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Acquire Skills, Not Credentials
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Don't rely on the declining value of credentialing signals: demonstrate you have the skills.
My recent conversation with Max Keiser on Summer Solutions (25:45) included three bits of advice:
1. Stop financializing the human experience
2. Acquire skills, not credentials
3. Vote with your feet
Today's topic is acquire skills, not credentials.
I have written two books on this topic:
Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy
and
The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy: The Revolution in Higher Education.
There is a place for credentials that act as an entry key to a profession: a dental hygiene credential, passing the bar exam, etc.
But outside these licensed professions, credentials such as four-year college degrees are fundamentally signals: they don't actually authenticate real-world skills, they simply signal that the holder of the credential completed the coursework.
It is remarkably easy to exit a university with a degree and essentially no practical real-world skills of the sort employers want and need.
That's the problem with the signaling value of credentials: in a competitive economy, employers don't want to gamble that the signal in a credential has value, they want evidence of real-world skills, i.e. the ability to profitably solve problems.
That's the problem with signaling: some signals might be noise. Employers don't want a signal, they want hard evidence of skills.
It is assumed that successfully navigating the institutional processes of higher education will impart professional working skills: showing up on time, performing as promised, being accountable, and so on.
This assumption is false: performing well in institutions of higher learning has no correlation to performance in the workplace. This is the conclusion that Google reached after crunching reams of data.
Lazlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google, made the following comments in an interview published by the New York Times in June 2013:
“One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s (grade point averages) are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore.... We found that they don’t predict anything.
What’s interesting is the proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time as well. So we have teams where you have 14 percent of the team made up of people who’ve never gone to college.”
Doing well in college—earning high test scores and grades—has no measurable correlation with being an effective worker or manager. This is incontrovertible evidence that the entire higher education system is detached from the real economy: excelling in higher education has no discernible correlation to real-world skills or performance.
If the higher education system does not explicitly teach these skills, students will not learn them, even if they excel in fulfilling the criteria of higher education.
The ultimate purpose of skills is to profitably solve problems. Problem-solving has become a cliché of sorts, and so we need to ask, what set of skills is required to profitably solve problems?
The set of necessary skills divides into two categories: hard skills in specific technologies and crafts and soft skills that enable ownership of tasks and projects, systematic application of creativity and critical thinking, and professional standards of collaboration and conduct.
These two sets of skills are essential parts of human and social capital. The ultimate purpose of education is to learn how to acquire human and social capital, and the ultimate purpose of human and social capital is mastery of the skills needed to profitably solve problems.
Problem-solving and accountability have been generalized to the point that we need to specify what they actually mean. In my terminology, they mean taking ownership of tasks and projects, i.e. accepting sole responsibility in the same manner as an owner.
Hard skills in the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math) are no longer enough: professional collaboration skills are increasingly essential even in workplaces that demand engineering and scientific proficiency.
The soft skills of collaboration, adaptability, creativity, entrepreneurism and professional accountability are core skills in every sector of the emerging economy.
Soft skills are not learned by osmosis or magic; they must be learned as systematically as hard skills.
The skills needed to establish and maintain a livelihood in the emerging economy are the abilities to:
1. Learn challenging new material over one’s entire productive life
2. Creatively apply newly-mastered knowledge and skills to a variety of fields
3. Be adaptable in all work environments
4. Apply a full spectrum of entrepreneurial skills to any task
5. Work collaboratively and effectively with others, both in person and remotely
6. Be professional, responsible and accountable in all work environments
7. Continually build human and social capital
8. Possess a practical working knowledge of financial and project management
If we step back and consider the abilities needed to succeed in the emerging economy, we marvel that anyone believes the prevailing (but unspoken) assumption that coursework in the conventional fields of language, history, science and the humanities magically instills these essential skills in students who regurgitate factory-model coursework.
Rather than rely on the same signals everyone else has, accredit yourself. Don't rely on the declining value of credentialing signals: demonstrate you have the skills.
