No degree? No problem, you can still get that job

NAIROBI: You may soon not need to prove you have a degree to get a job at a respected multinational.

That is if the latest trend by international firms to remove the barrier of academic credentials to job entry goes mainstream.

Also, promotions based on the long-held but unpopular tradition of performance appraisals could become a thing of the past, as companies across the world adjust to current employment realities.

Instead, companies will rely on online assessments to judge potential employers, and job promotions will be based on a reviewed performance system, where the line manager gives feedback on employee performance on a regular basis.

NO EVIDENCE

The ave of change comes on the back of revelations from research conducted by various talent and human resource managers that shows relying on college degrees alone to get employees is “naïve and narrow”.

The latest company to make hiring changes is professional advisory services firm Ernst & Young — one of the Big Four audit firms. It announced this week that it would be removing the degree classification as a job entry requirement, saying there was no evidence that success at university correlates with achievements in later life.

Maggie Stilwell, EY’s managing partner for talent, said the company would use online assessments to judge the potential of applicants.

“Academic qualifications will still be taken into account and indeed remain an important consideration when assessing candidates as a whole, but will no longer act as a barrier to getting a foot in the door,” she said.

“Our own internal research of over 400 graduates found that screening students based on academic performance alone was too blunt an approach to recruitment.

“It found no evidence to conclude that previous success in higher education correlated with future success in subsequent professional qualifications undertaken.”

The fifth-largest graduate employer in the UK said the changes would come into force when recruiting this year.

EY’s move comes on the heels of similar action from Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, General Electric, Microsoft, Gap and Accenture.

PwC, for example, said placing too much emphasis on academic scores means employers could miss out on key talent from disadvantaged backgrounds who perform less well at school.

Research released by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission recently revealed that wealthy children are 35 per cent more likely to become higher earners than clever, disadvantaged children, even if the former are not academically gifted.