Resume's and no college education...

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I am finding it increasingly difficult to find better employment and I really think I get shrugged off because of no college.

I have the experience, I can do the work but the way companies word their offers makes it seem to me that if you have no degree then you have no chance.

For instance:

B.S & 1 year exp
A.S & 2-3 years exp
H.S & 4+ years of exp

I would qualify for the bottom one but because IMO I think they see I have no college I just get written off and thrown to the trash immediately.

FWIW this is for an IT position which IMO experience is valued a lot more than education. I've know a lot of people that had no degrees but were aptly able to do the job.

Seems like I will never get away from my dead end position now based on the above.
 
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I can feel for you. I'm also in IT and luckily I was hired out of school.

I graduated with an A.S. and have been at my current job for almost 3 years. I feel very fortunate.

What is your current job? The best advice I can give is to do a good job at selling yourself. Maybe look at some local schools or some place with a lot of IT and see if there's any internship or apprentice work?

Maybe a small local computer shop? College IT?

Before and while I was in college, I used to work for my town school district doing basic IT and then worked for over a year at a local computer repair shop. Guy at the shop loved me and wanted to bring me on in the worst way... just those places don't always pay enough.
 
Originally Posted By: sasilverbullet
Get an associates degree, it's easy and goes a long way.



This. I used to manage a bunch of support guys and they all had associate's degrees at the bare minimum. Some had 4-year degrees, but it was never a requirement. Although we didn't explicitly require specific certifications, we gave higher weight to those who had big ones like Network+, A+, MCSE, CCNA, various mfg certs (Dell, Apple), etc.

So either pursue an associate's degree, or maybe obtain a few of the hot certifications. If you have experience in the field, some of them will require only a few hours of studying before you take the exam.
 
Just turned 30, been doing my current gig for almost 10 years now.

The way the company is structured and managed it is a very dead end position. I am underpaid now for the work I do but it's hard to argue you deserve X amount with no education. I basically get paid 1/4 of what the lowest end consultant would charge for the same work.

Ya I know that has been bugging me that I never got around to getting any certs. I would easily pass them all now. Working on CCNA now actually(well studying).
 
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FWIW the head of our IS/IT department only has an associates.

I asked him what he looks for when hiring (as that is my field of choice) and he said an associates or 4 years experience, "but at the end of the day, I hire whoever has the right attitude and passion because that's the biggest requirement for this job."
 
Papers show that you are able to follow orders, and make people who are over you happy. And that you are willing to go with the flow and do things the conventional way (get schooling, then experience, then do things the way everyone else does things, since you're playing off the same playbook as everyone else).

Not saying that this is right, just a casual observation.
 
It could even help if you're "in school for..."

For starters, the school will have a career placement section with postings and alumni tips.
 
Three people in my career I've encountered inside a big company who didn't have a degree have been stuck inside that company, and forced to climb the inside ladder to advance. The 4 year degree makes you portable.
 
My wife is an employment counselor and yes, she says employers pretty much expect a Bachelors' degree these days. She tells people if at all possible, get an Associates over the next couple years and then maybe if you get hired work toward a [censored]. It's the world we live in these days.

John
 
I have dead end jobs and people with college degrees applying for them.

The economy is trashed. Instead of being fixed, the people in charge are driving it farther and deeper into the spin. Soon the spin will be a death spiral.

Learn a trade. That can't be outsourced. IT sounds like it can be easily outsourced. And if it can be, it will be.
 
I felt the same when I got out there working as a certified mech over 2 decades ago...no college degree, hard, labourous work (day in, day out).

One faithful day I made the ultimate decision to abandon my F/T mech job and went back to college...got my degree in CpSc, landed in IT industry from that point onwards, job prospect is so much better from that day onwards, and I can constantly work my way through with all sorts of certifications and be specialised in specific areas in IT.

I'm now in much better health and well-being than ever...all thanks to the decision I made back then.

Good luck to you.

Q.
 
I know a lot of successful people in the automotive sales, finance and management world who worked their way to $175K to $250K+ a year jobs w/o a degree. You could also consider becoming a tradesman, that's if you don't want to pursue a degree. There are millions of successful people in American that didn't go to college, it all depends on what direction you want to head in. There's nothing wrong with getting a degree though.
 
