Promoted without required degree

In My Humble Opinion
1

So I’ve just been offered a promotion within my company. The job description requires a Bachelors, which I do not have. In fact, I have no college at all. It’s a very rare thing (in my company), so I’m very proud of this achievement.

My question to fellow Dopers is this: if you have made this kind of step (gotten a job that requires a degree without having one) how have you been received by your coworkers around you? Any ribbing/hazing going on for being “that guy/gal without the degree” type thing?

2

I think the only problem you might have is someone with a degree will be upset they did not get promoted. You must be doing a good job to get promoted and presumably you are the best person for the job.

3

At my last job I was the Financial Systems Administrator, a position which required a Bachelors Degree or 5 years experience, neither of which I had because I had been promoted from within the company. The only flack I ever got was from HR during merit increase time. My boss put me up for a healthy raise to put me more in line with what people in similar positions at other companies in the area were making. HR came back saying I was underqualified and that I didn’t deserve it until I had a degree, but she went to bat for me with the Senior VP who also loved me. I got the raise.

4

I’d be pretty dismissive of a lawyer without a J.D. Sorry, but that’s the truth.

ETA: This can happen, and does happen to the tune of 1 or so per year, in California and New York, under the law office/chambers qualification to sit the bar exam.

5

With most jobs I’ve had, the question of whether someone had a degree never came up once they were hired, except in terms of discussion of our college experiences. So assuming that you can do the work, I wouldn’t care.

6

I’ve worked in H/R and those “requirements” are rarely so. Most of the time they are tempered by statements such as “or equal experience” (or words to those effect). I would go re-read and see if it is a definate requirement.

Seems like if it is, the HR has left themselves an out to demote you if they want.

Of course if you say something HR could have made a mistake and you are exposing an error.

Stuff like this rarely comes to light except in the case of a new director of HR who may decide to review things or in case of a company buy out. I have known of places in the past that when the company is sold the new company makes everyone fill out an application form and re-interview for the position.

7

Virginia, also.

8

Not the perfect example though. A JD - and the studying / practice trials etcx. needed to earn that degree - provide a lot of the necessary background to becoming a competent lawyer. Sure, someone could probably cram enough to pass the bar exam, but that person almost certainly doesn’t have a sufficiently well-rounded background to handle all that a modern law practice might throw at him.

Whereas, I’d bet the job mentioned by the OP simply says “must possess a bachelor’s degree” - maybe in some broad area, but maybe just any bachelor’s degree from any instititution. In other words, it’s the experience that really counts; a college degree might substitute for some of that experience and give one a leg up, but 10 years down the line doesn’t make any other material difference.

Honestly, in the OP’s situation: who would even know you don’t have the degree? HR, and possibly your immediate boss. I know when I meet a new collegue, nobody says “and by the way, John Doe here got a degree from Gopher Gulch Community College, but Richard Roe here got one from Hahhvahhd”.

9

Exactly. No one knows my background unless they were in on my application process.

And one of the ones who does must have forgotten as she makes fun of someone else who has a degree in the area of my Master’s. :smack:

10

I’m technically supposed to have one but I don’t. It’s never been an issue.

11

I haven’t been that person, but there’s a guy I consider a mentor and who has been in that position. His coworkers had known him since he’d joined the factory back when the paint was still fresh; there was one who gave him some trouble but that one is a well-known ass (if envy was wings, dude would be a condor). For most people it was so evident that he was the guy for the job, that the reaction was to congratulate him. Some guys would occasionally turn accepting an order into a bit of a joke (“sir, yessir! :D”) but never going beyond acceptable boundaries (and they did do what he’d said). Mind you, when one of those guys you’re now supervising is your brother and another one your brother-in-law, some ribbing is to be expected.

That was for the promotion in which he got to have a position equivalent to others whose holders had college degrees; for later promotions nobody peeped, as everybody was used to seeing him as part of “the bosses” already.

