obsolete is due to The Law of Diminishing Returns. The degree’s value has declined over the past decades due to its loss of rarity. Back then during the Boomer generation, only the top percent of college applicants were accepted and you were almost guaranteed a job after graduation. According to Business Insider, in 1965 only about 12% of Americans held a Bachelor’s degree compared to over 25% today.
Create Value
Fortunately, due to the changing climate of the career world, there are new ways to showcase your value to employers today. In short, do free work projects or attend technical school. Gaining real-world experience and creating projects will set you apart from the crowd of degrees.
One way to get your foot in the door is to work for startups or a small business. Oftentimes they are still figuring out how to efficiently run their company and they need all the help they can get which is a prime opportunity to do a work project for them.
Learn New Skills
First, find a skill you like and learn it. There are countless ways to produce a work project. Some of the skills you can learn are photography, Photoshop, web design, social media marketing, or coding. You can learn just about anything for free on YouTube and Google.
Another idea is to find a family-owned restaurant or some other small business, and take a look at their website and social media. Do the photos look as if they were taken with a phone? Does the website look cluttered? What kinds of advertising can you do to increase social media engagement? Do they need help on their branding?
An important way to signal value is to create your own website. If you’re not coding savvy there are many online resources such as Bluehost. A personal website will help future employers get to know you. Think of it as bringing your resume to life. This will also help showcase your portfolio.
Employers want to see samples of your work and know what you’re capable of doing. Look for areas of improvement and come up with a solution to fix it. For example, if you are working for a small franchise and their corporate training is difficult to remember, create your own training manual then present it to your boss.
Make a Pitch
Once you have figured out a solution come up with a plan and pitch it to the business. You can make a short video outlining your plan or send a Google Doc so that employers can easily comment and ask questions. Be clear and concise about how you plan to solve their problem and set a deadline.
Doing the above will make you more hireable compared to a college graduate who hasn’t demonstrated any practical skills. Apple, Google, and IBM are adapting to the times by axing their degree requirements. If other companies followed suit and hired innovative, hard-working people then would we see better and productive workers? Graduates are drowning in debt, but we still encourage every young person to earn a degree despite the increasingly lower chances of getting a job after graduation. It’s clear that the golden age of college is over.