Wich is more important,motivation or a diploma?

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Permalink Reply by Burton Lee on March 6, 2008 at 5:59pm

Yes, without a degree, its much more difficult...but its also possible to have too many degrees...I have a PhD and MBA, and many companies will not look at me - the person - because they assume I am overqualified...so unless you fit in a specfic type of profile, which I do not, for example, its much harder to get their attention...which is why networking is some important, to get on the inside of an organization...thats why I used Xing and LinkedIn and Facebook a lot...are you on those social networking sites?

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Permalink Reply by isabelle de lentdecker on March 7, 2008 at 5:08am

Hy Burton,

Thanks for your reply.I am infact a member of ecademy and linkedin.I just recently started networking and you are right,it is important to do that.I do not have any experience of having to many degrees but i am in the process of employment at Cisco and VMWare,simply by motivation.Maybe it is possible after all?Anyway,it did cost me 7 years to get from nothing to this stage.

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Permalink Reply by Abdul Wahid Tanner on March 18, 2008 at 2:42am

Diplomas and degrees do have value especially to the screeners. These are the people who usually have many more applicants than they can ever hope to know in depth and use things like certifications, diplomas, and degrees as one way to reduce the number of applications that they need to look at. As a person advances in a career though, the value of the paper certificates is reduced.

On the job though, having a diploma or degree will not usually help solve real problems. This is where a person's skill, motivation, determination, creativity, etc. show their true value. These things do not diminish in value over time but are hard to quantify without real experience to document them and show others how you applied them. I know one person at Microsoft who has only a high school diploma but is one of our best developers.

So motivation and diplomas are both important but for different reasons. If you can get around the screeners by getting to know the hiring manager or others on the team, then you can explain your situation and maybe get an interview. A good interviewer will focus on what you can actually do and will only use your diploma information as a way to better understand which approaches you might be aware of when solving problems. Motivation is more important once you are actually working and goes a long way towards determining how much initiative a person will show but is not the only quality needed. For example, a highly motivated person with very little personal integrity will almost certainly not work well with the rest of the team.

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Permalink Reply by Christian Lenz on March 21, 2008 at 11:30am

This discussion points out a flaw in the recruiting system for most larger companies. The way I see it is that unless you know someone on the inside, you are relegated to the process that lands you on a screener's desk, who will often even be a computer program.

Putting myself in the shoes of the HR folks at say LMA or Boeing or Astrium, I see the challenge that's presented when you are trying to fill 10s or even 100s of positions following a big win. How do you do this efficiently and also effectively??? What parameters would you chose to pre-select so that you don't get a Realtor applying for a technical management role? (assuming the Realtor is a pure Realtor)... How do you screen out 'posers'?

Unfortunately a degree (and its source) is one of the few indicators that are 'hard', i.e. verifiable, vs someone's statement that 'they know their stuff'.

It is even harder in EU countries where labor laws are so restrictive that it is a huge risk to hire someone who may not be a fit since it is so much harder to layoff people, even for cause.

So I agree with Burton and the others that the best way for both parties, employee and employer is to network and to maintain relationships with people that are or may be a fit in the future.

Maybe the large company HR departments ought to sponsor more conferences, networking sites, lecture series, or just plain GTGs among industry professionals as a way to maintain relationships with past, current, and future employees.

I am curious what everyone else has to say about this. - CL

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Permalink Reply by Burton Lee on March 21, 2008 at 11:43am

HR professionals are trained to think in terms of broad employee categories...most of them have little technical background...so its difficult for most HR staff to make fine-tuned judgments about a person...only the hiring managers are really qualified to do that...I recommend hanging out in HR community forums to get a feel for how they think, what kind of questions and training they have...its quite illuminating...and limiting as well...

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