Holding a university degree can pay dividends during your career in the long term but can also open doors otherwise unavailable to you should you not have one at any point in your career.
Whether it’s a university degree, college diploma or a professional designation like a P.Eng, MCSE or other certification, having a designation can pay off even if you don’t realize it.
I can think of more than one company that told recruiters like myself to not bother sending them resumes of people who did not hold a university degree. In some cases, any degree would do. In other cases, the company preferred a specific degree or designation.
I recall one company we worked with who preferred Masters and PhD holders and they were a software development firm! It’s not like they were a research institution or similar but they preferred people that held post graduate degrees.
None of these companies actually spelled it out as blatantly as “don’t bother applying if you don’t have a degree” but in some cases, they might have mentioned in the job description that a degree was preferred.
I can tell you in no uncertain terms though that we were often instructed to not even bother with candidates who didn’t hold a degree so I know that there are some companies that have this view.
Looking at it another way, holding a university degree can pay dividends if the hiring manager you’re dealing with happens to have graduated from the same school you did. That can only help your cause! Don’t think people don’t take stuff like this seriously because they just might.
When I moved to New Zealand after graduating from university with a business degree, I got a job with a company where one of the managers had graduated from the same school I had. He told my manager about how good the school I had graduated from was and it helped me get the job.
I also got a recruitment job where my manager graduated from the same school I did and in fact, three of my colleagues (who he’d also hired) had too. Now, I didn’t get the job simply because of this fact but it certainly didn’t hurt.
At the end of the day, having a university degree can help you in ways you might not realize.
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