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Can i get a job without college degree
I graduted from flatiron coding school in nyc. I have not any coding experience.
My skills are #Javascript,#react,#ruby on rails,#angular
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12 answers
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Jesus’s Answer
Hi Gurwinder,
I am a tech recruiter in San Francisco. I deal with this question all the time. There is no one right answer for this. My advice to you is get your degree. This will open doors that otherwise may not be open if you do not have a degree. Study something you have a passion for. Most people will tell you that you need a degree in a certain area to have a successful career. That is not true. many people study one subject in college and end up working in something completely different. Lastly, no one can take your education away. As it is true in Silicon Valley that most companies will hire you without a degree. Having a sense of accomplishment and education that none can take away says something about you and your willingness to achieve your goals. Best of luck in making your choice.
I am a tech recruiter in San Francisco. I deal with this question all the time. There is no one right answer for this. My advice to you is get your degree. This will open doors that otherwise may not be open if you do not have a degree. Study something you have a passion for. Most people will tell you that you need a degree in a certain area to have a successful career. That is not true. many people study one subject in college and end up working in something completely different. Lastly, no one can take your education away. As it is true in Silicon Valley that most companies will hire you without a degree. Having a sense of accomplishment and education that none can take away says something about you and your willingness to achieve your goals. Best of luck in making your choice.
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Christine’s Answer
Hi Gurwinder,
The great thing about technical skills is that you can show them off without a degree. You should build up a portfolio of projects that utilises your full range of coding skills. If you create a Jupyter notebook or a GibHub account, you can then share this portfolio when applying for jobs. There are countless libraries out there of projects for all languages and of varying difficulty.
Learning new coding languages is easy and free online so you should continuously be expanding your skill set.
In my experience, you should apply for a job if you meet the minimum skill requirements, don't worry so much if they say they require a degree. If you can get your foot in the door, pass their tests, and talk the technical jargon, you have just as good of a chance of proving yourself as someone with a degree.
Best of luck!
Create a GitHub/Jupyter account
Start a portfolio
Up your skills
The great thing about technical skills is that you can show them off without a degree. You should build up a portfolio of projects that utilises your full range of coding skills. If you create a Jupyter notebook or a GibHub account, you can then share this portfolio when applying for jobs. There are countless libraries out there of projects for all languages and of varying difficulty.
Learning new coding languages is easy and free online so you should continuously be expanding your skill set.
In my experience, you should apply for a job if you meet the minimum skill requirements, don't worry so much if they say they require a degree. If you can get your foot in the door, pass their tests, and talk the technical jargon, you have just as good of a chance of proving yourself as someone with a degree.
Best of luck!
Christine recommends the following next steps:
Updated
Dexter’s Answer
Hi Gurwinder,
I think a college degree makes it easier to get an interview, but passing the interview has nothing to do with college.
Basically, for a lot of corporations, the first line filtering is done by the recruiting team. These recruiters are told to look for certain minimum requirements and to help the manager parse through the hundreds/thousands of applications that come in. If a manager values college degrees, they might tell the recruiter to look out for that and to filter out anyone without a degree. You have to remember that most managers hiring developers do have a college education (that I know of anyways), and so they're trying to find someone like them.
I would echo Christine Shrader's answer in that your best bet if you do not want to get a college degree is to build up a portfolio. When I hire, my first filter is a github page (types of projects, level of activity), so I would encourage you to build that up. If you do take our advice and go on github, I do recommend contributing to some open source projects. Even "easy" things like documentation go a long way with interviewers like me who give extra credit for helping open source initiatives. Also, I personally highly value documentation. :)
I wish you the best of luck in your career, Gurwinder!
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Dexter
I think a college degree makes it easier to get an interview, but passing the interview has nothing to do with college.
Basically, for a lot of corporations, the first line filtering is done by the recruiting team. These recruiters are told to look for certain minimum requirements and to help the manager parse through the hundreds/thousands of applications that come in. If a manager values college degrees, they might tell the recruiter to look out for that and to filter out anyone without a degree. You have to remember that most managers hiring developers do have a college education (that I know of anyways), and so they're trying to find someone like them.
I would echo Christine Shrader's answer in that your best bet if you do not want to get a college degree is to build up a portfolio. When I hire, my first filter is a github page (types of projects, level of activity), so I would encourage you to build that up. If you do take our advice and go on github, I do recommend contributing to some open source projects. Even "easy" things like documentation go a long way with interviewers like me who give extra credit for helping open source initiatives. Also, I personally highly value documentation. :)
I wish you the best of luck in your career, Gurwinder!
--
Dexter
Updated
Maren’s Answer
Absolutely! While having a college degree will certainly give you a leg-up when it comes to searching for jobs, not all jobs require that an applicant have received a degree. I would definitely suggest narrowing down to the fields you're interested in, then to the specific roles, and then researching those particular roles to see whether they require a degree. Additionally, in certain cases, hiring managers for jobs that may traditionally require a degree can sometimes overlook a lack of degree given the candidate for the role has adequate experience to compensate for the lack of degree. Just know that in those cases, you would likely have to start in an entry level role and it could also take more time to get into the role you actually want than it would if you had a degree. Your certification through FlatIron should be helpful though! And I would be surprised if they didn't have anything in place to assist their graduates with sourcing open roles that they could qualify for with the coding skills they learned through the school.
