Entry-Level Jobs that require bachelor's degrees

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I acknowledge I am not directly familiar with American hiring into fortune 500 companies, US government or US universities, almost all of my experience is as an Australian and an expat working in Asia. But I can't imagine it would be a quantum leap difference between hiring behaviour in US and Australia.

If you hold an existing position in a company you are usually preferred to an outsider as the boss already knows you. I know a lot of people who work in HR in major Australian companies and the process of recruitment of fresh graduates is fickled and non-transparent to outsiders. Internships do go to people from elite universities over here and they are usually the first to get a foot in the door. Of course grades do count, In the government public service exams your grades and qualifications matter more > where you studied. they then apply a competency test to qualify to see how smart you are.

Culture shock is a real thing, even when moving from one english-speaking nation to another. It doesn't have to be a quantum leap of a difference for a difference to still be significant. Even within the USA, just moving from one state to another state can be a bit jarring, given the differences in culture.

One consideration is that, while AUS and USA have similar land-masses, the USA population is 15 times greater than the AUS population (240 million vs 27 million). Likely more dynamic, too, what with immigration and international business and education.

There's also the disparity in post-secondary education opportunities. The USA has 3,928 post-secondary education facilities. AUS has 43.

AUS has many fewer people, and many fewer colleges, to pick from, and those people likely cycle out much less. As such, it makes sense to hire internally, and to simply select from the best schools. The "top 10% schools" in USA equals around 400 to choose from - the "top 10%" in AUS would be a pool of 4.

This isn't saying one is better than the other - just that there are functional differences in the available pools to learn from, and to pick employees from, and as such, the selection process is going to be different. Communities in AUS seem to be a bit more tight-knit than in the USA, simply due to the smaller size of communities and harshness of environment, making community interdependence and cooperation more necessary for survival and prosperity.

Another relevant factor of the population of america - Harvard alone awards around 10,000 degrees per year, across all degrees. So even the guy that thinks "I'm the best, I'M from HARVARD!" - guess what, so are 50 other applicants, and another 30 from Yale, 19 from MIT, etc. It doesn't necessarily narrow the field anymore. And, businesses know the importance of experience and ability over just a degree. So it ends up being the person from Kentucky State University who gets the job, cos they've also been working in the field for the last 6 years, with a proven record of exceeding expectations.

Now, personally, I have 10+ years of experience in the american post-secondary education system, including trade school, state college, and a top 10% private university - across 5 degrees. I also have 10+ years professional experience, including trade work, research, and management experience. Given that we're talking about american education and american jobs, I feel like this is relevant.

Granted. I am assuming hiring practices are broadly similar (Australian companies tend to follow similar Q/A and ISO practices to the US), but I do acknowledge the landscape/history is different between our two countries.

As a microbiology graduate back in the late 1980s there wasn't a lot of work beyond hospitals and the food/pharmaceutical industry. As a graduate I never really held a permanent job and went from one short term contract to another for about a decade. I couldn't afford to live beyond renting and was always not far from being in debt. It wasn't a great life. I had to re-invent myself as an education consultant and was able to find work in Asia and came back to Australia and have continued in this role working in private colleges in the higher education sector. As the international student boom died I moved into mainstream universities doing a mix of tutoring and ed design and ed services. One skill is my capacity to move across multiple employers/locations in Asia and Australia and keeping up with latest developments such as online learning systems, integrated gradebooks, online learning/workbooks/workshops which has accelerated since COVID.

Fresh graduates need to have flexibility to concurrently scrub floors and do their tour of duty in low paid jobs that nominally take into account their skills. Over time you stop applying the thing you studied in University. I haven't looked down a microscope since 1997.

I personally have never found this to be true of my own studies.

Why did you select a degree in microbiology?

It looked interesting at the time. I liked seeing millions of critters in one drop of water.


I'm over it now.

Oh okay. Thanks Brian. I have multiple college degrees. However I would need the job to require a bachelor's degree for me to take the job.

Well in my part of the state there were no job coaches available for me. We dont know if there will be a job coach available for me....I have to have a job coach to work a job. I am not expecting to start in the middle....I want to start entry-level on the bottom. Also people dont really work their way up the corporate ladder at jobs anymore at companies they stay at for years. Job hopping is the best way to advance your career not working your way up at a single company.

Last edited by Texasmoneyman300 on 04 Apr 2025, 9:05 am, edited 2 times in total.

I do not have a Ivy League degree plus I would never want to go a Ivy League school like Harvard even if it was an option for me. My family makes over 200,000 dollars per year so I would not qualify for free tuition.

You thought a degree in a social science would get you a job???
Social science is practically an oxymoron!

My parents told me that it would get a good-paying job and I was naive enough to believe them. All my teachers said you will get a good job to live the American Dream if you get any college degree. I was going to be a professor but that did not work out well for me. I got a sociology degree because many petroleum landmen have them and thats also what I wanted to do. However the landman jobs dried up by the time I graduated college because the Basin was all leased up at the time. I could of lived off a landman salary had I of been hired on right after college graduation. =

Last edited by Texasmoneyman300 on 04 Apr 2025, 9:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ivy League endowments are just criminal to me when they could use a little bit of the money to cut the price of tuition way down.

Here's a twist; once I got into job hopping (the only sure way of getting a pay rise as an engineer) I notice I was barred from the jobs in engineering design I should have got, because they required a 2.1 or higher. I presume they thought they were getting a better class of engineer, but here's the rub: Of the small handful of guys I encountered who had any talent for innovation, not one of them gave a stuff about getting high academic awards. It's part and parcel of the way of thinking, and I expect it is perfectly natural for sociallising types to assume a higher qualification is a sign of being smarter, but to those of us more gifted in dealing with (non-human) reality, an exam is just a barrier to be overcome with the minimum of effort.

Lol. My life is the same as if I was a high-school drop out. College scammed me big time.

Melbourne University in Australia has massive endowments accumulated from 1850s but quite often has job cuts which never made sense to me.

the highest bankrolled university is ACU or Australian Catholic University. they started as a theological school and have huge endowments from the catholic church and Catholics.

A few points
1. Parents live in a time machine from a previous generation and are out of touch with the job market unless they work in HR or they convince you to follow in their footsteps.
2. School teachers have no idea what happens in the real world outside of school and careers counsellor pamphlets, a good starting point is your careers counsellor but again its a lottery if they themselves are in any way versed in what's going on. My careers couslellor back in the late 1970s took us to the state library and asked us to read university level textbooks to gauge what career would interest us. Many of the books we were reading were from the 1960s
3. An experienced practioner in a field might have a bachelors because that was what was required back in the 1990s but in 2025 the minimum requirement might now be a masters. Remember, they are in their job because of basic qualifications + years of certification and experience. You on the other hand are competing with fresh graduates and new qualification requirements.
4. A sociology degree is actually more useful than what I have (a degree in microbiology). But you need to be creative in how you use your qualifications in selling your skills (which a sociology degree gives you).

It's wild how y'all will blame the schools and the degrees and parents and councilors and job coaches and even the jobs themselves - but not once is it even considered that the problem is your own damn self.