This one is easy and can be answered in one word: experience. But why? You try hosting an interview for a relatively low management/technical grade, where all the applicants have PHD’s but no actual job outside of education. I guarantee you, there will be a laptop shaped hole in your window before you can shout “next”. Don’t get me wrong, I have interviewed some fantastic, amazing, bright, and intelligent people that I know could do a good job after 6-12 months coaching (or even coming in with some hand holding), but could I allocate them a project, expect them to manage their own tasks, communicate to stakeholders and manage risk? Would I even be allowed to give them the job there and then based on their scoring? Not a chance in hell, and believe me I’ve tried, much often to the shock of my fellow panel members. More on this later.

You’re probably thinking at this point, what a complete and utter snob – throwing out all these jargonistic words and bashing people with 20 years education post-secondary school, thinking he’s better than people with PHD’s, and you’d be partially right, but, I didn’t ask for the industry, politics, office dynamics, shifting economy and human psychology to go the way it did, it just did! Back in the 80’s and 90’s, there would maybe be one person in your family that had a degree, and he or she would drive a top of the range Ford Granada, wear a grey pinstripe suite, and drink Pernod at every family occasion. Back then, my mum would say “ooh he has a degree, he must have a good job and be paid very well”, and to be fair to her, she was predominantly right – at that time! Aside from the fact that said person was probably a complete and utter tool.

Getting a degree was even free in the UK (more on funding later) yet I just didn’t know anyone that had one, because education was never valued as highly as industrial skills or grit and determination. Back to quoting my mum again: “make sure you do well in school so you can go to university and get paid millions”! Why though mum, why do I need to sit in a classroom for 4 years to be able to get a good job? I’ll tell you why, because what I had drilled into me was the basis that I don’t want to follow in the footsteps of my grandad “digging holes in the street” (he worked for British Gas (when it was a decent company)) and absolutely grafted no end. What if I want to dig holes in the street mum? And you can see how it goes. I guess what I’m saying here, and I’m being honest and open, is that there was an element of pressure from parents to “get into computers so you can work in an office and not dig in the streets and be paid loads of money”. There’s nothing wrong with that logic or want for your kids to do better, but this is another one of the main reasons I am where I am today, good or bad, you decide. Oh why couldn’t I have been a beach comber in Portugal or something equally ludicrous? Let me tell you, the grass ain’t always greener. It’s also fair to say that for a lot of people, they don’t know what they want to do until they’re doing it – like I say in the previous chapter, I wanted to be a fighter pilot, but that didn’t work out, so you always need a plan B and C and D, etc. The only thing I would say here is do what you want, not what someone else wants you to do. Anyway, enough of the philosophical crap.

Now we get started on the subject of nonsense degrees. Yes, several decades ago, you could get a degree and pretty much be guaranteed a good salary – degrees had meaning and were applicable to the workplace – you only had degrees relevant to common or major career paths, but what happened was politics, and politicians drive to get every single breathing organism through university*. What happens if everyone has a degree? Well, you’ve essentially reset the list of candidates to zero, as there’s no comparison. Precisely why I put experience at the top of the list. Bear with me though.

If you have a History degree, expect to work in that field, most likely teach History at some level. If you have a degree in Aerospace Engineering, expect to do exactly that for an organisation that specialises in that. If you have an IT degree (like me) expect to work in the field of IT, in pretty much any industry you want. And so on, you get my point, but what’s happened now are the nonsense degrees. In the UK at the time of writing, and I don’t mean to pick on Vikings, but you can get a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Viking and Old Norse Studies. Yes. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that if that’s your thing, and good luck to you, but can you name a host of well-paid careers that are realistically achievable with that degree? Again, I sound like a snob here, and I don’t intend to be but if you’re going to saddle yourself with £50k** of debt (at least) to get a degree in the UK, don’t you at least want to be able to have a good chance at a career after it? Have a Google round along the likes of “nonsense degrees” and see what I mean. I’d make a terrible Viking by the way.

