For the handful of hardworking 20 somethings who did their best in college, but can’t understand why their employers have them file and fax:
“My ability (and desire) to do today as a percentage of what I could and was willing to do 18 years ago I would say is about 20%. I’ve lost, as far as I can in my estimation, about 80% of my worth as an employee. But this has nothing to do with me or my previous hard work ethic. It has to do with progressive credentialism.”
Doesn’t anybody accept personal responsibility? If the guy had any balls he’d do what the rest of us do – start our own company.
Cap’n-
Robin’s done some homework on this exact subject.
She’s very, very good.
I’m not sure if I can comment on your site, so I will here.
The problem with the Trades right now is companys asking for Red Seal Journeyman Certification when all they need is a handy guy who can use a screwdriver without cutting himself.
I can (and have) rebuilt EFI turbo engines, and modified them, but without a ticket, can barely get a job changing oil.
Can’t even get an apprentice job without a boring year in College showing the Instructor how to do the job, babysitting teenagers, and paying for the privilege.
end rant
dwright
Ah yes, credentialling. One day I was in a cab chatting with the cab driver (often an illuminating experience) when he started to complain that he really didn’t make much money and wished to go back to the days when he operated heavy construction machinery (which is lucrative, with better hours than hacking cabs). I asked “what happened?” It seems that he had learned the operation of construction machinery from his father and was hired on the basis of his reputation. “Then one day I showed up at this construction site and the foreman asked me for my papers.” He was in his fifties and illiterate; so it was game over.
Would you like fries with those credentials?
Wow, David, you seem to have missed the mark by a record amount.
This is a problem with no easy solution. Back when I was running a news service, I occasionally applied to the Province of MB for various positions. Without exception, I was disqualified for every position because of a lack of a Bachelors.
I *ran* a staff of 10 without a degree, yet I wasn’t qualified for entry-level positions with the province?
All this does is drive up debt. Making a B.A. the new high school diploma is fine, except university isn’t free*.
*Yes, I know public schools aren’t really free.
Had this problem in IT circa 1995, when Novell and Microsoft each had an extensive credential program. The trouble was that many just memorized the material, busted the exam, but otherwise were clueless.
However, I still can’t understand why employers want college degrees. Nothing I would’ve learned in college, either today or 30 years ago (my Gosh has it been that long?) would prepare me for what I do today. And, after all, Bill Gates doesn’t have a college degree. Neither did Steve Jobs, and Micheal Dell only went back AFTER he endowed a building or two at U-T.
Ahhhh…you hit the proplem,Yukon.Go to a socialist province,and it’s not what you know,but who you blow.Them’s the plain facts.A real business man/woman will hire the one who can do the job,not based on their basket weaving course.
Those who can do…those who can’t control the credentials.
Case in point…one of the best bush pilots I ever flew with (thousands of hours of off airport flying) had no pilots liscence because he couldn’t qualify for a commercial ticket due to color blindness.
Start your own business, no credentials needed. Not usually anyways.
It is all part of the Canadian University Puppy Mill Scam. Here in Alberta, a Journeyman Carpenter with 4 years of Trade School is not allowed to build a roof truss unless it is certified by a Canadian University Puppy Mill Engineer. Canadians now have to pay for an engineer to certify what has been done for hundreds of years by tradesmen. None of the new legal requirements based on need. Ie, no plague of roofs have collapsed and killed hundreds of citizens, before engineers were required. But the Universities are hard pressed to find work for their ass wipe degrees so lobby the governments to regulate further and create demand for their Canadian University Puppy Mill Degrees.
@geek49203: The industry solved that problem internally. Once it became obvious that the credentials didn’t mean anything, people started toughening up their interview process. One place I worked hired six MCSEs for every one open slot, knowing that on average only one of them would be qualified and they’d need the hands-on time to identify that one.
Credential inflation should be a self-correcting problem. In system administration results talk and BS walks, so the system worked. In software engineering, though, there’s a widespread institutional incompetence problem, so failures caused by the over-credentialed and under-qualified routinely get blamed on other factors.
Affirmative Action, Government EEOC requirements and Jackpot Litigation also play a role in this farce.
President of the company showed me a resume today. Guy was applying for a job in our marketing communications program.
Had lots of credentials – internship at a major newspaper, journalism degree, slew of writing credits. But he didn’t get considered for an interview because of the following three lines on his resume (repeated here exactly, except for the name of the innocent employer):
Employment History
ABC newspaper, Proofreader
201-2011
All the credentials in the world ain’t gonna help you now, bunky!
Since we are on the subject of B.S. Credentials here is another:
CSTS (Construction Safety Training System)
8 hr $80 course on how to not to do something stupid and get yourself killed on a jobsite.
Mandatory now.
It’s not just credentialism in the upper professions, it’s worked its way all the way down to the lowest job.
Many moons ago, all anyone needed,
to get a low end job was to fillout an application.
Nowadays ask any teenager how elaborate their resume needs to be, to qualify for a job taking out the garbage at McDonalds.
Damn straight dwright. Had to take that useless course myself on the last industrial site I was on.
Don’t stand on the top of a step ladder…even though that’s writtten on the second last step of every step ladder now made.
I do have a keen sense of the obvious…honed by dealing with safety men/women that couldn’t find thier ass with both hands.
I still remember the days when programmers were hired on the basis of experience, not credentials. When I went into med school I figured that if I ever got tired of medicine I could get back into programming but now I wouldn’t have a hope of getting hired despite over 40 years of experience in the field.
