Employers Eliminate Degree Requirements

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yet being a huge issue in this country and more
and more gen Z's opting for vocational education instead of
a four year degree. As we're chatting about the other day,
now comes this headline that more employers are saying they
will eliminate degree requirements by the end of this year.

(00:22):
Let's discuss. Brandy Shade is a hiring expert and Gallop
certified executive Leadership performance consultant and joins us on the
news radio Evan Kfab Brandy, Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Good morning, good good to have you here.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
This is thank you, This is I think encouraging news.
Presumably these are all kinds of different employers and they're
evaluating the kinds of positions for which they're hiring, and
some of them they're saying, look, job experience is more important, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Job experience has always been more important than the degree
itself in my opinion. But I also think that as
of now, a lot of employers are still really putting
the filter on of we've got to have somebody with
some sort of degree or some sort of certification or
that has shown us that, you know, they can withstand

(01:17):
four years or five years of doing something hard in
order to make it through our gates. And so what
will be interesting to see is even if they are
reducing the degree requirement, you know what's being put in
place the degree requirement in order to you know, understand
somebody's aptitude.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Interesting, that's part of the calculation for requiring a degree
in many cases, isn't it that not necessarily the not
necessarily the credential, But you've demonstrated that you're willing to
put in the work to get something worthwhile exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
You know, one is the work that you're willing to
put in, and two is the exposure to different cultures
and different professors and you know, different requirements. Then being
able to pass the tests and make it through the gates.
And you know a lot of times people get jobs
right out of college that aren't within their degree line.
You know, they'll get a different type of job. But

(02:13):
even though they have the degree, they're able to get
through the gates or requirements of the companies.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
What kinds of possessions are our employers eliminating degree requirements?

Speaker 2 (02:23):
For the biggest one that I have seen over the
past ten years is cybersecurity, because what they're looking for
is for these individuals to pass all the cybersecurity specific certifications,
and there are you know, cybersecurity degrees that have become
stronger as well. But when there's a certification program that

(02:46):
is very specific to the needs of the role, the
employers tend to lean on that as the indicator that
this person might be capable of doing the job, rather
than the degree.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
I would think also, Brandy, that if I'm an employer
today in almost any field, you've got to be pretty
good with AI. You got to know what you're doing
with AI.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, Understanding AI is important. Understanding how to use AI
and leverage AI is important. What is most important is
how to specifically use it in the sense of business,
which is still something that's really evolving. So how do
I make my business successful? How do I get my
profits up? How do I get my cost down? How
do I streamline the business? And right now there's a

(03:30):
lot of people still experimenting with AI that's making it
a bit inefficient. And tell people get really good with
how do I actually use it, how do I leverage it?
How do I tell it what I need it to
do in order to produce the results. And a I've
got to become more accurate as well. We've got to
be able to lean on it. Right now, there's still
a lot of inaccuracies that come out of it, so

(03:52):
we're having to correct for that. And so yeah, it's
absolutely necessarily a skill that everyone has to have moving forward,
just like using the internet was when it first came out.
Everybody just had to learn that, yes, to be successful.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
We talked to a broad audience here, Brandy, what would
you say to a young person regarding their education choice
going forward? You need a degree for this, you should
go to college for this, you should go to vocational
education for this. What would you tell them?

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah? Absolutely, I would say you need to, you know,
understand exactly what direction you want to start going, because
you know, we all change at some point, but you
want to understand that very clearly. And then you want
to understand is what is happening in that market today
and what are the requirements to get through the gates,
whether it's you know, an undergrad degree or a master's

(04:42):
level degree, is it a some sort of technical degree,
is it some sort of certifications or requirements? For example,
if you're going to go into the HR field, you
need to have all kinds of certifications through that PAF
of career and so you might as well learn what
you need sooner rather than later in the area that
you're I went into to get ahead of the rest
of the field.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
Great info, Brandy. Thanks for the time this morning, really
appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Thank you so much for having me