Laszlo Bock, Google’s former SVP of People Operations once said, “When you look at people who don’t go to school and make their way in the world, those are exceptional human beings. And we should do everything we can to find those people,”
Today’s tight labor market continues to be a promising landscape for job seekers, with economists even predicting more opportunities for professionals without a degree. One of the world’s largest job and recruiting sites, Glassdoor compiled a list in 2018 of top employers who are expanding their talent options by no longer requiring applicants to have a college degree. Companies like Apple, Google, Starbucks, Bank of America and IBM are all in this group.
IBM’s vice president says “instead of looking exclusively at candidates who went to college, IBM now looks at candidates who have hands-on experience via a coding boot camp or an industry-related vocational class”
Asim Qureshi, CEO Jibble Group and LaunchPad Writes,
As of today (7th February 2019), Jibble Group, which owns cloud apps Jibble and PayrollPanda, will no longer give any weighting to university degrees of applicant candidates in its selection process. I implemented this policy for a venture builder I run, LaunchPad, a few months ago, and the signs are positive.
Jibble Group is looking to grow to 180 staff by year-end 2019, from our current 65. This new policy will thus soon have a real impact on our talent pool. We will assess candidates on internal test scores, interviews, their skills, experiences, and references, which have, according to our analysis, shown to be a better indicator of success than degrees.
Academic performance will remain a consideration but it would not need to be at degree level. The idea that a university degree dictates how smart or hard-working an individual is fundamentally flawed. Degrees are only indicators of hard work during one’s education years, but to assume that hard-work in university and in the work-place are strongly correlated is cavalier.
For us, attitude, raw intelligence, creativity, skills, the ability to communicate, are far more important than candidates’ devotion to academic study. And further, people change, circumstances change, life has phases. Jibble Group’s new recruitment policy reflects this.
Be on the look out for my
Upcoming Book “Disrupt Yourself Or Be Disrupted” where
I talk about the impact of technology on employment, the urgency to
upskill yourself and how you can position yourself for this shift in
paradigm.
I am currently raising money to publish this book. I’ll deeply appreciate your support. Here is the official link to my crowdfunding campaign: www.thundafund.com/project/disruptyourselforbedisrupted
I am Nicky Verd
Follow me on Facebook
Leave a Reply