You don’t hire pieces of paper, you hire people
Google, Apple, Microsoft (somewhat), Facebook, and many of the tech giants are into a post-diploma world. “A what now?” I can hear you say. Post-diploma, they’re less and less relevant in certain fields, to which I say, amen.
At this point any of the hundreds of people I know whom I’ve worked with in higher ed either with or for universities are thinking “blasphemy,” but if they look a little deeper, I’m sure they’ll get it.
Look, I get it if you’re training to be a doctor or something specific where your years of classwork leads to making the right decisions hyper-specific to a situation, but in many other areas and careers, it’s far more important you can think, learn, and pivot on that information, rather than be anchored if not tied to your training.
This, alas, is the issue with the death of the liberal arts education. Who hires liberal arts grads? Well, for one thing, most liberal arts schools are incredibly expensive, for another, they’re often cream of the crop students, most liberal arts schools are hard to get into, for a good reason, they’re not assembling a person to do “a” thing, but rather, how to live life and be damn good at it. How to get into situations and figure them out which, arguably, is a far better skill than an art degree, or an English degree, or many other diplomas they hand out every year.
If you’ve been the hiring manager as I have, I don’t want a piece of paper, I don’t hire a resume and/or a cover letter. Those woefully outdated BS systems feeding the ATS beast aside, I’m hiring a person, one who can distill information, who can learn new things, fast, and make sense of them to help move organizations forward. That, right there, is more important than some 323-level course you’ll take at night as you try to earn all your credit.
In short: Life > Schooling.
Hell, you want an example? Me. I went to school to gain my BFA in art for arts sake, changed it up for design, including branding, with some marketing and a psych minor, but was that my first stop after college? No, it was publication design, followed due to my love of design and software with beating over 1,000 applicants to get a coveted role at Adobe helping write the book on Photoshop… literally.
Did any of my hardcore BFA training help me in those roles? Okay, sorta, it’s a yes and know. I got more experience understanding at a keyboard banging away at figuring things out, which made me far more adaptable behind a computer, arguably more than most because I was, and still am, highly passionate about it. But how much can I trace of my schooling to my career? Honestly, when it comes down to it, what I learned at University was how to diversify my skills, how to troubleshoot, and how to work with other people.
Don’t me wrong, these are great skills, but they’re weren’t part and parcel of the curriculum, which is the point of this post.
The brilliant, warm, and deadpan David Carson gave one of the most humorous, geniune, and arguably insightful TED talks about Design and Discovery.
In it, he gives insight into the mind of a true designer, a world which most creatives do not look life, objects, themes, and constructs the same way an average person does.
There’s a layer below that piece of paper, a diploma, to how every creative thinks, one in which having a degree in design doesn’t necessary make one a great designer any more than getting an MBA makes you an world-class business person. Quite the opposite, sometimes getting degrees can mire a person by teaching them constrictions instead of endless possibilities.
“World of endless possibilities” could sum up the approach David Carson takes towards design, and life in general.
David’s original education is that of sociology, how social actions, structure, and functions relate to the theoretical understanding of social processes. Understanding sociology may well be a better key to understanding marketing and design rather than a straight up education of either discipline.
Design is far more than making pretty pictures, visuals, and how things look. Marketing is more than a mere process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers. There’s much more beneath the surface to understanding either or both.
David entered design as an observer, he looked around and design and then put his own unique take on it. Had David perhaps formal training he wouldn’t be renowned in many design circles, leaving an indelible mark on the creative visual aesthetic. Shudder to think, but had he a four year design school education, his work would most likely wind up looking like everyone elses.
When one looks for talent for an organization, brand, what-have-you, whether that’s to assist in a message, visibility, to get the word out, to hire, retain, or whatever the relationship, there’s so much more than a person’s education or background. There’s the person’s perspective on the world and how they see it, and the value they add as a person, not a bloodless list on some job qualification requirements or bullets on a resume.
David Carson’s talk should remind all of us in some position of hiring authority we must look past the formal education, learn what makes a person tick, their passion, their enthusiasm. Never discount intuition about someone, or your own. These are things that go much further than one’s education or background and can make the next great thought leader and one to watch in your industry.