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Gloria’s Answer
The short answer is yes, you can get a job without a college degree. Your challenge will be getting the experience that you need for the job that you want. The first question to consider is - what is the job that you want? Does that job normally require a degree in the businesses hiring in your area? I actually do not know related to coding in particular. I can actually do my job without a degree, but getting an interview can be harder. Your challenge is going to be finding a way to use your coding skills to earn the experience that you want. For example, to gain some experience, could you use your coding skills to help a local non-profit? You would be volunteering your skills in return for experience. Also, how do you use your coding just for fun? Do you create code that could be used to create work samples? This would be another tool that you could bring with you to interviews. In an earlier post, someone mentioned applying for jobs that you believe you meet minimum requirements. That is true. Something like a work product to share will help you. Also, if you apply on job platforms like Indeed.com, some employers actually have you do a test to see if you really do know how to code. That is proving that you know the job which you can do without a degree. Continue to practice your coding skills and make sure that you are still on the leading edge of best practices in coding.
Good luck on your job search efforts.
Good luck on your job search efforts.
Updated
Jonan’s Answer
Hello Gurwinder,
You can absolutely get a job in software without a college degree, especially with that skill set. I've worked with brilliant developers who didn't graduate from middle school.
My advice to you is to start learning publicly and get involved with JavaScript and Ruby communities online. Your first job will likely come from a personal referral. The easiest way to bypass the recruiter screening issue is to come in as a reference for a current employee. As a courtesy this will very often get you a discussion with a hiring manager or someone who is capable of determining your actual technical ability, instead of just what your resume can say about your skills.
Share your journey online. Write blog posts, build portfolio projects, put every bit of code you write up on GitHub and consider creating short videos for YouTube or even streaming on Twitch to help other developers in your situation. No matter where you are in your career there are people looking to walk in your trail.
Best of luck with your journey. When you're feeling down remember that this first role is likely the only job you'll ever have to actively search out. After your first year or so you'll start to wish the recruiters would just leave you alone.
You can absolutely get a job in software without a college degree, especially with that skill set. I've worked with brilliant developers who didn't graduate from middle school.
My advice to you is to start learning publicly and get involved with JavaScript and Ruby communities online. Your first job will likely come from a personal referral. The easiest way to bypass the recruiter screening issue is to come in as a reference for a current employee. As a courtesy this will very often get you a discussion with a hiring manager or someone who is capable of determining your actual technical ability, instead of just what your resume can say about your skills.
Share your journey online. Write blog posts, build portfolio projects, put every bit of code you write up on GitHub and consider creating short videos for YouTube or even streaming on Twitch to help other developers in your situation. No matter where you are in your career there are people looking to walk in your trail.
Best of luck with your journey. When you're feeling down remember that this first role is likely the only job you'll ever have to actively search out. After your first year or so you'll start to wish the recruiters would just leave you alone.
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Ajai’s Answer
100% you can get a job without college degree.
I know people who thrive in their roles without a college degree.
Especially in tech you can do one of the following to improve your chances of getting a job without a degree.
* learning through online resources - https://github.com/Michael0x2a/curated-programming-resources/blob/master/resources.md
* Tech certifications
* Open source contribution
I know people who thrive in their roles without a college degree.
Especially in tech you can do one of the following to improve your chances of getting a job without a degree.
* learning through online resources - https://github.com/Michael0x2a/curated-programming-resources/blob/master/resources.md
* Tech certifications
* Open source contribution
Updated
Youki’s Answer
Experience is more important than a certification.
Just learn from the company and stay confident.
Just learn from the company and stay confident.
Updated
Christina’s Answer
Hi Gurwinder, yes you can get a job in software engineering without a degree. If you have no professional experience coding but have graduated from a coding school, I recommend completing a few projects that showcase your skills, keeping an update GitHub profile so that prospective employers can see your work, and volunteering your time to get some working experience under your belt. You can find volunteering opportunities on most job listing websites by filtering by "volunteer." I hope that helps!
Build a few projects
Create a GitHub profile to show off your projects to prospective employers
Volunteer your time to get some professional experience under your belt
Christina recommends the following next steps:
Updated
Blake’s Answer
Hey Gurwinder,
There are a lot of jobs that require college degrees, but there are also a lot of jobs that don't. My recommendation would be preparing to have the best interview possible. A lot of jobs teach you what you need to know on the job.
Thanks,
Blake
There are a lot of jobs that require college degrees, but there are also a lot of jobs that don't. My recommendation would be preparing to have the best interview possible. A lot of jobs teach you what you need to know on the job.
Thanks,
Blake
Updated
Simeon’s Answer
There are excellent trade jobs outside of college, like electrician, plumber, welder, and HVAC tech, but it sounds like you want to go in a more technical route. Check out the certifications that Google is offering at grow. google. com and see if any of them are a good fit for you. You just need a high school degree and no previous experience is required.
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Bill’s Answer
It is possible to get into the field if you have a portfolio that showcases your knowledge. If you have no professional experience at all though, it's rather difficult and a degree can help open doors you might otherwise not have access to. A degree usually comes with courses to help you succeed in the professional world, not just courses related to your specific role. I suggest that if you have no experience and can get a degree, then you should pursue it.