Any hiring manager has to decide how she feels about college degrees. Is it a must? Nice to have? Irrelevant? It comes up in conversation. You have to decide whether it influences your hiring decisions.<\/p>\n
Applicants want to know, too. Should I stick it out in college? Should I change my degree from psychology\u00a0to CS? (I know\u00a0an intern now facing that kind of question.)<\/p>\n
I interviewed an applicant a couple of weeks ago on a university campus and he wrote to ask me about college degrees.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hi Tyler,<\/p>\n
I have had this question lately and have asked several people and I’m interested in your opinion. Is a CS major worth it? Would a CS minor + Professional\/CS related job experience + self-learning give me the same job opportunities?<\/p>\n
For example when you interviewed you did not even see my r\u00e9sum\u00e9, you just cared about the coding\/algorithmic questions, what would have\u00a0happened if I did answer everything well but I was pursuing a CS minor instead of a Major? Would that make a difference?<\/span><\/p>\n Will a CS minor + Professional\/CS related job experience + self-learning be enough to get CS jobs?<\/span><\/p>\n Thanks for your time!<\/span><\/p>\n Raul<\/span><\/p>\n Raul,<\/span><\/p>\n Good question! The answer is: it depends.<\/span><\/p>\n While I didn\u2019t spend a lot of time on your r\u00e9sum\u00e9 others did. The purpose of the r\u00e9sum\u00e9 is to get an interview.<\/span><\/p>\n When I\u2019m at the r\u00e9sum\u00e9-reading stage the degree does matter. All other things being equal I would rather hire someone with a CS or CIT degree than someone with a Math or Biology degree.\u00a0 But work experience matters as well. If you have a CS minor plus a good portfolio and experience then your degree\u00a0wouldn\u2019t get in the way of working for me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One of the best intern interviews I ever had was with a Physics major. Didn’t get him. Dang!<\/p>\n Remember, not everyone thinks this way. There are still a lot of hiring managers that will discard you out-of-hand if you have an unrelated bachelors degree. In some ways, an odd bachelors degree is worse than just dropping out of college — just because it can be distracting.<\/span><\/p>\n Does that answer your question?<\/span><\/p>\n By the way, would you mind if I used your question as a basis for a post on ManagerJS.com<\/span>?<\/span><\/p>\n ~Tyler<\/span><\/p>\n Tyler,<\/span><\/p>\n So basically I could get a job interview and actually get the job with you with a\u00a0<\/span>CS minor + Professional\/CS related job experience + self-learning and lets say a major in Business Management?<\/span><\/p>\n You mentioned others reading my Resume, who are those others? and what role or power do they have in the hiring process? What do they decide?<\/span><\/p>\n Yes no problem, for sure you can use it, would be nice to read the post.<\/span><\/p>\n ~Raul<\/span><\/p>\n Raul,<\/p>\n For my part, I hire people based on what they can do, not solely their credentials. Majoring in CS or Web Development helps to inform me on what you can do. \u00a0Seeing a portfolio corroborates that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If you don\u2019t have a strong degree then you need even stronger portfolio and web experience. Yes, you can work for me without a degree in CS. One of my favorite past colleagues dropped out of high school.<\/span><\/p>\n Remember, some companies will never schedule the interview if you don\u2019t have a good degree. And when I\u2019m flooded with resumes I have to filter out the noise somehow. Filtering by degree is likely to happen from time to time.<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t recommend getting a non-technical degree if you want a technical job.<\/span><\/p>\n Oh, and for this interview process you needed to pass the screener just to get an interview scheduled. The screener looked at your r\u00e9sum\u00e9. Then to get a job offer your r\u00e9sum\u00e9 and the interview notes were reviewed by all the managers with openings. \u00a0They could have based their decision to offer or withhold based on your r\u00e9sum\u00e9.<\/span><\/p>\n Thanks for the thread!<\/span><\/p>\n ~Tyler<\/span><\/p>\n That was really helpful!<\/span><\/p>\n Thanks for your answer Tyler, I appreciate your time.<\/span><\/p>\n Enjoy your day! will see you soon in another interview haha ;)!<\/span><\/p>\n Raul<\/span><\/p>\n Managers, what do you think about degrees? Are they a must have? I know that for at least some jobs they are.<\/p>\n Applicants, what do you think? Would it change your major if you knew you could get web work with a different degree?<\/p>\n Finally: please don’t drop out of college just because I say you can get hired anyway. There’s a lot more to life than getting a good job. Plus, you might need the training.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Any hiring manager has to decide how she feels about college degrees. Is it a must? Nice to have? Irrelevant? It comes up in conversation. You have to decide whether it influences your hiring decisions. Applicants want to know, too. Should I stick it out in college? Should I change my degree from psychology\u00a0to CS?… Continue reading Would You Hire Me if I Didn’t Have a Degree<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[18,19,4],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-applying","tag-being-interviewed","tag-college","tag-your-resume","wow fadeInUp","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Manager Reply<\/h2>\n
Applicant\u00a0Follows-up<\/h2>\n
Manager Reply<\/h2>\n
Applicant’s Final Words<\/h2>\n
What do\u00a0you<\/em> think?<\/h2>\n