IT Managers: When hiring, do you look for experience or education?

Question

Okay...here's the short long story: I'm a graduate from a two-year programming course, earning my associate's degree (with honors, no less). Earlier this year, I had a brief stint where I tried to go back to school part-time for my Software Engineering BS degree, but that fell apart for various reasons which I won't go into here.

I've been hired on at the company I took my internship with, and have been working here the better part of a year and a half. Unfortunately, while this company is a good place to start a career, it's not the place to build a career. (I describe this to people by telling them that the experience I have gained here has shown me precisely what NOT to do in a programming job, if you catch my drift.)

The sad state of the economy notwithstanding, I've been hunting for another job, but have had no success thus far. Every job listing I have found that would even remotely interest me (at my pay level, anyway) requires at least 3+ years of experience, a bachelor's degree in CS/SE, or knowledge of a language which I have little or no experience with. This leaves me in the rather difficult position of figuring out if it would be worth trying to get back in school, or if I should just weather the storm and wait until I can get the requisite number of years in before taking off for somewhere else.

So my question is this: as an manager who would be looking at prospective hires, what would you consider more valuable: a "higher" degree of education, or more work experience?

(Note that I exclude skill here, because let's be realistic...even if you are proficient with every technology under the sun, you're not going to avoid the HR application filtering software if your work experience/education levels don't match with their standards.)

Answer 1

I look at both, but put much more weight on experience. Education is the ability to learn, and experience is the ability to apply knowledge. There is no substitute for experience, other than spending time in the trenches. For example, I wouldn't disqualify you for a job based solely on amount of experience unless it was for a Senior or Lead type of position. For a mid-level, or equivalent, I would look at anyone who had a resume that hit the key points.

Answer 2

I would look toward more experience, balanced with continued education. That means I would tend to favor a candidate with 2 years experience with work toward a certification being done over the course of those two years, over one with 3 years of work experience but no furthering of their education.

I would recommend 2 things to you. First, if you have 2 years of experience, apply for jobs that require as much as 4 years, as you may still be the best candidate. Second, rather than go back to school full time, find some courses or certifications that interest you and start working on those part time. It will give you a competitive edge over other candidates with a similar level of work experience.

Answer 3

I look for people who have an interest in the subject. If someone submits an application claiming intermediate C++ and it turns out to mean that they took one course during their degree on C++, then that's not a good start. If they took no courses, but have been coding for fun since they were 12, then that's a very very good start.

Answer 4

Demonstrated Experience first, education is a plus. Candidate is capable to do work, that is matter.

Answer 5

I may look casually at education but focus almost exclusively on other qualities. In order:

1. What the candidate has accomplished. This is usually, but not always, related to job experience. I'm interested in what the candidate can do, and how. The best answer to "How would you approach..." is "When I did that before, this is what did and didn't work, and what I'd do differently."

2. How well the candidate can answer questions that are pertinent to the job requirements. The level of detail tells me how familiar the candidate is with the technology, and the "angle" often gives me an idea of the experience/seniority level. For example, an open-ended question such as, "Tell me about the software development cycle" can be answered from a coding perspective, a testing perspective, a customer perspective, a management perspective, etc.

3. How articulate, confident, and honest the candidate is. I often pick something--anything--that the candidate claims to know well and "dig" into it, getting more and more specific based on the answers I get. Eventually some form of "I don't know" is the answer. I'm interested in how far I can dig, how well the candidate can explain the subject, particularly if I'm not familiar with it, and whether or not the candidate gets flustered and/or makes things up.

4. Enthusiasm, presence, humor, creativity, and other intangibles. I want someone who will enjoy working in my group, someone who is attentive and "gets it," someone who will challenge my decisions when appropriate and suggest better solutions. I'm on the fence whether to list this first or last because it's a lot like sex: if everything else is right, this is a bonus, but if this is missing, it's a critical deficiency.

One piece of advice: if you see an opening that you think you're qualified for, in the sense that you know you can do the job and will enjoy it, apply regardless of your experience.

Best of luck in your new career!

Answer 6

As a manager, one thing I see from a lot of people in IT is the preverbal "Grass is greener on the other side" syndrome. It’s easy to fall victim to that regardless of what point you are at in your career. This can become a problem because you will start to look more outside your organization and completely miss opportunities along the way. Take a good objective look at where you are, the experience you have, and what you can do where you are right now to further your career goals. You might surprise yourself and find the opportunity at work to do something really unique and great where you are. If there is truly nothing you can do at your job, you can always work on side projects on your own and use that to build your resume. The best programmers I know do lots of their own little projects outside work.

Another thing, make sure you HAVE goals. Without them you are just shooting in the dark. Even if its something as simple as "I want to make more money" you will get a lot further if you give yourself direction.

An example of someone I have mentored:

An associate of mine was a network administrator out of college and was hot to get into programming. The place he worked had several full time programmers that he convinced to give him access to an MSDN subscription. Using this, he spent a good deal of time on his own working on programming projects for himself, family, and friends. After about two years of doing this on and off (with no formal programming experience) he presented some of his better work to his bosses. Shortly after, he was taken off administration tasks and given his own programming project.

The best advice I can give to you starting out is that many employers are looking for 5+ years of experience in most fields, any less and you are often left behind in the application process unless you have some really stellar project work underneath your belt. There are exceptions though...

Our IT department employs people from all sorts of educational backgrounds, from doctorate holders to high school dropouts (one of our best developers no less) so it really comes down to corporate culture and standards. Smaller houses tend to be a lot more forgiving in this regard and bigger corporations can be downright Nazis about it.

My advice for getting past a lot of it is something every person needs to work on: NETWORKING (not the computer kind). The best jobs I have gotten (including where I am now) were never jobs that were offered on Monster.com or CarreerBuilder. I built my professional relationships up to the point where people knew who I was and what I do. Before that my favorite job hunting tactic was to find a posting I liked on a major job site like Monster. I knew how many people applied for even a single job on that site and how easy to get lost in the shuffle. I would get all the details I could about the company and "socially engineer" my way around (via email and by phone) until I got in touch with either the hiring manager or the manager in charge of the department hiring for the job. If you can accomplish that and get your resume in the hands of that person, you have likely bought yourself at least an interview.

The economy may be in the drink right now but there is always an opportunity out there for someone willing to work for it.

To sum this up: Only you can determine whether its best for you to stay where you are right now. Speaking from experience, I would be very careful about leaving your current job without:

a.) Having another job lined up b.) Knowing what your overall career goals are

My personal line is this: I could care less what your education is as long as you can communicate with well with customers, work as part of a team, and have the skills to get the job done. Bigger companies have mandated educational standards that they have to follow but for most of us looking for employees, that is all that matters.