Guides and Gates

Culturally, we have clear ideas about who is qualified to do certain jobs. You need to be an MD or DO to practice medicine. You need to pass the bar to practice law. Few are going to argue with a standardized approach to education and skills testing to certify people who are working in areas as critical and specific as heath care or criminal defense. Or, for that matter, for electricians or plumbers.

But we carry the idea that certain jobs must have certain qualifications into corporate settings and often never look back to consider if they are valid. Do people really need a college degree to work in advertising? Maybe if they are in finance and need specific accounting skills. But the rest of us?

I was an English major, but most of my early career was in sales. I didn’t take one course in college or grad school about sales. The training I got, and there was plenty of it, took place when I was working in sales, because I worked for companies who thought sales training was important, so they provided it.

I doubt I would have gotten those jobs if I didn’t have a college degree. The fact that that diploma said Stanford University also helped, I’m sure. I’m coming from that level of privilege to say many of the accepted things on the checklist of corporate competence may be outmoded and serve not as guidelines to maintain excellence or guarantee a certain skill level, but they have become barriers to entry, especially to people with less privilege or money or time.

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