I wrote Get a Job, Build a Real Career to explain how to acquire high-demand skills and accredit these skills yourself.
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Anyone who can solve another's specific problems can find work. Doesn't matter whether you're an engineer, a doctor, a sandwich maker or a ditch digger.
Like the old saying goes, "those who can't do anthing useful, write books about people who can't do anything usefull".
I guess that is this loser's "aquired skill".
Sorry to break it to you, but no level of 'skill' will ever match an Ivy League education. Studies have shown that Ivy League educated individuals earn far more than non-Ivy Leaguers, and they also have higher IQs, move up the corporate ladder faster and have more job satisfaction. People should move up the ranks based on seniority and formal qualifications - this focus on skills without education is just a way of cheating the system.
People should concentrate on technical skills and virtualization technologies. Sorry doomers, we are not going back to 1890 and technology is going to get faster and better after the collapse of USD. Your pre-information technology "skills" are not going to do you much good in our glorious future.
"performing well in institutions of higher learning has no correlation to performance in the workplace."
Well, that's certainly been true for me. I made it through college with a copy machine and somebody else's notes. Even back then (late 80s) anyone with half a brain could look around and realize the whole thing was a phoney baloney, plastic bannana, bullshit "credential stamping" process.
Youre saying you performed well in school by cheating so now you perform poorly at work? Thats a revolutionary perspective but I can see where youre coming from.
HVAC and welding are not 1890's technology. They are skills that relatively few people are going into, because they would rather get Business Associates degrees and sell stawks to morons.
"Information technology" is just a fancy way of saying backdoor deals, trading on stolen information, outright theft, and general asshat-ery.
glorious!!!
what say you, deluded one !
Acquire "Freedom"...not more blow job "skills".
Let the overlords fluff themeselves...then die.
But the skill they get in the ivy league is blowing their profs. Bot worth it.
MDB, shuffle back to your state provided cubicle and leave us alone for the rest of the day...
D.C. is chock full of Ivy leaguers and that place gets stupider by the day.
;-D
What kind of product does Ivy League schools turn out? Look at DC to get some insight. Ivy League schools are overrated, overpriced shitholes that produces a garbage product. Someone once bought my daughter a Harvard T shirt. I refused to let her wear it.
Yeah - but what came first? Probably high quality family background, great social skills, great genetic material, and problem solving education from the time they were walking. The Ivy League is just another credential - and yes - that probably helps - but if they didn't already have quality tools (problem solving tools, ability to communicate well) they wouldn't have gotten there. And those that got 'there' (Ivy) could probably have dropped out and started something - like Facebook, or Microsoft or something. Or Apple. Or Google.
I can't put into words how much I disagree with your comments. Our company hired a Cornell educated lawyer and started him out at less than an entry-level engineer. I'm sure there are rousing success stories for those white-collar Ivy Leaguers but give me a guy with a work ethic and some skills over than nonsense any day...
-Argenta
its not about finding work, its about finding work that is fair pay for labor exchanged.
should a doctor or engineer make more than a sandwich maker? Sure they have more education (cost) and bigger responsibility.
a teacher doesnt make much "profit" so do they deserve the wage they get?
One of these days it will be about.....survival.
its already about survival. we have kids here that only get one meal a day.
but i get what youre saying. survival in which the "shot callers" no longer have staff and must rely on themselves.
the current status quo is real solid though with entrenched power protecting it.
Yeah, but wait until those who protect the ones entrenced in power figure out they've been lied to and ain't gonna get what was promised to them.
I work with a bunch of engineers (and am also one myself). But unlike most of them, I can run heavy equipment, repair cars, am a licensed electrician, can repair plumbing along with many other skills I've accumulated over the years. If I pick up a side job on a Saturday, I can easily make $300 - $400 cash. The people I work with are generally very smart but they are always amazed that I can make that kind of cash doing sidework. The difference between me and them is that I've created the oprotunity to learn these skills. Nobody has ever approached me offering to teach me a new skill. You have to go out and make it happen. Sadly, most people just aren't motivated to learn new things.
