How to Get Tech Certifications - Ep. 7

Ryan: Aloha guys! And welcome back toDegree Free! We are your hosts, Ryan and Hannah Maruyama. On this podcast, we share fundamentals we've discovered and the mistakes we've made while self-educating, getting work, building businesses and making money. We'll tell you how to make it happen. No degree needed.

Hannah: Before we get into today's episode. If you are looking for a way to actionably take what you've heard on here and do it yourself, you can check out our website, which is degreefreenetwork.com. And you can grab our guide where we put all of this stuff neatly together into one guide. So you can take it and use it as a manual that said, if you can't do that right, Please keep listening along, take notes, and you can find all of this stuff yourself.

If you just listened to the episodes and keep a list of what to do.

Ryan: Right on, let's get into today's topic today. We're going to be talking about tech certifications. Today is going to be an introduction of tech certifications, what they are, how to get them, why you would get them kind of the, who, what, where, when, why of it all.

We get this question a lot about tech certifications and also about job training. That's not college people when people are like, okay I'm not going to go to college. What should I do then? And they don't know what they want to do. These, this is one of an infinite amount of answers, but it's a pretty common one.

It's something that has pretty familiar with just because she has some personal experience with these.

Hannah: Yeah. I find that this the tech certifications are a mystifying to a lot of people when, especially when I talk to people who have college degrees, who are now looking to change jobs, they don't even know that they exist.

They think that you have to get a degree in whatever that is in order to get a job in that. But in fact, it's the opposite you need a cert to get a job in a specific type of tech. You don't need a college degree. The reason is because if you went and applied with a degree and you don't have the, sir, they'll tell you to go get the cert because you're not qualified.

But if you have the cert and you don't have a degree, they're more likely to hire you. Than they are, if you just have a computer science degree or something. So it's been really interesting as I've been talking to people, like you said, who don't want to go to college and they're trying to figure out what to do or people who are trying to change jobs and earn more money, or just find a different sort of lifestyle.

Ryan: So before you're any more into it what are tech certifications.

Hannah: So a tech certification is basically a branded college degree. It's a piece of paper that is issued usually by a licensing body or by the company itself to use its software or its methods. When I say methods, sometimes these are management methods.

They're not necessarily being able to use a certain type of software. So there is a methodology called agile, which is used in software development and you can go and learn how to do agile. The agile methodology and use it to help lead software development teams or just product development teams. The most, I think most people would be more familiar with six Sigma was really big at one time that was a methodology.

It wasn't a technology. It was. A way to manage people that was used at a lot of big manufacturing companies. And it became something that was a standardized skill set. So you'll see it now, even sometimes there's still jobs that specify they want somebody with this certification and the certification is oftentimes more important than the degree, because the specific knowledge is in the cert, not in the college degree.

Ryan: Yeah. It's specific knowledge of exactly what this company.

Hannah: And when I say branded college degrees, I'm talking, you're getting. It's Google, it's Microsoft, it's Oracle. And they're telling you exactly what you need in order to know enough to use whatever software or whatever method that they have designed.

They are obviously more of an authority on that than a college. Every time, because it's theirs, they made it. And the certifications are quickly becoming, I think that this is the future, which it makes a lot more sense for companies to be the ones who certified the skills needed to get a job then colleges. And that is rapidly.

I think that is rapidly taking off. And a lot of the reason is because you can do it from your house.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. I think, yeah. So I think the certifications are an interesting education tool because yeah, I think it's what colleges were meant to be. I think that it was meant to be job training.

I think eventually I think if you go farther enough back into history, college might've been that, but it's not anymore. And this certification is highly targeted to whatever it is that you're learning. If you want to learn. How to do, how to be a Salesforce admin, you can go ahead and be a Salesforce admin, but you don't have to be a developer, right?

Like you can pick and choose where you want to go within the field that you want, and you can hyper target your own education, which equals your own job training. So I think also. Exactly what you said, which is most of the time you can do this from your house. Most of the time you can do this online. With COVID nowadays some of these tests you used to have to go into a physical building, but now they just outsource the test taking to an online Proctor and you just set up a webcam and you take the test in your house.

Hannah:  Somebody in another country watches, you take the test to make sure you're not cheating.