Therein lies one of the main reasons that I’m saying experience is far more valuable than a degree, as well the PHD example above – degrees have now become a tick box exercise: “to apply for this job, you must hold a bachelors degree of at least a 2:1 grade”. Right so I’ve got my degree in Tasmanian Origami or the inside of a ping pong ball, now I can apply for the Senior Delivery Manager role, nice one. If everyone in the waiting room has a degree, then you’re gonna need to differentiate from the rest of the candidates somehow. It’s a bit of a vicious circle this because my mum would retort “yeah but if you don’t have a degree, then you won’t be in the waiting room”. Touché, but I would argue that there are better and more rewarding ways to be in the pool of candidates (i.e. through experience in the role/organisation) than getting there by ticking a £50k box. In a word, you’re never gonna have good candidates that only have qualifications with no experience. Am I saying don’t get a degree? No, it isn’t going to harm you, and will work in your favour, especially if you want to be a Viking – stick with me.

I can hear you (rightly) shouting “well how do you get experience if it’s your first job and you don’t have any experience”? All’s I can do here is explain what I did, and you can take from that what you will…

A little bit more about me and my background when it comes to education. I’m not an academic genius by any stretch of the imagination. I somehow managed 10 GCSEs with nothing better than a grade C (other than English Speaking, which was an A – comes in handy for the bullshit skills later on). After school I was pretty much going to college to do A-levels, whether I liked it or not (no more mum quotes in this chapter, you’ve had enough). I can honestly say that the two years I spent in college where academically the biggest waste of my life. I spent two years discovering beer and girls, and I was interested in nothing else. Even Physics, my strongest subject at school, was just 30 equations a week – I completely and utterly switched off. And here’s where the fear kicked in, at the end of the two years I’d failed the lot, and all of the university’s that I’d applied to turned me down, bar one that offered me “Marine Studies”. I should have taken that nonsense degree (only joking (then again, I could have got that beach comber job)). I was devastated, I realised that I’d wasted two years of my life. You’d be right at this point to wonder why I’m so stressed about education, where all I have said is you need experience. Well to be fair I haven’t said that it’s all you need, let’s just say it can be an essential element that forms part of your arsenal. Cutting a long story short, I got myself onto a Computing HND (Higher National Diploma) with a promise that if I passed, I could go onto the final year of the Information Systems degree at university, to get my degree. That all worked out just fine, but halfway through the HND, I was told I could only join the second year of three, and not the final. Of course, I was totally pissed off at first and felt cheated, but the more the news sunk in with me, the more I realised there was an opportunity presenting itself. You see, a lot of my good friends with me at this point in education were a lot older than me, and were desperate to get that degree, ahem tick box, so they just wanted to finish and get it done with so they could find a job, whereas I had realised two things: one, this course offers a sandwich placement (no not working in Subway, although they didn’t exist back then in the UK (Christ I feel old)) whereby you work in industry at an agreed organisation for a year (adding a year to your studies), then come back and do your final year, and two, I was still young (20-ish) so could afford the time. This was the eureka moment for me. I pictured myself up against all my classmates in a giant interview room, where we’re all competing for the same job. This was my perfect opportunity to (and I cannot stress this word enough) differentiate! Surely if I’m sat in a room with all these fabulous people having just come off a degree, I would be seen in a favourable light if I’d actually done a year of work in that subject? This assumption would turn out to be correct, and thus form the basis of this chapter (a lot of my university friends did unfortunately take quite some time to land decent, relative work after graduating).