Geez, I sound like I'm talking to my kids here. Now, go clean your room.
Engineers like yourself who are doers and tinkerers are usually worth 4 of the other kind put together I might add.
voted up just because of the icon. my mentor!
You are so right.
I'd rather be the skills guy than the credentials guy...
I gotsa skills...
hunting
canning
barter
gardening
gunsmithing\reloading
prepping
MADSKILLZ!
Bowhunting skillz, numchuck skillz, etc
pumping bitcoinz to teh masses....
I've got those skills, but we used to call that being a country boy....
The way we're heading, those skills may become necessary for general day to day life, where valuable skills will be glass blowing, blacksmithing, pottery making, being a millright, etc...
My thoughts exactly. Right now I am taking apart a Ford 6.0 Powerstroke to replace the high pressure oil pump. If you know something about that job you know it's not easy and time consuming, but you also know how much a dealer will charge for said repairs. It would be really easy to just call him up and tell him to fix it, take a little money out of savings, but I enjoy turning wrenches on the side and that savings looks better in the form of some stored food stuffs, etc.
There is good reason you see most farmers carry a pliers. I can almost without fail pick out the farmer who has everthing worked on by someone else, he does not carry one.
I used to own a 250 seat IT firm before getting back into Finance in early 2007 and can tell you that we never hired people based on these credentials. We looked to hire people with skills. We had gobs of the Microsoft CSE's looking for work but had no idea how to apply the supposed knowledge they acquired from passing some silly test. In IT college degrees and other paper wasnt worth what you wrote it on. Give me an IT guy that has a skill and has people skills as well and I will show you how to acheive 25% annual growth. Sadly these days are gone. KInd of like the fiat paper money and paper colleges.
haha no way to "baffle em with bullshit" when it comes to programming huh?
There's at least one website devoted to the corner-cutters...
& the punchline is it's never been easier to acquire them! in mid 90s when I was learning oracle (a skill that would eventually pay off my house) if you didn't work for a company that already had software & required hardware there was no way to get "seat time". nowadays anyone can spin up anything cheaply/instantly on aws, read a few websites/watch a few youtube videos & at least takeoff, circle & land the plane. in fact, at 45 I have seriously struggled w/breaking myself of the habit of wanting to solve problems myself that I can just google in a fraction of the time.
Mooching free knowledge via a Google search is a great time saver. And since that time saver has come to exist, it has substantially devalued personal knoweldge expertise. But... there still remains the task of interpreting and applying the knowledge in the most cost effective manner. Meaning: Knowledge and skills are not enough without a well calibrated price/value compass.
Mooching free knowledge via a Google search is a great time saver. And since that time saver has come to exist, it has substantially devalued personal knoweldge expertise. But... there still remains the task of interpreting and applying the knowledge in the most cost effective manner. Meaning: Knowledge and skills are not enough without a well calibrated price/value compass.
Google's great, as long as you stay sharp enough that you can still handle it when *this* happens:
https://xkcd.com/979/
I used to run into "Paper Tigers" all the time with Novel CNE and Microsoft certs. A lot of them didn't understand basic file structures and couldn't do network backups that maintained directory structure. Basically, these people didn't understand how a computer worked at the file level let alone the OSI model for networks. My last certification was from DEC on RSX-11M in the 80s but I ended up having to babysit and train these clueless but certified morons in the basics.
MCSE-must call someone else....
Not just skills, but useful skills. I've always been curious and willing to try new things, but nowadays the young people have been taught not to pursue an education, but a degree and they can't even do an easy program in four years. Fat, lazy and stupid is apparently the new paradigm.....
"Old English scol, from Latin schola "intermission of work, leisure for learning"
Now its purpose is job training (credential mining) (and partying)
Honest work dont pay much these days.
fawke "honest work"... itz for chumps!
"credentials such as four-year college degrees are fundamentally signals: they don't actually authenticate real-world skills, they simply signal that the holder of the credential completed the coursework."
