Burn Your Resume – The Degree Is Dead
As many of you probably know, I chose to opt out of college.
And while I’m proud of that decision, I’m not trying to brag about it and make it seem like going to college is an awful choice. However, I do believe that more people would opt out of college if they knew they could do just as well, if not better, without it.
I dropped all my college courses a week before class started with no concrete guarantees. Just some ideas, a few plans, and a determination to succeed.
Why?
Because once I realized what I could do without a degree, I couldn’t stand the thought of turning back to the traditional path to acquire one.
It used to be that you could go to a company, submit a nice resume with solid bullet points, and land a comfortable job somewhat easily (if you could interview well). Having a degree made you stand out, as did an excellently worded resume.
But today? That’s not often the case. “So you have a degree? That’s nice. So does everyone else.”
Everyone has a degree, everyone has a resume, and everyone has killer references. If you want to make a unforgettable impression, it’s going to require effort. No more “spraying and praying.”
Take it from someone who has been on both sides of the hiring table.
The degree is dead. It’s time to burn your resume.
For one thing, resumes are boring. They’re all about you, what you can do, and what you’re looking for. And they all look the same.
Companies (no matter what their core values are listed as) care about what you can do for THEM. Yes, if it’s a good company they will care about their employees as well, but generally, candidates who pitch why they stand out and outline what value they can bring to the company get hired first.
The only thing that matters is, can you do the job excellently, and are you willing to grow? And if you can, and you have a great attitude, I couldn’t care less whether you went to Harvard or not. A degree used to be a signal of someone’s value as an employee, but today, it takes much more than that to stand out.
That’s not to say that you can’t provide value propositions after you graduate college. I know many successful colleagues who went to college, graduated, and still stood out in interviews… but it wasn’t due to their degree. It’s because they were willing to go above and beyond with their value signaling.
What is value signaling? It’s showing a company why you would be the best fit for the role and why they should choose you over all other candidates.
For example, I used a platform called Crash to create a customized pitch for a certain company. I found the hiring manager’s email online using Hunter.io, did some research on the company, and created a short video pitch to introduce myself and share why I would be a great fit for them. I had to follow up a few times, but eventually, I got an interview. While I was chatting with the hiring manager, she ended up mentioning –
“You know, your email bounced around to a few different people, but that video was really intriguing. I felt like I already knew you, and it’s the reason why we’re interviewing you now.”
Value signaling matters. Does it require a lot of work and effort? Yes. But is it worth it? Again, yes.
And once you pitch your first company and gain some experience, degrees don’t matter much.
I went through an entrepreneurial bootcamp called Discover Praxis, which launched me into my first role. You can totally do all of that without a bootcamp, you just need to be extra dedicated and seek out the mentorship and the knowledge of branding yourself on your own. As I was interviewing for my second job, I was only asked roughly three times what college I had gone to. Two out of those three people thought that my opting out of college was the coolest thing ever.
My point in writing this is to get you to think twice before going to college. If you’re going to go into debt for a piece of paper that’s supposed to give you a value signal in the future, but you don’t know for sure what interests you, maybe give it a second thought. Just because it’s “what everybody does” doesn’t mean you have to do it.
At my second job, I had lunch with one of the interns. He had just graduated with a four year degree, was 2 years older than me, and had the same job as I did…except I was full time. After hearing my story, I remember him saying “wow…I really wish I would have known I could do that before I went to college. I probably wouldn’t have gone.”
We live in the information age where pretty much anything you want to learn can be done for free online, or for somewhat cheap (compared to college) in a bootcamp. So if you’re not planning on being in the medical field, and don’t desire a job that actually requires very special training like that, why go?
It’s getting easier and easier too. Gap years are much more common today than they were several years ago. Don’t believe the lie that you need to jump into college immediately after highschool. It’s not going to ruin your life. Take your time, be productive, learn like crazy, and forge your own career.
No one else is going to do it for you.
