Meeting Education Requirements Won’t Necessarily Get You a Job

When applying for jobs, most people assume that since they met the bare minimum educational requirements, they have a great chance to get the position. Most of the time, they are wrong. For example, if a job requires that you have a high school diploma, and you apply with just your diploma, who is the company going to hire? You or something with an associates or bachelors degree?

All too often we believe that a high school diploma or a bachelors enables us to get plenty of jobs. The truth is that by getting more education, we are only furthering our opportunities. We are only opening doors by furthering our education. I have seen positions that only require a high school diploma go to people who have a masters in the related field. Anyone applicants with the bare minimum requirements were probably not even given a phone call. Those with bachelors might have had an interview if they were lucky. But in the end, the position went to someone with the highest level degree in the field.

Many people believe that experience is more important than education. They think that four years of education in their field is going to look better than a four-year degree in the field. While this might be true for some fields of work, it usually does not withstand the test of time. Maybe in one field, applying with four years of experience is going to look better than having a four-year degree and no experience. After all, it costs a lot for companies to train their new employees. However, what happens a few years down the road? Does eight years of experience look better than four years of experience plus a four year degree? What about twenty years of experience versus fourteen years of experience plus a bachelors and a masters? At a certain point you stop learning from your experience. Are you really twice as productive with ten years of experience as you are with five? I would doubt it.

Employers will almost always have a biased towards applicants with education, regardless of whether or not that educational level is required for the position or not. Obviously, education has its limitations as well. Do you really need a PHD in geology to become a geologist? Of course a PHD would look great if you are applying to a geologist position, but someone with five more years of experience than you and no PHD would be a much more practical candidate for the company to hire.

In order to get the position, you really need to meet the minimum requirements on all levels. You need to meet the minimum education, experience and knowledge requirements to even be considered. You aren’t done yet. Once you make it past the first hurdle, you have the other candidates to compete with. You can rest assured that the other candidates are all probably not applying with the bare minimum requirements. Anything extra education you can have above and beyond the basic educational requirements is going to give you the extra boost needed to stand out and get the job.