I do need to go back a little further actually just to let you in on another significant step for me. When I was 17 going on 18, I had a job in an off license. One of the best jobs I’ve ever had, loads of fun, met amazing punters, had a laugh, and drank loads of beer (not on the premises of course, who would do that). Towards the end of my time in the shop, it did dawn on me that it would be beneficial if I could at least get myself in front of a computer, regardless of what the job was, just so I could say I had some experience in computing! A couple of months later, I’d left my amazing job in the off license, and got myself a job as a typist for a local estate agent and surveyors office – I can’t begin to tell you the sheer amount of insults and nicknames I got as a result of that job, but needless to say its helped me type this entire chapter in about four minutes (sorry to all typists out there). It worked. When I joined that office and my colleagues learned that I was capable with computers, printers (yeah I know) and basic networking etc (I’d done all this on the HND) they had me doing exactly that, and I soon became the unofficial local IT. This was the foundation entry to my CV, its as simple as that. By moving from working in a shop selling litres of vodka to locals, to becoming the UK’s fastest typer, I was able to start putting relevant things on a piece of paper, which would later allow me to apply for the sandwich course I mentioned. Without this job, my only experience would be basic retail (great if you want a career in retail of course). To top off a fantastic year out working (sandwich course) I’d manage to secure part time work in the same place whilst I went back to university, so not only did this mean some income whilst I studied, but essential to this story is that I graduated with two years’ experience in industry. Bingo.

The moral of the story here is, do not be afraid to start at the bottom, and do so to differentiate yourself from those that haven’t, or wont. Unless your dad is the CEO or you’re best mates with the head of IT, the likelihood is you’re gonna have to work your way into the job you want. Time after time (and yes, I said I wouldn’t quote her again but here I am) my mum would say something like “why are you only earning X salary when you have a degree”? This attitude that was entirely commonplace back then (and still today) which has resulted in people expecting to go straight to £30k overnight from school. It just won’t happen, sorry.

So, what’s the way forward, would I put my kids on a degree course? No, not as the next step from school and here’s why, in no particular order. In the UK now, you can expect to pay at least £50,000 for a degree by the time you add everything up, unless you’re Scottish where they get it free and spend that on beer instead. Paying off student debt sticks with you for many years, and whether or not it affects your credit file and ability to get a mortgage or not (it very much does) it’s several hundred pounds straight out your wages every month over a certain salary, for years. I only borrowed about £7k and it still took me many years of agonising dealings with the student loan organisation to pay it all off. Politicians will also tell you that this doesn’t matter and brush the reality off to the side – it very much does matter. Finances aside, there are many good opportunities available in companies such as apprenticeship schemes, where you do come into the organisation without a degree, get several years’ worth of experience, plus all the funding to get a relevant degree in your field of work – this is a win-win, you get years of experience, a salary, and a degree thrown in – your career can be rocketing ahead whilst others are only just coming out of the classroom with nothing but a paper scroll and a sack full of debt. A lot of the rhetoric I got when I was going through education was “oh you have to study, you have to pass to get a job, otherwise you’re screwed”. It was fear, pure and simple, and fear never drives performance.

I do realise this may come across as me not saying many very good things about university, especially as I already have a degree, but I do want to highlight some of the wonderful things too. Firstly, you will meet some amazing people, people that will mirror the personalities and ways of working that you’ll eventually meet in the workplace, this is golden in its own right, and we’ll talk a lot about the different types of people later in the book. You’ll also mature a great deal and learn what it mean to be autonomous, and own your own successes and failures. I could go on – university isn’t bad at all, its damn hard work, but you will have a laugh along the way, especially if you’re doing Clown Studies (I kid you not, look it up). Oh and don’t forget the tick box.

Finally, remember that old saying “just get your foot in the door”? I do believe that still holds true now. If you can find a job at the bottom of the ladder in the organisation or industry that you want to work in, you have every chance of climbing that ladder, with or without a degree, it can and does happen, and we’ll touch on the recruitment and interview processes quite a bit in this book, but for now, put down your text book and get out there and look for something, anything, that may jut get you one step closer to where you want to be.

*I didn’t want to get into governmental politics in this book, but I think this deserves a mention given the nature of this title. That’s enough of that now.

**£50k can be a very subjective figure. When I went to university, I stayed at home and didn’t sample the delights of too much alcohol poisoning (that comes later with kids) and was with my now wife at the time. Not to mention that fact my fees were £1,000 a year, and not the £9,000 that they are at the time of writing. Just bear this in mind, especially if you have to add living costs to the already high fees.