Qualification + No Experience = No Job?

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Huh?!?!?? I'm confused. Are you saying employers care about an applicant's educational level? Because, as someone with a master's, I assure you they don't. I can't even low-level clerical work even though I do have experience.

I thought I was adequately clear.

The focus by employers on everyone having at least a BA/BS degree to be considered for hiring comes from the push by academia to teach HR people that college was essential. You saw apprenticeships, on-the-job-training, etc. pretty much dry up in a generation and everyone wanted a degree. Colleges, of course, were more than happy to craft dozens of niche-market "degree programs" for these jobs. Utterly counterproductive when you realize the needs of an industry can change and evolve so much faster than academic programs can keep up.

Employers got out of training their own workers and wanted people showing up on the door with read-to-work skills already in place by their paying for it in school...often only to get entry-level wages anyhow.

Of course, this creates a backlash for the educated....

1. Being in debt for an education with only X degrees of marketplace applicability.

2. Risking being "overqualified" for any number of jobs that can ensure survival because employer is afraid you will depart for a better job (which might be so...but in a bad economy you still need to eat).

3. Risking being "unqualified" for any number of jobs you could easily learn because you need that niche-marketed degree program to qualify for the job.

4. (Relating to #1 above), not having the means for any new skill training nor be able to be ready for work in the time span available from the time you know an opening is coming available to when it needs to be filled.

Employers will often look past limited experience (depending on your age) if you can show willingness to learn. It's all about how you write your CV and how you perform in the interview.

I had zero proper job experience but I got an internship at a major financial organisation.

Please don't patronize me just because I disagree with your views.



Employers require everyone to have at least a bachelor's degree? Really???? This isn't my experience at all. Most job postings I see just want a high school diploma/GED and then several years experience. Employers couldn't care less about degrees. I have my bachelors and masters...it isn't helping me. As I said already, I can't even get measly clerical work even though I do have some work experience in that area (I worked for a couple years between undergrad and grad school).

Now, if you're just merely lamenting the fact that employers won't hire young college graduates that lack experience, I completely agree with you.

I'm not intending to patronize. Perhaps I'm being too general and you're taking me too literally.

In my experience, the "good jobs" all require advanced training, and even when they aren't "technical jobs." Many good jobs were obtained without advanced education. Early on, a degree was a way to fast track your way up the ladder rather than learning on the job, proving yourself, then being moved up the ladder.

Somewhere along the way, it seems to me that all the "good jobs" now mandate a college degree....even though the nuts and bolts of the job really don't mandate college education to perform. Effective marketing on the HR people from those in academia.

There are certainly a lot of jobs that don't need anyone with more than a HS diploma or GED, but they are not considered the "good jobs" and having a degree will more likely than not get you shut out of consideration as "overqualified."

In your situation, I have no doubt your degrees are keeping you from getting the "low end" jobs because they think you won't stick around for long or that you will be bored (or maybe you'll educate the other dumb workers, perhaps).

When I got laid off from one job, I applied twice to be a route attendant for a vending machine company. First time, I listed my law degree. Wasn't interviewed. Second time, I didn't list it. I got interviewed and hired. Wasn't a great job, but I needed the money and even though in the long run I did leave them (and the customers didn't like me because I wasn't "friendly enough"), my supervisor did admire how hard and long I worked and thought in a way it was silly that customers were more upset that I wasn't a sociable guy when my sole purpose for being in their business was to clean and stock the vending machines so they had a fresh variety of products to choose from.

I'm largely working in a secretarial job. I got lucky as my mom was retiring and her boss was too lazy to try and interview a replacement. I took her place, and while it's been a decent arrangement, there is no future for me here. I make an okay paycheck (for getting by), but no benefits. I'm considering taking a lower paying job just for the health benefits if it came with them. I've been trying for about 5 years now to get something better, but I'm lucky to ever get an interview...maybe once a year, and as I hit 43, I realize in about 7 years, I'll be unemployable at 50. Nobody will want a 50-year-old with no real accomplishments in his life. Should this secretarial job go away, I'll likely be hoping to get a job back at the grocery store collecting carts from the parking lot.

i've always wondered how these people get jobs advising people to look at thing on google. for some reason such jobs seem to always require degrees. degrees to piddle around and do nothing but tell people to look things up on google and distribute similar boiler plate.

it's probably something to do with you looking for measly clerical work. some jobs they want degrees, some jobs they don't. the key factor is they all want experience without giving you the chance to get any and on top of that they want you to get into degree programs that may very well be completely useless by the time you're done going through me (even if they were in demand when you entered them).

I don't see that many jobs that even ask for a degree. I RARELY see jobs that require a degree, but don't require experience.