He did get a college degree through long-distance education, but it wasn’t even taken into account for those further promotions. That factory later closed and he got job offers from people who knew him and who were surprised to find out he’d actually gotten a degree in business once they’d asked for his CV to pass it to HR (after offering him the job!).

12

Trivia: One of the former federal judges in this area, who retired only a few years ago, had a J.D. but no college degree. He’d attended, but WWII got in the way of completion, and somehow he got into law school after the war anyway (things were different back then).

13

I currently hold a position that stated I needed a college degree. Not only do I lack one, but I didn’t even graduate high school!

14

I’ve held a couple positions in my company that would normally require a degree, and I’ve only got a year of community college under my belt (so far*). From an entry-level “leads qualification” position, I moved up to an enterprise sales position that normally requires a bachelor’s degree. After a few years moving up the sales ladder, I moved into a sales operations position that normally requires at least a bachelors+work experience.

Granted, the degree requirement is usually for outside hires - being promoted from within at my company (especially in sales) usually happens because folks have impressed the right people and shown a drive and loyalty to the company. There’s rarely any politics involved, at least that I’ve seen.

I haven’t caught much flack for not having a degree - in fact, most folks are surprised when they find out I don’t have a degree since they presume I’ve been through business school. Years in sales will give you enough experience to fake it, I guess. :slight_smile: The only folks who’ve given me shit were the recent college grads who thought their piece of wallpaper from the U of O was worth more than acuity, observation, and a solid work ethic. But I’m still here, and they’re all long gone, presumably to some boiler-room outfit churning out extended warranty calls.

*That said, I would like to try to go for an MBA over the next few years - there is a ceiling of sorts in my line of work, and an MBA is usually one of the requirements to break through; plus I could always stand to learn more about business theory and economics.

15

Heh. I almost started thread very similar to this one, but figured I’d posted enough about my “I-wish-I-had-your-problems” work woes already. Not only did I get promoted to a position that would generally require at least one degree I don’t have, but as the only person in the company who knows what all I actually do, I was tasked with writing the job description and minimum requirements. The document I created would be used to determine the baseline salary of the new position, so the temptation was there to beef it up as much as possible.

It didn’t take long to decide: I didn’t list any degrees, not just because writing my job description such that I’m not qualified for my own job would be ridiculous, but because I have long-standing deep-seated issues with requiring and/or obtaining expensive pieces of paper that prove nothing that wouldn’t be better determined by actually treating people like individual human beings during hiring processes, this being why I never got around to finishing any of the degrees I have about a semester’s worth of classes left on. [Rant curtailed, and trust me, we’re all happier that way.]

End result: HR put the degree requirement back in anyway, along with other paper-requirement-style changes that render me distinctly unqualified for the position I not only hold but created.

More money for me, I guess, but I still feel dirty about the whole thing…not out of any sense that I’m at all underqualified, mind, but because if I ever quit, a carbon copy of me wouldn’t be able to get the same job. No, Me-Prime would be summarily rejected, and the job would go to some appropriately-enpapered person, who may or may not have the first idea what they’re doing, but hey, the letters after their name match the ones in the job listing. [Other rant curtailed. No, really, it’s a different rant. I have a few of these; most are quite specific.]

More directly relevant to the OP…speaking for myself, few whose opinions have ever mattered for anything have looked down on me for not having a degree, but then, most people seem to assume I have one until I inform them otherwise. Hopefully the same will hold true for you.

Whatever the case, a hearty congratulations, Cap’n, and don’t stand for any harrassment you might face. If anyone does give you guff for being promoted over them, just tell 'em the reason you were chosen was because you didn’t need to spend four years and thousands of dollars to be every bit as capable as they are and more!

16

My experience in the software field is: If a man knows his stuff, no one cares about the degree. People will respect him as long as he is good at what he does - and not so much if he is bad at it, even if he does have a degree.

17

I’ve known a number of technicians with many years of experience who wanted promotions to an engineer position, but so far I haven’t met a technician who really thinks like an engineer, and has successfully taught themselves to make the proper inferences and connections, without the education.

Then again, I know a number of engineers who can’t do that either, so maybe the degree isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.