I’ve hired more people for more roles in more companies in more industries than I care to count. For me at least, hiring has always been about the skills.
But the question is, which skills?
The basic technical skills needed to do most jobs are the price of entry. You don’t get an interview or get past HR unless you can demonstrate those basic skills. If I’m hiring someone to review digital performance metrics, they need to have mastery of Google’s latest analytics platform — or I’ll never even meet them.
Who I actually hire
The skills that are actually going to get you a job working for me are very different. Do you have good judgment? Can you think on your feet? Are you a good problem solver? Do you speak and write well? Can you effectively communicate your ideas and advocate for them when needed? Will you be able to convince me I am wrong (if I am) and prevent a project from falling off a cliff?
If I am hiring a coder, I need someone who knows the current language, but more importantly, I want somebody who thinks like a coder and can handle whatever comes next. When industry standards shift, will I be reviewing resumes or confidentthat my team can flex as needed?
I like hiring people – even for entry-level jobs – who I believe can go on to be the next generation of leaders at my company, in the industry.
Do you need a degree to acquire all those skills?
One thing is for certain. The Google Cybersecurity Professional Certificate program does not list those broad skills in its curriculum.[i] Nor should it, it is an excellent, focused program targeting much valued technical skills.
Reality is if you laid out the technical foundations plus all the other skills I’ve just talked about, and looked for all the necessary bootcamps, internships, mentoring programs, and more needed to acquire them… you might be able to do it on your own. But you also would have recreated something that looks a lot like the undergraduate curriculum at a lot of schools.
The Bottom Line
My experience has been as a former student (a long time ago), as a parent, and as an employer. If you make wise choices about college, the whole can be a lot bigger than the sum of its parts.
Encourage your children to pursue programs and majors that do more. Look for opportunities that will give them superior technical skills, plus help shape them as people, teach them to think, future-proof their capabilities, and enable them to enter the workforce with not just a job but a career path.
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[i] https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/google-cybersecurity