Originally Posted By: Challenger71
Getting your certs is what's important. Don't concern yourself with college degrees.



I don't agree with that.

As a hiring manager, having the cert is a good thing, but it's only part of the equation. Having the cert doesn't necessarily prove competency -- it proves you can memorize enough things to pass the exam. Obviously some of the exams are harder and do require practical experience, but certs are not the end-all, be-all.
 
I like to be positive about the value of a college education but Win has a valid point. Our kids are 16 so the subject is real to me. IT is almost a dirty word and moving to the Cloud is the in thing today. We are moving this Spring and do not plan to have a server room at the next location. Outsourced IT in 2012 when it became a painless option to save a lot of money.

One who can use their hands to do things like plumbing, electrical, etc with certs mentioned above will eat well I expect.

I do hold a terminal degree personally so it is not like I am anti-educational. I have taught the kids how to take care of our electrical and plumbing needs at the house and vehicle repair just in case they need it.

With state and federal governments demanding more and getting it business is a wild card today.
 
in terms of mobility, becoming a tradesman certainly has it's advantages (and job security).

IT is not as secure as it was initially thought to be (2 decades ago), and ditto with manufacturing sectors.

I see more local gals getting into trades these days: from boiler tech to electricians, plumbers, gas fitters, etc. Some may require more physical demand than others, but hey! at least they can make a steady living from there onwards, agree?

Q.
 
I hear where you are coming from, experience is sometimes more important than a degree, but it can go both ways.

I have been in IT for going on 8 years, now in a medium sized corporate Network Admin position going on 18 months.

I can tell you without a doubt that if you want anything besides entry level helpdesk or a small business "jack of all trades" ( been there done that, no fun!), a Bachelors degree is required. Most of the entry level Help Desk in our company have their AS degree too, huge positive on your resume.

Although getting your Bachelors a very expensive "piece of paper" it's just one of those technicality things, its a must have. Sure there may be Network Admins that know more than me in the field without degrees, but employers want to see that you dedicate 4 years to something and have the base knowledge for corporate level IT work. There is a lot more to being in corporate level IT than working on computers in a small business or mom and pop shop. Things like project planning/rollout, disaster recovery, storage, networking, proper documentation, social skills etc etc are all seeded in college.

You wont learn everything in college, some of it may even be redundant info like a lot of it was for me, but it's well worth the $40K for the doors it will open.

Before my degree I made $42K a year as a Jr. Network Engineer/Help Desk at a SMB. After my degree and being in my position 18 mos I make $62K a year and can only move up from here....

Certs are important too but IMO they can be worked at after your Bachelors. Then again I guess it depends on what you want to get into. If you want to be a network engineer and program switches all day then yep certs count more than a degree. Vice versa, if you want to get into a network admin job usually the degree trumps the certs.
 
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Get you certs first then try for a associates degree. Got to have current certs. Best thing to do is work on certs and associates degree at same time. Need both in this IT economy if you want to stay in IT.
 
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Originally Posted By: GaleHawkins
I like to be positive about the value of a college education but Win has a valid point. Our kids are 16 so the subject is real to me. IT is almost a dirty word and moving to the Cloud is the in thing today. We are moving this Spring and do not plan to have a server room at the next location. Outsourced IT in 2012 when it became a painless option to save a lot of money.

One who can use their hands to do things like plumbing, electrical, etc with certs mentioned above will eat well I expect.

I do hold a terminal degree personally so it is not like I am anti-educational. I have taught the kids how to take care of our electrical and plumbing needs at the house and vehicle repair just in case they need it.

With state and federal governments demanding more and getting it business is a wild card today.


In reference to your cloud/IT comment above. I believe the trick now is to be well versed in all the technology and provide a wide spread of value to your position. I tri-manage all of the networking, storage, server, virtual, cloud and backup infrastructure as well as some specialized systems at my company. Being versed in all of that makes me a valuable asset to my team.

The word "Cloud" comes up a lot and people seem to freak over it. In reality someone at your company still needs to maintain the connections from your infrastructure to the cloud. We have some of our data out on the cloud, trust me, it's still work to keep it going. Now, if your company wants to go to all hosted, which I don't see any SMB and up doing, then yes absolutely start looking elsewhere.
 
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