True.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZN4r8p6KbU
Unfortunately the market needed a new signal because the old one, i.e., IQ testing, had been deemed discriminatory by the Supreme Court in the 70's due to "disparate impact". So a lot more white people had to attend college (driving up the price), just as a lot of white people have to pay more in housing to live in a good neighborhood due to desegregation policies (also implemented in the 1970's). Shit, the 70's was a crappy decade, wasn't it?!
Well said, too many ppl focused on 8th place medals.
If you go to kollege, you'll get a [better] job lolololo!
This one here. :D
I actually overheard a conversation the other day from two young guys talking about how stupid the boomers are. Presumably because boomers can't navigate new software and gadgetry as easily as they do. They were both working in a restaurant.
That summarizes exactly what's wrong with our society today. Very succinctly.
-Argenta
Being able to "twiddle yer thumbz" ain't nearly as useful as programming the device(s) to understand what those "thumbz" are trying to accomplish.
Excellent advice! Essentially skill yourself like people did a generation ago. I'm not knocking a college degree. Disiplines like Doctors and Engineers require formal training, but tech schools are often a much better option for kids coming out of high school. We've all paid electricians, plumbers, mechanics, etc. and see what rates they demand and how much they are in demand. I really appreciate articles like this and thank you. Super sound advice. I bet the guy with $100k in student loans with a BS in South American History wishes he'd had such wisdom some years ago.
-Argenta
Embrace the suck. The pay is way better. Honest work is for suckers.
So YOU'RE the guy with a BS is South American History!
-Argenta
No I am the guy with the skills.
Laughable.
What you said was true back in the 1990s, but nowadays, the trades don't pay anything.
I have friends who did trades in the glory days, and today they are competing against undocumented workers willing to work for peanuts. My friend gave up welding, because the only jobs out there offer $12 an hour now. I have a friend who is a painter and makes only $12 an hour despite supervising his crew. My auto mechanic I go to told me he only takes home $35,000 a year, but it beats the minimum wage fast food work he did while working on his certifications. I have a friend who did HVAC back in the 90s and made good money, but today 20 years later, the only job offers are $10 an hour for HVAC, but at least they provide a company vehicle they told him.
The big thing back in 2009 was become a truck driver up in the Bakken and make six figures! That didn't last too long. After those jobs got filled, the pay scale was cut down to what a fuel delivery driver makes anywhere else in the country. Now with no fracking demand, those guys are out.
As I say ad nauseum in these comments, the only "industries" that pay anything today are finance and real estate. Everything else in this country is an absolute joke. Until the tax code is changed, and bankrupcy laws are changed, and lobbying influence is changed, and Central banking is changed, those will be the only industries where one can be successful. I'm not holding my breath waiting for these changes. In the mean time I go where the money is. It sure the hell wasn't in blue collar work, or working in a cubicle.
Respectfully encourage you to expand your radius of data. My experiences run almost completely counter to your own. Maybe I need to expand my own radius but I don't think so. Any tradesman that pays attentention to detail and puts himself above his competition can do very well. But hey, it is what it is. The larger point I was making is that a vast majority of college degrees are overrated, and worse, useless.
-Argenta
Nice article, however, soon the most valuable skills within American will be the ability to shoot, maneuver, and destroy.
Sad.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
agree kc....knowing how to keep your firearms productive, plenty of ammo, knowing how to can foods, storing up on foods, growing your own food, a water source etc are the only skills that will be needed.
It is very sad tho as you mentioned...too few are demanding liberty and too many enjoy their servitude.. if stockholm syndrome was a commodity I would invest in it. :-)
As a hobby, I keep a Bridgeport milling machine and a South Bend "heavy 10" lathe out in my garage shop. My skill in using them increases with every little machining project I do.
On the serious side though, I'm determined to build up some l33t day tr4der skillz. With each passing day, that seems increasingly useful.
My next big purchase will be a Bridgeport, and I'd like to have a small Hardinge lathe, too.
Eventually, I'll have a Star swiss lathe and a simple surface grinder, too.
The Bridgeport will come in handy when building AR lowers.
