It has often seemed to me that I have spent most of my career looking for my next job. For one reason or another, I have been constantly on the lookout for the next step on my climb up the corporate food chain. As I have looked through the postings over the years, I have noticed a common plea on many of the job descriptions. Nestled somewhere in the “Required Skills” section is an appeal for the applicant to be “an independent thinker with an innovative approach to problem solving.”
Chances are, if you have looked at a posting online anytime this decade, you have seen a similar requirement. The language varies from posting to posting, but the message from employers is clear: please bring some level of innovative thinking to the table. The commonality of this request indicates just how rare of a quality independent thinking can be in an employee. This begs the question of why employers have such a hard time finding workers who can “think outside of the box.” Are innovative employees truly in such short supply?
One answer to this origin of this dilemma is located on the very same job postings that list the need for innovative people. If you travel a bit further down the job posting, past the “Required Skills” section, you will encounter the “Educational Requirements” for the job. Often times, these are fairly predictable. Corporations post education requirements that match their open job type. Business Analysts should have a business degree, Marketing Officers should have a marketing degree, and the list continues on down through the various job selections.
Is higher education really worth it?
At a glance, that correlation makes sense. A hiring corporation needs a quick way to assess whether a candidate has the basic knowledge necessary to handle the daily requirements of the job and educational background can often serve as the “quick and dirty” measuring stick by which a candidate is judged. However, as we noted above, thinking is a skill. That is why innovative thinking is often placed in the “Required Skills” portion of the application. The process by which we think is developed and shaped by our education and our experiences. So what happens when an individual attends a business school? They learn to think like all of the other business students that are churned out year after year across the nation. While every person is absolutely unique, the shared method of analysis and problem solving taught to them in business classes carries them out into the business world prepared not to think “outside the box,” but rather how to fit into it.
The solution for this quandary is fairly simple. If hiring companies truly want to have applicants that have a unique perspective on problem solving, then employers must leave the box behind them when reviewing applicants. Educational background should not be used (either intentionally or effectively) to weed through candidate lists. Instead, employers need to take the time to review a candidate’s full background and look for an applicant that has the basic building blocks for success but is different from other employees or applicants. That means that a candidate with Philosophy, Art History or another Liberal Arts degree should not just be tolerated, they should be sought out by recruiters. An alternative educational background is indicative of someone who has been trained to think differently than others. And the chances are, if a candidate looks different on paper, she will end up not fitting into the box, which in turn means an alternative approach to problem solving.
How a four year degree affects your lifetime salary expectations.
Of course, it ultimately comes down to the employer’s decision when hiring an employee. But if companies are truly looking for candidates that think innovatively, then those same companies need to apply a bit of innovation to their hiring practices. Look for a candidate with a degree outside the posting field and a company might just find an employee ready to offer a unique idea or two.