What I’ve found is that people who are self taught are, on average, far better than those who take a course and come out with a piece of paper that says they’re “qualified”. 30 years ago CompSci students were the butt of many jokes from engineers I worked with as they seemed preoccupied with writing pretty code and documenting the blindingly obvious whereas we wrote ugly code that ran as efficiently as possible on the machines of the day. My usual comments were the date and time I started the program and some terse notes about a particularly non-obvious piece of code.
I did have to go the conventional route to get an MD and one of the reasons I like working in a small center is because one gets to manage patients completely on ones own in hospital rather than having to refer to a host of subspecialists which is the pattern in large cities.
The solution to credentialism is to allow people to challenge exams; either a written exam or a practical exam. This would likely be fought tooth and nail by the education industry who firmly believe that there is no other way to learn anything than through their expensive and time consuming programs. Far better to have people learn on the job than waste time learning irrelevant materials. Unfortunately high school has become so dumbed down now that what I learned in math, chemistry and physics in my last year of high school in Alberta isn’t taught until 1st or 2nd year university; or never if one wants to become a teacher.
“It is not titles which honor men, but men who honor titles.”
I like your thinking Loki…Set a standard and let anybody try. I got my pilots liscence when I was 16 and never went to a moment of groundschool.
When I worked in the patch I made decent side money re-writing the BOP test for consultants who were too busy to come in from the field.
The toolpush I broke in under was illerate but taught me more then any schoolroom I ever sat in.
The man who taught me to swing big hook cranes had a grade 8 education. He also was a commercial pilot.
None of these people died falling off the top step of a ladder.
yup dwright & syncrodox. Went though something very similar last week actually.
After 16 years self employed doing work and installations on construction sites as a subcontractor, was told I suddenly wasn’t qualified to use an x-acto knife, cordless drill, and >6′ ladder or handle any chemicals by a customer. Spent 8 hours being treated like an idiot at various “training courses”.
Good news is now that I have this fancy little laminated card in my wallet and fresh new certificate on my wall I’ll be charging that particular customer a premium on every future job due to my certified skills.
Perhaps part of the problem is that more people are going through university these days than the marketplace can find jobs for. Inevitably some of them will be disappointed in that they have a fancy degree with plenty of learning but no place to use it. Of course, even at best, for many jobs you concentrate on a small amount of the high end of what you learned and don’t use much of the rest (other than the basics).
I have also wondered whether, since the stagflation of the 1970s, businesses had to cut costs and they started by ditching a large part of the personnel department, figuring they could cease expensive individual testing and save cash by merely looking for the Bachelor’s as the first step in the weeding-out process.
In some occupations at least, the creep of credentialism is due to our legal system & those masters of hindsight, lawyers. Credentialism is another attempt by firms & industries to reduce liability.
Shakespeare addressed the solution to lawyers in one of his plays.
Stereotypical student story/urban myth goes something like this: Student cashier is handed $20.14 for a purchase that was $15.14. Couldn’t figure out the correct change.
Good luck kid.
I do have a keen sense of the obvious…honed by dealing with safety men/women that couldn’t find thier ass with both hands.
Yes, practically everyone knows it’s bull, but the ‘system’ requires them. From there it builds to institutionalized parasitism, all stemming from a institutionalized lack of taking personal responsibility.
If I walk across my employers yard, slip and break my leg, it’s not the employers fault. If I experience debilitating stress on the job, it’s not the employers fault. Yet that’s our system. Workmens compensation will pay. Hence, parasites to point out the obvious. Their wages come out of the wages of those who actually do the work.
Safety first, bah. If safety were first I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning.
More of that fallible reason, I suppose we can blame it on that…always a scapegoat to avoid responsibility.
“Additionally, my work ethic, worn down by misleading job after corrupt job after the world’s dumbest most incompetent bosses, is nothing compared to what it used to be.”
Your work ethic has shrunk, and it’s your bosses who are entirely to blame? Aren’t you all about taking personal responsibility and eschewing victimhood? Or have you finally seen the light and recognized that individual work ethic alone isn’t enough, that there can also be structural barriers and external factors that impede one’s entry and advancement in the modern economy?
“Much as I like to point out what I was willing to do and what I was capable of, those points are moot because that’s not what the market demanded. The market demanded a dataentrysman when I was 22. Not their next all-star analyst…”
Didn’t you apply to Goldman Sachs straight out of university? And you were expecting them to immediately recognise you as an “all-star analyst”? And you expected to be promoted to chief risk officer after a single year’s worth of on-the-job experience? And a junior executive after two? Ever consider the possibility that the reason you didn’t get hired by them is your sense of entitlement and your general arrogance and disdainful attitude? But I guess that requires taking some modicum of personality responsibility, which apparently you don’t do any more.
Davenport, tell me the course YOU took where the job you do even faintly resembles what you learned in school.
Employers lie about their requirements. The bigger the outfit the more they lie. Welcome to life.
Davenport:
Why post here?
Since no one here cares what you have to say (the same holding true for me as well, but at least I’m smart enough to realize it), go and take it up with the Captain himself by posting your supercilious rebuttal on his blogsite. I’m sure that if he deigns to answer you, you’ll receive the verbal smackdown you so richly deserve.
Davenport consistently demonstrates the difference between knowing stuff and having a clue.
I’d like to suggest credentialism is a direct result of the advent of the HR department. I have no credentials but a lifetime of experience in my field. Being interviewed by HR people has been amoung the weirdest, stupidest experiences of my life. The have no idea how to gauge my experience, and don’t even know the lingo of the field so they compare what they can understand; letters behind the name. When I interview with a senior in the field it takes about 10 minutes and I’m hired.
I suspect that the bulk of credentialism is as a result of Insurance Companies….
nv53: ‘individual testing’? Let’s remember that even criminal background checks are illegal raciss-m nowadays.