What served me well was this: "Never go to your boss with a problem, go only with solutions; he hired you to solve problems..."
That only works if the boss is not a moron or a cheap, ass punk looking to keep the status quo because it maximizes the profit margin but in doing so fucks all his workers in the process.
So...going to him with a solution is the same as going to him with a problem because the solution breaks the status quo and threatens his self esteem and his pocket book.
I can tell you never actually worked before. That was some hilarious brainstorming session motivational pow wow mumbo jumbo there.
If you ever go to your boss with a "solution" he will discipline you because he sees it as subordination.
I remember reading an article about Mark Cuban going to his bosses with "solutions" and it always cost him his jawb...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/monteburke/2013/03/28/at-age-25-mark-cuban-l...
The trick is, you either have to give the mangler credit, or manipulate her into thinking its her idea. Either way you're not going to be there long anyway, because when the details need to be addressed you'll come out of the shadows and everybody knows whose idea it was. If another manager is impressed, you're transferred. If they are embarrassed and you're not transferred, you're on permanent latrine duty until you quit or retire. If you're surrounded by incompetent treehugging cronies, they'll either keep the secret as dirt on your manager, or you're fired. If you're surrounded by treehugging cronies you have no future there anyway, so you should move on. Keep your resume current, network like a crack whore and you'll do fine.
Maybe you boys need to talk to some construction workers or some oil industry guys. Wages are falling for honest work.
The only reason I still do honest work? Ethics. I could make stupid money ripping people off. I get offers to do just that all to often.
If I didn't have a conscience, I would have long ago sold out to the VCs in San Francisco, making or joining a stupid app company and raking in the big money. Honest engineering work I do (SW, embedded, FW, HW) pays pennies in comparison, but at least I have my dignity.
If all you are saying here is true, you have more than that. Integrity and good ethics are going to be worth more than gold (almost.. ) in the brave new world we,re entering to.
I made somewhat the same choice in the same industry as you skateboarder but now the little shits with "agile" solve the world process that does not produce a product of value for the customer have even managed to invade. I can adapt but I have look like old phart when I point out the crap is too complicated and will be too slow to be of use. Sad.
Good to hear from you, Mr.Miffed, and to hear that we bear like crosses. Here's a little poem to convey my sentiments regarding the website and app industry that corrupted the fundamentals of engineering real things:
"Agile" and "scrum",
A stick up the bum,
Mouth fulla cum, from
Suckin VC scum.
These motherfuckers take for granted the hardware, FW, and SW that makes their very livelihoods possible, and yet we are often paid the least, doing more with less. Coming from small business, it aint easy. Even when you are the best, making real products, the relative value addition to the customer alone or society at large is not rewarded the same as making a stupid website or app or whatever. The "markets", the website/app industry and VC/PE culture, banking-overload, general deterioration of humans' value for quality and appreciation of physical goods and the workmanship that goes into it...
I don't particularly like technology anymore - it's going to get evil with the IOT bubble, which I do not want to participate in, despite being good in the embedded realm where there is a shitload of money going to be made. Help make our own chains? I think not. So I will be leaving the field. Always wanted to run my own food cart - think I'll do that. You can't go wrong with feeding people good food.
Engineering as a whole has gone awry. From Euclid to Fourier, Gauss to Faraday, the giants upon whose shoulders we stand - no, we shit on them - they must surely be disappointed.
Being in the corporate world for the past 8 years, I finally admitted what this article points out. Pushing papers and knowing software isn't a skill. It's simply cog work. I am traveling abroad and changing industries to learn new SKILLS. Resume with pretty titles and experience isn't safe keeping in a changing world, so F it, rolling the dice.
I've got mad "fixing, diagnosing & building" skills, although self taught.
UFO Back engineering level skills in some areas, it turns out. I'm honest, hard working, and cheerful to have work.
I'm unemployable unless someone holds my hand through the front side application process..
Skills never got me a good wage, or easy employment, ever.
