Recently, the job review site Glassdoor compiled a list of 15 different companies that don’t require job applicants to have college degrees. The list includes high-paying tech outlets like Apple, Google and IBM, in addition to service-oriented companies like Costco, Starbucks and Chipotle.

Abandoning the four-year degree as a qualification might feel like a dramatic break from hiring orthodoxy. But in some ways, it’s more surprising that so many companies still insist upon a degree in the first place.

“Academic qualifications will still be taken into account and indeed remain an important consideration when assessing candidates as a whole, but will no longer act as a barrier to getting a foot in the door,” Maggie Stilwell, Ernst and Young’s managing partner for talent, told the Huffington Post when the company dropped the requirement.

In other words: Companies will hire the candidates whose experience and skills best suit them for the job. Many of those successful applicants will have university degrees. Some of them will not.

Google acknowledged several years ago that college transcripts and test scores are worthless predictors of later job performance. The only exceptions were very recent graduates, and even then the correlation was weak. At IBM, where roughly 15 percent of new hires in the United States don’t have college degrees, CEO Ginni Rometty has said that vocational courses and on-the-job experience offer more relevant training for many tech sector positions than a four-year college degree.

It’s not that college degrees are useless.

For many people, university is the place where they acquire skills employers value. But automatically discounting people who earn that same knowledge through a different path can be counterproductive.

Which hypothetical resume offers a more convincing case for a candidate’s work ethic or motivation: one from a recent college graduate who majored in computer science, or that of a self-taught coder who acquired those same skills while also managing full-time employment? What a person knows is more important than how they learned it.

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【正统观念】zhèngtǒng guānniàn orthodoxy orthodox practice, custom, or belief

【适得其反】shìdé qífǎn counterproductive thwarting the achievement of an intended goal

最近，求职网站Glassdoor罗列了15家招聘时不要求有大学文凭的公司，其中就包括苹果、谷歌和IBM等高薪科技公司，还有好市多、星巴克和Chipotle等服务型企业。

弃用四年大学文凭这一录用条件，也许大大违背了正统的招聘之道。不过，换个角度来看，更令人吃惊的是竟然还有这么多公司仍坚持招聘时要求有大学文凭。

在安永会计师事务所弃用大学文凭这一录用条件后，该事务所的人才招聘经理合伙人玛吉·史迪威尔告诉《赫芬顿邮报》说：“公司在招聘时仍会考虑学历，在对应聘者进行总体评估时，学历仍然是重要的考量因素，但不再是招录的一道门槛。”

换言之，公司将招聘经验和能力最适合某个职位的人。被录用的应聘者中很多有大学学位，有些则没有。

几年前，谷歌公司曾坦言，大学成绩单和考试成绩并不能用来预测日后的工作表现。只有刚毕业的大学生例外，但即使是这些人，大学成绩和工作表现之间关联度也并不强。IBM公司美国总部新招聘的人约有15%没有大学学位，首席执行官金尼·罗梅蒂表示，对于许多技术岗位而言，专业培训课程和在职经历比四年的大学学历更有用。

这并不意味着大学学位就没有用。

对许多人而言，大学里可以获得雇主看重的技能。但据此自动筛除那些通过其它途径获得相同知识的人就适得其反了。

哪一种简历更能证明应聘者的职业道德或工作积极性 —— 是刚毕业的计算机科学专业大学生，还是边全职工作边自学成才的码农？一个人真正获得的知识积累比获得知识的途径更重要。 (Chinadaily.com.cn)