Ryan: Yeah. It's very simple. It's not easy and it's not always easy, but it's simple. You just do it. And I agree with you. I think that this is the way that education knowledge accumulation is heading job training is heading.

It also makes sense. A point that you said earlier, it makes sense that these companies would want to start pushing the certifications one. It tells you exactly what they need. This is. Exactly the knowledge that you need, just because you have a certified adopting side, it's similar to a college degree, just because you have the certification, it's not automatic that you're going to get hired.

Hannah: And it's still the company's version of what you need to know and not necessarily the business that may be hiring you unless you're working directly for that company.

Ryan: So that's not to say that. It's going to be right when you get the certifications, you're automatically going to get hired.

That's not the case either, but at least. It's a certification that's outlined by the specific company. Exactly the things, the processes, the tools that you have to know how to do and know how to use in order to be proficient, or at least not proficient, but at least to start to learn how to do that job.

Another point to that is it makes sense that they would do that because it just creates more jobs in their field. It's self feeds. They're creating developers and they're creating developers and admins and jobs for people that upkeep this architecture, whether or not that's just system processes or whether or not that's actually keeping up cloud infrastructure, whether or not that's keeping up a CRM whatever the case may be.

You're building these people that build and maintain your platform, which maintains your relevance.

Hannah: Not only that, but most of the people, if you learn a certain type of certification, people will joke. So I have I'm as I have a Salesforce, I have a Salesforce administrator certification and a lot of people make fun because Salesforce people are definitely Salesforce is built somewhat of a cult brand.

People who are Salesforce, devs admins, architects are extremely enthusiastic about Salesforce and what it can do, why? Because they can do it. And so they know what it can do. And Salesforce has built a team of professionals who are highly educated in their software who love their software. And will tell companies to upsell to by this level of this, because it can do this.

So what it also has created is it's created marketers. For the software, which is fantastic. It's a wonderful way to incentivize the companies, to provide these tech certifications at a low cost and for people to just pick them up and then go work. It's great. It's amazing.

Ryan: Absolutely.

Hannah: I like that you save job training when you refer to the tech certs, because that's exactly what it is. Also, I realized that we're using some technical words, but the thing is like everything. If you do flashcards for a few hours, you can learn all of the vocabulary about any one of these certs.

You just look at the words, you don't know, you put them on flashcards and then you drill the flashcards until, you know what the words mean. That's how I learned what a lot of these words mean. That's how I think a lot of people learn what the words mean. So don't be intimidated by it because it's the same as getting in is it's the same as getting a degree and learning the vocabulary.

If you learn the vocabulary, it can help you along the way, but don't be intimidated by the acronyms or the jargon because you can learn it. It's not, it's really not hard and there's not that much. Okay.

Some of the companies on the forefront of this are, they're going to be big companies, fortune 500 companies you're talking Google, Microsoft, Amazon is, has a very strong has always had a very strong cert.

So Amazon is actually incentivized to give low cost certifications. They probably get tax write-offs for it, but they're incentivized to give them to educators. So anybody who's a teacher, students, and then also veterans they're encouraged to help these people get skills at a lower cost, which is fantastic because you can get the search for almost nothing. And they are extremely valuable. A lot of the jobs for Amazon specifically, if you're doing any sort of Amazon tech development or anything like that. And again, don't be intimidated. You just got to learn it. And after you learn it, you can find work. But a lot of these jobs start at six figures.

Not below that. They start at six figures, these jobs, when people, I say that to people immediately doubt me. They're like, what? No. This can't be real. And then they look and then I just had a friend, who's a teacher who did this and they looked and they're like, is this real? I was like, yeah. I told you look like, look at the demand here.

Also, if you live on the east coast, you're on the money-making time zone and you're, you can work. A lot of these jobs are remote work. Also got a little bit off track.

So the companies that are going to be big on this is going to be Microsoft, Google. Oracle. You can even do it to an extent with Facebook and Pinterest, they have different sort of certifications.

It's a little bit different. But another large group of these is going to be cybersecurity, which is growing. It's a growing need. And that's going to be people who basically just keep technology safe, that's their entire job. And those are often used by they're used by the government they're used by private companies and those are their own independent certification programs.

