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Should we disregard educational qualifications in the recruitment process?

Steve Bridger

Admittedly a provocative title... but yesterday I read Neil Morrison's blog post - Qualifying success - in which he writes:

I’m currently in-between receiving A-level results and GCSEs for my two kids. Having been through the exam period with them and now awaiting results, I’m reminded how frankly barbaric this process is. As a means of assessing potential and capability, it ranks up there with Russian roulette.

Neil is a CIPD board member and I have always enjoyed reading his views. This one hits home as I also have a daughter who will receive her GCSE results on Thursday morning. It has been a stressful 12 months... but how much should it matter?

Neil again...

As a long standing champion of disregarding educational qualifications in the recruitment process, I believe business has a big role to play in changing this dialogue. Our job is to identify potential, to seek out talent and to build capability – yet we know that there is no direct correlation between this an academic results or educational establishment. This is why not only should we fundamentally limit the use of academic qualifications in assessment, but we should be open and clear that we do.

Do you agree?

How much weight do you currently give to academic qualifications?

Has your view changed over time?

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  • As always it's a question of context and "what for?".

    At one extreme I would prefer my doctor/dentist/architect to have undertaken a course of study leading to an academic qualification permitting them to practice their professions. As one step down I would probably recruit quite a few R&D people with a PhD in an area of applied research that is appropriate to the job I want them to undertake. Although not necessary on an academic level I would also expect a head of R&D to have gone through a similar route - but more because of getting credibility with his team of dreamers... his real job is probably no longer based on technical expertise and is more about managing resources.

    At the other end of the spectrum qualifications only have a real value for me in the early years of someone's career (see Robey's post), and the degree they obtained 20 years ago in social anthropology will be irrelevant to their profession of office manager.

    For day to day jobs the skills and experience acquired after 5-6 years will almost always be more important than the qualifications - the exceptions being for regulated professions.

    More interesting these days are the certifications of operational and professional competences that many bodies are now promoting - I've just finished a 45 minute oral with a person who wanted a professional competence certification in the highly specialist are of senior executive remuneration (in a French context). The oral followed 2 days of group training and case work, then a 4 hour examination aimed at checking whether the person could demonstrate they could successfully apply the technical knowledge in an operation context...

    In conclusion - "horses for courses"
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  • As always it's a question of context and "what for?".

    At one extreme I would prefer my doctor/dentist/architect to have undertaken a course of study leading to an academic qualification permitting them to practice their professions. As one step down I would probably recruit quite a few R&D people with a PhD in an area of applied research that is appropriate to the job I want them to undertake. Although not necessary on an academic level I would also expect a head of R&D to have gone through a similar route - but more because of getting credibility with his team of dreamers... his real job is probably no longer based on technical expertise and is more about managing resources.

    At the other end of the spectrum qualifications only have a real value for me in the early years of someone's career (see Robey's post), and the degree they obtained 20 years ago in social anthropology will be irrelevant to their profession of office manager.

    For day to day jobs the skills and experience acquired after 5-6 years will almost always be more important than the qualifications - the exceptions being for regulated professions.

    More interesting these days are the certifications of operational and professional competences that many bodies are now promoting - I've just finished a 45 minute oral with a person who wanted a professional competence certification in the highly specialist are of senior executive remuneration (in a French context). The oral followed 2 days of group training and case work, then a 4 hour examination aimed at checking whether the person could demonstrate they could successfully apply the technical knowledge in an operation context...

    In conclusion - "horses for courses"
Children
  • in reply to Ray
    I would agree with the perspective of time in many cases. I would hate to think anyone cared what my Maths GCSE result was now (and indeed if a recruiter was that pedantic I'd probably think twice), and I do smile when I still get CVs that proudly tell me what someone got in their "O levels" in 1979 :-)