If College No Longer Guarantees A Job, What Does?

I had just finished speaking to a room full of about 280 higher education leaders where many of them had been diligently taking notes for the previous hour when a thought hit me.

Why is so much of business education disconnected from the real world?

In nursing school students are required to complete 500-700 clinical hours directly caring for patients under supervision by instructors with an active RN license.

In many states students interested in becoming teachers have to complete 12-16 weeks full time in a classroom with direct mentorship from another teacher.

Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, etc. all require apprenticeships combining classroom work with thousands of supervised on-the-job hours.

But for most other degree programs, especially in business school? Maybe a capstone course with a project that merely simulates the real world, ultimately not resulting in any marketable skill that you can confidently share with a future employer.

And therein lies the issue that many recent graduates are facing as they enter a very different job market than even 24 months ago, when the headlines were full of stories of people “quiet quitting” or finding work life balance in a world that was sure to stay fully remote.

And I get it. Business degrees are usually not as specialized as, say, their medical counterparts, designed to develop generalist management and leadership skills applicable across sectors and departments.

It’s also more than likely that we’re in yet another cycle akin to the financial collapse of 2008 or the tech bubble burst at the turn of the millennium.

The sociopolitical environment, however, is only a part of a bigger shift being accelerated by the growing impact of new technology that’s sure to have some kind of lasting impact on markets, whether in the short term or long.

What’s emerging from that shift is a new focus for employers called “skills-first hiring”.

At first glance this phrase feels obvious, almost mocking in nature. But here’s the underlying reality of what’s happening.

For decades employers leaned heavily on degrees from top institutions as a way to evaluate baseline intelligence, work ethic, time management skills, and often, social capital.

Over time degrees alone stopped being a differentiator, or at least proved to show little correlation with future job performance.

Internships became another baseline for demonstrating someone’s ability to get their foot in the door with a company. If ‘that’ university and ‘this’ company are willing to take a chance on an individual they’ve clearly already passed the initial test.

Today, internships are now also table stakes on a resume. An interesting data point, but often not enough to show how someone can actually add value. In some cases internships can actually devalue a resume unless the person was actually able to drive meaningful results for an organization, or at least position their experience in a way that sounded meaningful.

AI resume tools have exasperated the issue. People desperate to land interviews have used these tools to try to pass through ATS systems with mass applications, stuffing them with keywords and numbers that do little to actually demonstrate ability and skill and instead dilute an individual’s accomplishments to sound like everyone else.

So, what then is the solution to this seemingly unsolvable problem, and what will employers expect to see from talent going forward.

The first clue comes from recent graduates across disciplines with high placement rates even in the current hiring climate, like data analytics.

Narrowing down on your area of focus and being deeply targeted with the organizations you’re pursuing is the first step to refining how you position yourself to employers.

Sure, they may want to see that you have strong communication skills or the ability to be resourceful when solving problems, but when it comes down to a human evaluating your potential contribution to the role they’re typically looking for a very specialized skillset that makes them believe in your ability to do the job at hand.

This means removing any fluff from your resume designed to appeal to the everyman and instead pointing to work samples, digital portfolios, or other projects that had a tangible impact on a business or organization.

Going deep and being specific with the actual outcomes that you were able to achieve is not just a nice to have. It’s something inherently difficult to copy and even difficult for AI to portray by itself. It’s nuanced stories about what you actually did to drive results, stories that are believable specifically because they cite something unique that can only come from experience.

Leading with skills-first is similar to “niching down” from the perspective of actually being competitive in the marketplace. It may seem logical to broaden your opportunity set and background to optimize for results, but targeting and reflecting on your specialization is more likely to have the desired result in part because so few people are actually doing it.

Next, the aim of every young or mid-career professional should be to seek out alternate methods for accumulating direct experience in the field or role that they are targeting that can effectively demonstrate tangibly acquired skills.

Outside of internships this can be proactive outreach for temporary contract opportunities, small projects for real organizations that may need help but are less selective or have less resources than established brands, including startups, non-profits, small and local businesses and more.

To execute on this effectively it’s important to embody an entrepreneurial attitude to the types of activities one prioritizes in their effort to make themselves more competitive.

This includes consistent cold outreach on platforms like LinkedIn, attending local industry events, being willing to provide services relatively cheap to build the necessary portfolio via various gig platforms like UpWork, and more.

While uncomfortable and far more labor intensive than simply applying for available opportunities online where one competes with everyone vying for the same jobs, this is exactly the nature of output that’s required in a skills-first hiring environment. It’s also an ability that can future proof your entire career as you become immune to changes in markets, technology, or economic conditions.

It’s not that your degree is worthless, or that the internship you worked on during your final semester has no value. It’s that in an increasingly competitive world it takes more, and it’s the responsibility of the individual, not the employer, to communicate a clear and compelling story about why you’re the right person for the job.

Most people are never taught this skill, and that’s exactly why this added effort will make you immediately competitive. After all there’s a lot of opportunity out there, but simply too many inefficiencies in actually connecting great talent to those opportunities.

Use those inefficiencies to your advantage and focus on demonstrating the skills that you’ve worked so hard to acquire and double down on telling a story that helps you stand out from the noise.