So those are C I S P, C R I S C there's comp Tia plus that's the most basic one, there's quite a few. And then there's also newer and upcoming certifications. There's different blockchain certifications for cryptocurrency there's IOT, which is internet of things, which is basically a new type of, it's a new type of internet that these people are starting to build that links different smart objects essentially.

And you can get certified in that. And there's security for that as well. Which is growing increasingly important. So when I first got into this, it wasn't that long ago, but when I was reading, I was shocked at, I was just reading these people's accounts. I was on Reddit and I was reading for those of you who aren't on Reddit, get on Reddit to do. Crowdsource research on this stuff. There's always the risk that someone's making it up, but if they're not, then you're really going to get good context from it. So use your own judgment. But as I was reading, I was going, there's no way these people are making these people are making, say 70 K from this piece of paper.

And then I went and I got the piece of paper. 70 K like it's crazy. It's the craziest thing. And I think for a lot of people too, they're you can't downplay the fact that a lot of it's remote work also where you're, you can move around, you can work with different teams in different places. A lot of the companies are extremely flexible, so you can negotiate different hours and different locations.

Ryan: Yeah, definitely. And I know that Hannah and got in the weeds there. She said a lot of letters and words that a lot of people don't know. I didn't know half of what she was saying. So definitely don't just because you don't know what it is. Go ahead. You can Google. You can Google cybersecurity certification.

You can Google, Amazon certifications. We're going to make more in-depth episodes of the, how to get these and study, but today's just a general overview. One of the things also that you could do is both Google and Facebook. They have advertising courses and certifications that you can.

So you can become a certified Facebook ads manager. You can become a Google ads. Yeah. Which makes sense because that's how they make their money. They want to make sure that they have certified people to,

Hannah: Administer their platform.

Ryan: Absolutely. That's the overview of the different companies.

Hannah: And, also I realized I forgot Salesforce, which is the one that gave me that I got into. I will plug Salesforce right here too, because Salesforce a huge part of the reason that I chose Salesforce was because I did. Research on the use case for it, which is a lot of businesses use it cause they use it to keep track of their sales and their customers, which is a good way to determine if something is going to make money.

If you're going to help a company make money or find ways to save money or make money, oftentimes that's a good place to be. And I looked into the demand, it looked pretty solid to me. And the biggest thing was that Salesforce, I will say has one of the most accessible learning platforms there is. It's designed very user-friendly and it's also free.

You can teach yourself Salesforce for $0 on their site. There's a lot of supplementary material that has sprung up around it. That's obviously faster and more condensed, but if you want to teach yourself Salesforce, it's called Trailhead. They've done a fantastic job laying out the different tracks and they'll give you career strategies, like start here and then get this one.

Then get this one. And they'll tell you how much you can make at each one. And it's hard to be how transparent that is and they've made it really accessible to everybody.

Ryan: Yeah. And I think one of the things that we, while I was going to touch on next, which was cost just because this that's, that is obviously one of the most important things is how much does any of this cost and before we get into an example, like you said, so Trailhead is free. Salesforce is free. A lot of them are. Free or relatively cheap nominal price for assuming that you can get it. And then you can go and start finding a job. You go, you study, you get this certification and then you can almost immediately start finding work.

Hannah: At the high end, I would say a thousand dollars at the high.

Ryan: Yeah, that's just a, that's just a ballpark, right? Exactly. A lot of them are cheaper.

Hannah: My initial cost for Salesforce, I bought two courses. So you don't have to do that, but I bought two courses and then you do have to pay to take the test because you're paying for a Proctor to watch you take the test.

So Salesforce charges you for that. My total cost was $362. That is ridiculous.

Ryan: Yeah and mostof the costs was the payingfor that Proctor and  the practice test.. I think you  took a practice test and

Hannah: I took a practice exam. And I took an exam and I believe that, that represented $250 of that cost.

Yep. The rest of it was Quizzlet questions, flashcards and just self study.

Ryan: It wasn't very difficult. You did it very accelerated. You studied very hard, not taking that away from you. That being said,

Hannah: it's not hard to do.

Ryan: Yeah. You just sit your butt in the chair and learn it and learn this stuff.

