Apple, IBM, and Google No Longer Require College Degrees for Employees
Apple, IBM, and Google are just a few of the companies that have removed their requirements for a college degree.
While we are huge fans of formal education that adds value, there is a huge skills gap across America and not just in manufacturing. We agree with Gary Vaynerchuk that there are too many people that are taking on $200,000 in debt to “find their passion” rather than to gain specific skills that will benefit their career.
A new report from Glassdoor finds 15 companies that are easing their formal education requirements. With unemployment continuing to drop across the United States, companies are finding it increasingly difficult to fill positions. The amount of time it takes to hire someone for a position once it’s posted has increased by over 100% in some parts of the country.
IBM’s Vice President of Talent, Joanna Daley, told CNBC in 2017 that around 15% of new company hires do not have traditional four-year degrees. Instead, the company was increasingly looking for candidates who have hands-on experience through boot camps and other training programs. Google has taken this approach since 2014, when Laszlo Bock, Google’s SVP of People Operations told The New York Times “When you look at people who don’t go to school and make their way in the world, these are exceptional human beings. And we should do everything we can to find those people.”.
Top talent that knows their passion and knows their skills and weaknesses can benefit greatly from attending college. However, we’re increasingly seeing the most successful people in their mid-30s and 40s are those were not sure what they wanted to do when they graduated high school and 1) found an internship in a field or company they were interested in and did that for a few years 2) took non-formal education path (e.g. coding boot camp) 3) applied to one of the many companies that do not require a four year degree. They then either go to school part-time or they work for a few years (and sometimes change jobs multiple times) to learn what they’re really good at so that they can focus their career on that.
We love this increasingly entrepreneurial approach to education by people and that companies are beginning to embrace it as well.
We’re also seeing companies are turning to new platforms like Toppick to help fill their talent pipeline with qualified candidates and boost diversity by identifying high-potential individuals with non-traditional career paths.
Here are some of the companies you can score a job at if you don’t have a college degree:
Current openings include: product manager, recruiter, software engineer, product marketing manager
Hiring locations include: Mountain View, CA; Austin, TX; San, Francisco, CA
Penguin Random House
Current openings include: marketing designer, publicity assistant, senior manager of finance, production assistant
Hiring locations include: New York, NY; Colorado Springs, CO; London, England;
Apple
Current openings include: design verification engineer and engineering project manager
Hiring locations include: Santa Clara, CA; Las Vegas, NV; Austin, TX;
IBM
Current openings include: financial blockchain engineer and lead recruiter
Hiring locations include: San Francisco, CA; Raleigh-Durham, NC; Atlanta, GA
= = = = = = QUESTION FOR YOU = = = = = =
Do you think a college degree is needed for most entry-level positions? If not, why do so many companies require them?
Used to be, you were hired based upon the quality of your attitude, work and experience. I never got my 4-year degree, but worked 20+ years as a paralegal. I started with a correspondence (by snail mail) paralegal course thru Kaplan, then joined national societies and took every advanced credential I could get. The studies to get those ‘resume stuffers’ led me to LOVE my job. Since then, a 4-year degree (thru an ABA approved school) is required to be a paralegal. I hired people in my position, and I learned that a willing worker with a positive, pro-active attitude is ALWAYS preferable to a degree. Always.
That being said, I think many companies require degrees for entry level positions because it saves the recruiters so much time. It’s much easier and faster for many company leaders to evaluate candidates using courses and GPAs than to evaluate their ability and willingness to contribute from interviews. Also, a candidate’s college performance provides hiring professionals a good CYA in case the hire goes south. “This guy was stellar in school!,” may justify a poor hire. “He interviewed really well” and “I really liked him,” doesn’t protect anyone.
I think at least some junior college shows that a person can show up on time, pay attention and follow through. But the question needs clarification. What kind of entry level positions? I live in a town where being a good drinking buddy and little else seems to be enough to run for office. False fronts did okay for Wild West towns, not for modern city government or workers.
Of course we need to have people that are articulate and can show that they have real intelligence….BUT, we have become too reliant on the “college degree”. Some jobs were being filled by people that had a degree in the arts while people that had actual hands on production experience (or something similar) were passed over simply because of the college requirements. I have seen far to many people not only get jobs but also get promotions over people that deserved the positions much more than the person that got them. This happened simply because too many employers had that mandatory college degree requirement. They should have always had an exception possibility from the very beginning. The bottom line is that it’s great to see common sense and fairness returning to the US in the work environment. This will only help us strengthen our position in the world, whether it be in manufacturing, production, design, whatever.