It depends. I know quite a few people who went to work right out of high school, and they're doing just fine now, unlike my overeducated ass, who has to live at home and apply for disability.



Yeah, I have too much education for crappy jobs.....too little experience for good jobs. However, even among crappy jobs, I have preferences. I'd much rather a minimum wage job doing data entry than in doing retail or customer service. Ugh.

That's life for a lot of NTs with degrees who can't get jobs as well. You are not alone in this.

Why is the HS grad with no degree doing better that their college educated counterpart? They went to work, and if they worked hard, they got promoted, more pay, more benefits, and now, even if they are making less money, they don't have the college debt hanging over their heads that their counterparts have.

This is doubly so in the current reality where the average college graduate would be LUCKY to get a job paying as much as what your associate/department manager in your local grocery store earns without a college degree.

Maybe, but I think Aspies are more prone to being overeducated, un- or under-employed. Think about it. You really don't "social skills" to succeed in school, but you do need them to succeed in the workplace.

Why is the HS grad with no degree doing better that their college educated counterpart? They went to work, and if they worked hard, they got promoted, more pay, more benefits, and now, even if they are making less money, they don't have the college debt hanging over their heads that their counterparts have.[/quote]

Fortunately, I don't have debt (free ride through undergrad and grad school, but didn't get to go where I wanted for the latter), but since I'm making nothing right now, the HS degrees with no degree area definitely making more I had a job before grad school with OKAY pay and benefits but still probably less.



We're creating a white-collar underclass.

College degrees are just meaningless pieces of paper when you remain unemployed for years and years. 3 or 4 years doing a pointless degree in your situation to end up having wasted 3 or 4 years of your life for nothing.

NTs can obtain work far easier than Autistics/Aspies. NTs have superior social skills that helps them build social networks and enable more job opportunities. Who you know, not what you know plays a major role in obtaining employment.

The problem with a college degree is that it doesn't really say anything. If your resume says "Engineering Degree from MIT", it doesn't tell an employer you're capable of doing specifically what the job requires. It may say you're good at studying, and that you've done something requiring engineering skills, but what?

I've had my hand in hiring a few people, and the thing that stands out most is an accomplishment that closely matches what we actually want that person to do. Reading list after list of degrees, licences, and cerifications, they all start to run together. My company needed to contract a tooling guy recently. He was hired almost entirely based on a single drawing he showed us that looked like what we wanted him to design. The highly educated person that just listed degrees may have had hundreds of similar examples, but without showing us, how do we know?

I can understand why employers don't value degrees, but what I don't understand is why our parents and teachers (you're not much older than me, so I'm sure you had the same experience) pressured us to to go college so much. One teacher even told me I'd never make more than minimum wage if I didn't go to college. Why did they lie to us? Were they just fooled by those statistics showing that the more educated you are, the more money you make? CORRELATION ISN'T CAUSATION!

If had gone to work right out of high school, I'd be better off or at least no worse off.

I preach that too. It's been hammered into the heads of middle-class americans that college is simply what you do after high school. And at that age, you can't blame them. Everything they've done has been planned and most enjoy the comfort of sticking to pre-laid tracks (the illusion at least).

There's also the idea that college is a life plan in itself. Getting a degree is only a pre-requisite for the real plan you should have before entering college. I was railroaded to college out of high school like many others. About a year in, a friend of a friend asked me what I was in college for. I said mechanical engineering. Then he asked me what I wanted to do with that degree. Wait, What? Be a mechanical engineer of course. I had no idea at the time I couldn't just keep going to class and expect everything the take care of itself. If I really took his question to heart and made extra effort to prepare myself to be perfect for what I wanted to do (finding that out also), I'd have been farther ahead at least a couple years.

Employers do value degrees, but you need to prove you can generate profit for them with what you learned. That's something you have to prove on your own. Schools just teach you to pass tests.

Any advice for those Aspies who aren't technically inclined? LOL....it seems Aspies can only got jobs as engineers or computer programmers. I'm sorry, but the "technically inclined" Aspies don't know how good they have it.

Has anyone mentioned they have Aspergers Syndrome on their CV/resume? Hoping the employer is open minded and does not hold your Aspergers Syndrome against you.

It is very hard having to explain Aspergers in the interview or the employer may find out you have Asperger's when you are working. Problems with customers, doing the job or interacting with work colleagues due to Aspergers.

I have Asperger's Syndrome is how I introduce myself to new people. If people accept your Aspergers that is good and they are open minded and understand that people have differences. If people don't accept your Aspergers well they are not worth talking to and are ignorant, intolerant and narrow minded.

Is an employer worth working for if they do not accept your Aspergers? A person can not be your friend if they do not accept Aspergers. You either support Aspergers or you are against Aspergers.