Hannah: That's a phrase that we use a lot, but it's like button chair. If you have to do it, it's a crude phrase, but it's true. Like the only way that I did that was to put my butt in a chair for five hours every day and study, which I will say as an adult, it's a difficult skill to relearn. I was never a good student and I get bored very easily and I have a hard time sitting still.

That said, that's part of the reason why we're so enthusiastic about it too, is I'm probably the least, I have the least amount of natural ability to sit still and study for a test. But. But I did. And that's why I think that a lot of people it's super accessible. I feel like it's really one of those cases where if I can do it, I really think that anybody can do.

I think that anybody can do that. You might need some help and to get somebody to watch your kids or just to set the time aside. But if you can do it.

Ryan: Yeah. I agree with that. And that's not like a. I will vouch for you and say, that's not you being humble or anything like that. That's real, if you can do it, anybody can do it. You know what I mean? I'm not trying to be an ass either.

Hannah: No, I don't. I don't think you are. It's real. That's real stuff right there. Of anybody in my life, how ill-equipped I am as just my personality and habits to do that. It was not it was not an easy thing to do, but at the same time, it's an, also another huge part.

Is, I am not tech savvy. I had no technical experience prior to that. None, not only did I have no technical experience, but Ryan can testify to the fact that I had an active allergy to computers and would avoid doing things at all costs. So you don't have to have prior technology to do this. You don't even know how to use Excel or anything.

Nothing. You can start from zero.

Ryan: I think my last question before we get into some different things is going to be like, so we went over what it was. We went over what companies might be looking for it, an idea of possibly how much you get paid depending on the certification.

And then the cost of the certifications, how long what is an average. I know that they're all different, but like how long can you expect to study before you can get, from, okay, I want to get a certification. You sign up for whatever you sign up for, whatever course you schedule your test.

How far out should you schedule your tests?

Hannah: Things like that. I think a lot of people, so a lot of people I think are really intimidated by the length. They see a lot of the course, a lot of the course estimations, we'll say six to eight weeks or six months. That is very generous. I think that is way too long.

If you're trying and you are actively setting aside time every day to study and to actively get through things, then I think you can do it in three months or less. And I think actually for all of the things on here, I think that's possible that would be accelerated. But if you're trying to get a job, especially if you're somebody right now, who's unemployed.

Dude take advantage of the time that you have. If you do not have a job right now, put your button, a chair and study for five hours a day and you can get any of these certifications. I believe it. I don't care who you are. I don't care what, if you sit down and study, you can do it, you can do it.

So I think another thing is that. People get really hung up on not knowing the knowledge, but usually the people that are hung up on not knowing the knowledge are the same people who have a college degree and don't have any knowledge.  I'm not saying in that in a condescending way, I'm saying it because the people who I've spoken to who are trying to retool their skillsets, who have college degrees that are now trying to move into these certifications, they're like I want to make sure I know all of it.

I was like, you don't need to know all of it. You didn't know all of it when you graduated college after four years, Pass the test. The goal is to pass the test. It's the same as your is the same as your midterms. It's the same as your finals. Did you retain all of that? No, of course you didn't. Nope. Nobody does.

They left college and probably forgot everything that they learned because that's how it is when you're studying for a test. Your goal is the same as a college degree. And that is to get a piece of paper. The reason why is because a piece of paper is the thing that companies want to see in order to know, this is the agreed upon standard that this thing represents this amount of knowledge.

That's it. You don't have to know how to do everything. You will learn it on the job. That is how people. Because the thing is you're not going to learn all this theoretical stuff and all the different ways to use this thing. If you've never actually used it, you will only use you only learn that by doing work.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a, that's an important point. It's being honest about what it is and that's it's a piece of paper. It's a piece of paper that just hopefully gets your foot in the door. Like we like to say on the job requirements, it's just another line checked off of that, that you have it.

Hannah: The difference with this one, though, for the tech jobs is that if you don't have that cert, they will not hire, they will oftentimes they will not hire you. It's different than a college degree if you don't have the degree, but you have the there's a much higher chance that you're going to get called back if you have a degree and no, sir, or no knowledge about that thing.

Ryan: So we talked about the how to do it. And right now we're just talking about like self study buying courses, online, doing flashcards Quizlet, things like that. I know that there are, depending on the field that you go into, you can also go into like boot camps. There are actual places.