+1 for "UFO back engineering level skills"
*That's not quite all true. "almost never got me..." would be more correct. Just a bit over cynical today.
I have two different skill sets with like 15 years each but I want a college degree before I get too old: just to say I did it. Plus it is very interesting in many ways. I like UCLA.
I graduated from UCLA in the 1981 with a BA degree in English and the analytical skills I acquired help me today design and build analytical instrumentation and solve water chemistry issues in power plants. Funny thing is everyone thinks I'm an engineer or a chemist.
Now, after graduating college, I did do a tour in the USMC as a platoon leader where they expect you to solve everything with nothing or die trying. That was definitely a results-oriented environment!
Improvise Adapt Overcome. If all else fails blow it up
The main skill in demand today is creative fraud.
It is in demand because we are in a moral collapse environment.
We are in a moral collapse environment because we have systematically encouraged moral hazard through monetary and governmental venues for a very long time.
A word on STEM people, that those who have worked with them will recognize immediately:
- For every engineer who can think and solve using the principles he learned there are 100 who essentially just memorized answers.
- Honestly (and sadly) many can't solve simple math story-problems of the type commonly given in elementary schools in the 1960's and 1970's. Not an exaggeration. Sat in a room of 50 of them trying to figure out a way to validate product capability just LAST WEEK...the answer was found doing a simple elementary-school-type math problem...and only one guy of the 50 could do it. The rest just shrugged and pointed to 'that guy' who could figure out the right parameters.
- Many STEM degrees aren't worth the electronic paper they're printed on, because their recipients can't do anything without direction...a motivated hobbyist is often more useful.
- And many of these STEM granduates are useful only as long as they are working in conventional and well-established technologies, where they need never do more than regurgitate someone else's answer.
- The guy who can genuinely, and consistently pull a totally new solution from the ether (think up a solution to a problem) is a rare bird...probably not just in STEM, but everywhere.
I know a lawyer who describes his job as "writing fiction for the court". Quite successful. Whenever you deal with the court, remember this.
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It's the Dr. Laura 'Fake It Until You Make It!' narrative. We're all waking up to the idea that everyone in any position, just faked their way into it, for the most part, hauled up by the other fakers, who didn't want to be discovered, so all we have at the top, are a bunch of fakers.
•?•
V-V
My skillset took down the global economy & annhilated thousands of banks Worldwide while I handed all the executives, and Economists, throughout the entire World, their asses to them on a silver platter. Soon I will hand them all their heads on silver platters and I did it without collaboration in less than one hour March 10th 2008, SUCKERS.
NOTE: If de Rothschild Bank does not fork over my $30 trillion in physical gold bullion real soon I will permanently take all of their holdings with my skillset that no employer on Planet Earth can afford.
p.s. Take this job and shove it, Oligarchy dude.
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With 3D printing, VR/AVR, robotics and driverless vehicle technology coming, what fucking skills are we going to have to acquire, need, or compete with to get a job to pay for food and shelter?
Construction will be wiped out in 10 years. See the robot that lays 1000 bricks per hour. And 3d printed houses, then buildings by 2020.
VR/AVR will wipe out retail and sonambulize the population.
DVT will wipe out the logistics and transporation sector in 10 years.
Somebody… Say something… Tell me it ain't so.
•?•
V-V
I read a very interesting book, The lights in the tunnel, by Martin Ford that shows how the automation destroying jobs ends the concept of mass production.
I didn't care for the authors solution but the problem statement and effect seemed to be well described.
I think we are all grappling with a proper alternative. I always thought naively that owning some capital would permit me to survive. I have learned that what I thought was capital, stocks that appreciate with growth and bonds with interest, are about last century. Capital now is about a very small crony group and as someone famously put it: it's a club and you're not in it.
http://www.amazon.com/Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating-Technology-e...
When capitalists are making money from QE , enriching themselves and buying back their own shares from free money, what is the need for skills? What is the point in employment? when the creators of money keep that in their own pockets and not let it trickle down.
It means that skills wont buy you money , why waste time ?
Rather be a banker.