Re: success with finding jobs/college degrees

["Cramer, Kim" <kcramer -at- NCSLINK -dot- COM>]

OK - I finally had to jump into this discussion!

Steven Warren said:
> Having a college degree shows a prospective
> employer that you have what it takes to see something through to the end.
> This establishes your character to a prospective employer.
> It proves you also have what it takes to stick out a long project.

I don't see any correlation between having the above characteristics and
having a college degree.

As you can probably guess, I'm one of the folks without a degree (in
fact, I've taken only one college course; it was on Nutrition, not
writing; and I took it purely because of personal interests).  The lack
of a degree has never been an issue for any of my employers, nor has it
prevented me from getting the jobs I really wanted.  My employers looked
at my experience (20 years in the microcomputer field, with experience
in retail management, computer sales, sales support, customer support,
training delivery, and training development, plus 9 years as a technical
writer (including 4 years doing online Help) and checked my references.
And voila, they pay me well to do neat stuff!

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that I know everything about
documentation, because I definitely don't!  When I want to learn about
something new, I prefer to research and learn it on my own, find a
mentor to work with, or take hands-on non-university courses from
practitioners in the field.  The thought of having to jump through the
adminstrative hoops necessary to get into a college or university degree
program makes me shudder.  To get a degree, I'd have to suffer through
all kinds of BS courses in areas outside my interests, plus pay lots of
$$$.  Yes, I'd learn cool stuff too, but I can't see that the piece of
paper would result in my being more employable.

And frankly, I'd rather not work for a company if that's the primary
criteria on which they judge potential candidates.  I've worked with
college grads who can't write (and some of them had been "technical
writers" for years).  Like Wayne Douglass said, "There was no obvious
correlation between sheepskin and ability."

Here's another issue for me - I think my job performance or personal
life would suffer while going to school even part-time.  For me, it's
not worth the trade-off - YMMV!

My 2+ pennies worth!

*************
Kim Cramer
kcramer -at- ncslink -dot- com
Sr. Information Developer
NCS Education, Mesa AZ
*************

 TECHWR-L (Technical Communication) List Information: To send a message
to 2500+ readers, e-mail to TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU -dot-  Send commands
   to LISTSERV -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU (e.g. HELP or SIGNOFF TECHWR-L).
  Search the archives at http://www.documentation.com/  or search and
browse the archives at http://listserv.okstate.edu/archives/techwr-l.html