What is your suggestion for OP where their resume is immediately discard because of no education? Networking and meetups won’t get you passed HR filters and corporate requirements.
As I mentioned, even if you don’t get the job or lose the job, you’re still ahead of not trying. And you now have experience to put towards your next employer (and your old employer will only verify employment dates, as they don’t want to be sued).
This is the unfortunate reality of an asymmetric labor market where employers can make demands with no cost to themselves. Fake it until you make it.
"Fake it until you make it" is completely different from "lie until you are caught." Speaking from experience, lying is not a good idea.
OP is competing against people who have put in work that he/she hasn't. That's just the reality. The best way in is to show the employer that they are a qualitatively superior employee. Networking and filters are _very often_ surpassed by leadership, sometimes even by creating new positions that are an exact fit for that person's experience. I have a few clients who were hired this way, and had better opportunities because of it. I even got a job that way myself long ago, when a CEO friend-of-a-friend hired me in a low level role but then re-read my resume and moved me to corporate offices to work more directly with leadership.
Lying about your past is not a good idea in this case, and it's far worse than just faking a role until you get better at it.
Here's another anecdote: I'll take four experiential-subjective anecdotes from a professional any day, as compared to macro-scale analytical-subjective theories from an analyzer-theorist.
Dodging around relational morals like "don't lie to others" or "be a good human being to others" is a typical blind spot of a game-analyzer-type logician. "I beat the game, don't I win the prize?" are famous last words in these cases; I suggest you choose your audience very carefully if you wish for your cognitive gifts to be celebrated in the context of such a strongly-recognized developmental target as being an honest person. Perhaps sporting or hostage negotiation or other "bluffing"-oriented domains are better suited for such advice, where some variant of "outright lying" is given a little bit more leeway.
> As I mentioned, even if you don’t get the job or lose the job, you’re still ahead of not trying.
I fail to see how poisoning your own reputation comes out as "still ahead"; that is absolutely guaranteed to get your résumé silently discarded. The tech community isn't that big, even in the tech hubs, and word does eventually get around both among engineers and recruiters.
True that. The community I work with all know each other, and one's reputation is paramount. If anyone found out I lied about my degree, I'd be finished. I wouldn't work with a cheat, either.
I’m not advocating lying, but there’s no way this comes up, at least not at startups. Do you think we sit at the bar and discuss potential hires university degrees? If someone told me “watch out man, Stu lied about his uni education” my response is likely to be, “why would you tell me that and why would you think I cared?”.
The gabber is going to look worse than the candidate by a long shot.
Startups involve a lot of trust between the members of the initial group. I wouldn't have anything to do with trusting my future to a professional liar.
It's like marrying someone who cheated on their spouse. They'll cheat on you, next.
Rumors are a quick way to get sued. Are you ready to pay a settlement as an employer because someone’s resume has an inaccuracy on it? Sometimes there are benefits of living in a litigious society when it works in your favor.
> I’ve seen lesser cases win. You’d be surprised. Your tight knit industry community isn’t the general public.
[citation needed]
Court cases are a matter of public record and, given your, ahem, open advocacy of falsehoods, it's unclear why we should believe your unsupported assertion.
>What is your suggestion for OP where their resume is immediately discard because of no education?
Eh, I don't have a degree. My own strategy? I just apply until I find a place where that isn't a hard requirement.
I personally don't mention my education at all. Let them assume what they like. I mean, if they ask, I'll tell them, (they ask like 20% of the time, and it has never been a problem at that phase, as far as I can tell. At least once, the interviewer acted super surprised and I got the job.)
Note, a lot of places claim to "require" degrees. Treat that requirement like any other "requirement" on the job description; in my experience, you need something like 3 out of 5 of the requirements to get a chance at an interview; the degree is just one more I've gotta make up for, no different than not knowing Java.
>Networking and meetups won’t get you passed HR filters and corporate requirements.
This hasn't been my experience. Someone on the inside with pull has a lot more influence than HR, in my experience. It's very rare that we technical people approve a person and HR blocks them; the only cases I know the details of in my own experience have to do with serious (and obvious) lies turned up by the background check.
I mean, certainly, there are jobs that will bin my resume right off... and I'm sure there are some jobs that will bin my resume even with a good internal recommendation, (I could tell stories there, but they all have to do with trying to get work outside of the USA.) but my experience is that most places? A good internal advocate is worth a thousand pieces of paper from the university.
The other thing to keep in mind is that a technician who misleads is about as useful as a salesperson who can't deceive without crossing that line in the way that good salespeople can. A lot of the startup advice is fine if you are management-track, but if you are looking for individual contributor work, being honest and straightforward in ways that don't really work when you are management/sales is the order of the day. I've seen a lot of technicians fired for lying about a screwup (or because management thought they lied about a screwup) - I haven't seen many technicians get fired for actually screwing up.
B.Sc. Computer Information Systems, Wahresleben University, 2014.
(Wahres Leben = “real life” in German)
If they actually check they won’t find the university but they can’t discount the fact it might exist. So HR is more likely to follow up with you then throw your resume out, and you can take that chance to explain you being more to the table than a university graduate.
Employers don't care to hire a liar. What you'd "bring to the table" is a lack of trust. What else have you lied about? Would you lie on expense reports? Would you betray confidential information? Would you lie about the quality of the work you'd do?
If one person in the hiring chain knows German, you're out of luck. And more than likely, if they can't find a university, you are probably lying. Universities are big, kinda hard to not be able to find one.
You should not lie on your resume, but if you're going to lie, just find a way to make it harder to verify. Presumably the for-profit schools that got shut down in the last few years would be hard to check with. Obviously they aren't accredited, but that's not your fault. It'd be, at least, a believable lie.
The point is if they knew German they’d get the joke... you’re not trying to lie. You’re trying to get past the crazy HR driven mandate that EVERYONE have a 4 year degree, even when it has zero relevance to the job.
As I mentioned, even if you don’t get the job or lose the job, you’re still ahead of not trying. And you now have experience to put towards your next employer (and your old employer will only verify employment dates, as they don’t want to be sued).
This is the unfortunate reality of an asymmetric labor market where employers can make demands with no cost to themselves. Fake it until you make it.