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This is true for some companies, sure. It doesn't tell the whole story, though. As a counter-anecdote, I've had no trouble being hired in engineering roles with

This is true for some companies, sure. It doesn't tell the whole story, though. As a counter-anecdote, I've had no trouble being hired in engineering roles with no CS degree, and nor have several acquaintances of mine.

einhverfr 13y ago
In my experience it is the general rule (there may be exceptions) for companies which have HR do resume screening unless you have an in with the employer or manager.
- nostrademons 13y ago
  "unless you have an in with the employer or manager." That's usually the key point. I have a number of friends without college degrees that do just fine. Their usual modus operandi is to meet someone from the company at a conference, consult for them for a while, and then get hired once the company sees how awesome their work is. I wish this weren't needed, but hiring managers function under conditions of very low information, and they wade through too many resumes of low quality to avoid filtering it on some criteria. Degrees and GPA are the most easily quantifiable filtering criteria, and so that's what makes it into the filtering software.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    So replace hiring managers with competent staff who aren't feeding resumes through a filter.
    - nostrademons 13y ago
      The problem is that "competent staff" are still under conditions of low information, deluged with resumes from unsuitable candidates, and lacking suitable discriminating power between the resumes they do see. I'd encourage you to look through 100 random resumes online and try to decide who you'd hire; most likely, you will pick someone like yourself, not someone who's best for the job. In other words, don't hate the player, hate the game, because otherwise you will end up hating yourself. I think what's ultimately needed is a way to reveal more information about a candidates' abilities in a very short amount of time. Contract-to-hire works for this, but has the problem that many candidates (and in particular, good candidates) don't have time to devote to a project that may lead to a job. So does tokenadult's persistent suggestion of a work-sample test (and HireArt's implementation), but these both have the problem of being able to cut down an employee's daily duties into a small problem that can be given as a short task. Many of the skills that a really experienced employee brings to the table are only evident on long, hard, extremely challenging problems.
      - einhverfr 13y ago
        What is ultimately needed is a renewed understanding that personal contacts are what are important and for both hiring managers and potential employees to seek out these kinds of connections.
        jhandl 13y ago
        That's precisely what LinkedIn is for.

einhverfr 13y ago

In my experience it is the general rule (there may be exceptions) for companies which have HR do resume screening unless you have an in with the employer or manager.

nostrademons 13y ago
"unless you have an in with the employer or manager." That's usually the key point. I have a number of friends without college degrees that do just fine. Their usual modus operandi is to meet someone from the company at a conference, consult for them for a while, and then get hired once the company sees how awesome their work is. I wish this weren't needed, but hiring managers function under conditions of very low information, and they wade through too many resumes of low quality to avoid filtering it on some criteria. Degrees and GPA are the most easily quantifiable filtering criteria, and so that's what makes it into the filtering software.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  So replace hiring managers with competent staff who aren't feeding resumes through a filter.
  - nostrademons 13y ago
    The problem is that "competent staff" are still under conditions of low information, deluged with resumes from unsuitable candidates, and lacking suitable discriminating power between the resumes they do see. I'd encourage you to look through 100 random resumes online and try to decide who you'd hire; most likely, you will pick someone like yourself, not someone who's best for the job. In other words, don't hate the player, hate the game, because otherwise you will end up hating yourself. I think what's ultimately needed is a way to reveal more information about a candidates' abilities in a very short amount of time. Contract-to-hire works for this, but has the problem that many candidates (and in particular, good candidates) don't have time to devote to a project that may lead to a job. So does tokenadult's persistent suggestion of a work-sample test (and HireArt's implementation), but these both have the problem of being able to cut down an employee's daily duties into a small problem that can be given as a short task. Many of the skills that a really experienced employee brings to the table are only evident on long, hard, extremely challenging problems.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      What is ultimately needed is a renewed understanding that personal contacts are what are important and for both hiring managers and potential employees to seek out these kinds of connections.
      - jhandl 13y ago
        That's precisely what LinkedIn is for.