I don't understand

thehappyone

How come a vast number of entry level vacancies ask for a degree, but the higher up you go the less it becomes a requirement.

You will see a Help Desk job asking for a dozen requirements from ITIL to AD to various OS's and a degree, whilst paying £8 an hour. And then you'll see a 35k networking job asking for a CCNP and a solid understanding of networking.

Also you'll have 100+ applications for the entry level jobs and around 20 or so applications for the medium to high paying jobs.

It just doesn't make sense. Answers on a postcard please.

Danielm7

I imagine that for entry level work they know you won't already have working experience so they want you to have a base level of knowledge from somewhere. It might be from a degree, certs, etc. After awhile they assume that since you've been in networking for X years that the base understanding is already there and that your work experience should prove that.

As for the 2nd question, there are likely more people trying to get a start in IT than there are higher level specialists.

TheFORCE

One you have a proven track record, you have less resistance in the work place. But to get there you need to show your employer that you have the abilities to perform what they need, the degree is that tool when experience is lacking.

BlackBeret

Experience trumps all, if you don't have experience they need to see other qualifications. If you have experience no one should care about the paper, they care about what you've done.

DatabaseHead

+1 with the proven track record. Especially if this is a niche knowledge. While this may be an extreme example I think it's relavent to this discussion. What about a COBOL programmer working on some old mainframe system for a financial or insurance company? I honestly think they could careless about a degree.

@BlackBaret I see this in the business and IT side. I see older folks like myself coming in somewhat often without a degree. In fact my boss doesn't have one and she is a level higher than I, obviously. I have a masters she has high school, but...... She has quite a bit of experience support web and report servers.

Matt2

Generally speaking yes, many companies are smart enough to know experience can trump a degree. But somewhat surprisingly not all do. I've seen jobs you can't even apply to because there's a yes/no question on a degree, which is only semi useful for the job in question. And they don't have any option to factor in 15 years of IT experience, it's crazy. If 10+ years ago a fortune 100 company was ok without a degree, you'd think joes mobile apps would be ok without a degree if an individual had proper experience.

Pmorgan2

Experience is a great indicator of potential for job performance. For an entry level job, you need to show some sort of potential to make up for a lack of experience. Education and certifications are a popular stand-in for experience. At higher levels, both are important but experience is typically preferable. A lot of job posts state they want 10 years experience, and that a 4 year degree counts as 4 years of experience. So having both is the best way to go.

IT is an exciting field with a perception of high pay. A lot of people want to break in, but not everyone stays past the entry level. They may go a business, sales, or other technical route instead as opportunities unfold. In addition, mid to advanced career positions are usually very specific, so only specific people apply to them. Not all advanced system administrators have VMware deployment experience. Someone with 20 years experience with Windows Server might not apply for an advanced Red Hat Enterprise Linux position.

Remedymp

The purpose is to weed out the under-educated class of applicants. Nothing more, nothing less.

dontstop

Degrees are only relevant for certain professions (Engineering, Health, Law ... etc) otherwise just replace "Degree" with "piece of relevant paper" and you'll be sweet.

OctalDump

Because the system most organisations use to hire staff is horribly broken. The only reason it 'works' is because that's the system most organisations use. HR management in general is pretty crap, probably worse than it was 50-60 years ago. Management in general might be worse. I read some statistic recently that there's something like 10x as many managers as 80 years ago. The implication of having more is that standards are lower.

If you look at the old system, like how they used to run the railways, banks, newspapers or any reasonable sized organisations, you started at 14, 15, 16, and they then trained you basically from scratch. This system basically dates back to (at least) the middle ages and apprenticeships. Companies had all the structure in place to train people, so could take more risks in who they hired. Now they have no real in house training facility at all - they expect that staff will be able to function from day one and will take care of all their own training and development needs.

So they are now much more risk adverse, and think by setting a high bar for entry level, they will get better staff. What they should do, is refine their selection processes to target the actual skills/knowledge that they need, work out how to manage and train up new staff, and make sane choices. I suspect that might also mean some reform of the education system and wages.

sj4088

Actually it's an easy question to answer. Experience is king for most people/companies. Not all, some companies require degrees for certain position. But the assumption is if you have 5 to 10 year of experience you know more than the guy with the degree anyway so a degree isn't required. If you don't have the "real world" experience than they want to know that you have a certain base knowledge and aptitude for the job. A degree and certs can help with that. If you already done it at another company(experience) then you've proven that you have the knowledge and can do it. And that's less training for them. Most of these engineering teams don't have the time, man power or desire to sit there and train you everyday so they want you to know a lot coming into the door.

As for the second part. It's also very simple. If it's an entry level position everybody is going to take a short at trying to get hired for it. On the other hand if it's a Systems Architect or Network Architect position then there are FAR fewer people qualified for it and most people aren't going to waste their time applying for a position they almost certainly won't get. They know they are going to need close to 10 years experience of senior level experience to be taken seriously for the position. Also even though most of the entry level ask for a lot of requirements they are usually much easier to get, for example ITIL(easy test), AD(really just resetting passwords and adding machines and such for entry level) than a Sr. System Engineer where you need to know how to deploy a VM infrastructure environment, build out an entire data center, etc.

DatabaseHead

The situation is contingent on its own criteria but like others have mentioned, experience trumps most other things.......

I have a friend who scored a job in networking straight out of high school because of his father. He has no degree or certifications, but has been a network engineer for over 15 years. he has no problem landing jobs, so in this one specific instance his experience carries him.

Even when the job ask for a degree, certs, and even preferred masters he still gets those jobs.....