You can actually fly to, or they have online boot camps now, too. Every Tuesday, Thursday from eight to four, whatever it is, five days a week for 40 hours a week for four months, depending on what it is you want to learn and you can just take a bootcamp and then get certified after a month or six weeks or three weeks, whatever.

However long the bootcamp is.

Hannah: Yeah. So boot camps are I have. I think bootcamps are good for people that need a lot of structure. But I also think that if you're skeptical or you're highly leveraged to other debt, that's probably not a good idea for you because oftentimes the boot camps are extremely expensive and they oftentimes are long.

A lot of boot camps are not structured around somebody who's already working. So if you have a job, that's probably not a good option for you. You're going to have to use your vacation time to go to that bootcamp. And they're thousands of dollars. Sometimes they can be extremely expensive. From my experience of the developers that I work with too.

And these certifications are not all development certifications. A lot of them are the soft skills around it. But a lot of developers will say that they wish they hadn't gone to bootcamp and they had just taught themselves. And a lot of them say, a lot of them say that it wasn't worth the money that they spent and they could have just taught it to themselves, whether or not they could have done that with no knowledge.

I don't really know. And I think, even though I know. And I've self-taught I have multiple certifications at this point. I think that if I were to try to learn a hard skill, like JavaScript or Python or some sort of coding, I would probably go to a bootcamp. The reason being is I think it's intimidating. I think I'm too intimidated to go and try to figure that out myself.

I think I'd rather have a person tell me what it is. I need to learn, even though I know I could probably be more refined, but it's a matter of the time and curriculum and structure that I think that I would choose. But if you're just starting out, I would suggest you try to get a softer certification.

And by that, not so coding heavy and just teach it to yourself as an entry point. The reason being too is because it's cheaper. So try a low cost certification and see if you can get that and then move on to a bootcamp.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. A word about the expense. One of the things though is yeah.

Are they more expensive? Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. Are they more expensive than you studying on your own taking courses on your own? More than likely.

That being said, you have to evaluate whether or not it's a good financial choice for yourself.

Hannah: Return on investment.

Ryan: You have to see if it makes sense for you to spend that money, or it doesn't make sense for you to spend that money.

One of the things is that bootcamps are usually with other people and there's somebody teaching you. It's just, it's a similar thing to having a personal trainer. Could you go to the gym? Could you go online and literally get any free guide? Go buy a gym membership and then go get ripped. Absolutely. You could, you can get up, you can get a meal plan, you can get a workout routine.

You can get a cardio routine, all of that online for free, and then you can get to any fitness goal. You want to buy yourself guaranteed. That being said there's value in having a personal trainer there's value in having somebody that holds you accountable. There's value in having somebody that when you show up, you don't have to think about it.

You don't have to think about what you're, what it is you're learning. Or what it is that you're doing today. All right. Today, we're going to do bench. All right. Tomorrow, we're going to do back. Alright, easy. I'm going to show up and that's what we're going to do.

I don't have to think about it. And that's the value that bootcamps bring. I think what you touched on towards, I think what you touched on was important in that what we find happens similar to college is that people want to go to these boot camps, similar to going to college where they don't know they've never been in that industry before.

They don't even know if they like to say coding bootcamp. They don't even know what coding is. They don't know what a coding job entails. They don't know what Python is for. They don't know what JavaScript is for. They don't know HTML and CSS. If they want to be right. Exactly. You know what I mean?

They're like, I want to build websites. And then they're like, okay should I go to a boot camp to do it? I find that to be just similar to I want to be in marketing, so I'm going to go get a marketing degree. I want to be in marketing. So I'm going to go out and get a communications degree. It's your same thing. You don't know. You don't know what is marketing, right? What is it? All right. Then do you really need to get a degree to be in marketing? You don't need one. It doesn't help. You can ask, it depends who you ask. But I think what you said is definitely good idea, which is to start slow.

If you're thinking about data analytics, you're thinking about doing something with Python, you're thinking about going to a bootcamp maybe trying to learn a little bit by yourself.  Maybe take a minor certification or maybe just watch a bunch of YouTube videos or take a Coursera course or take a Udemy course something cheap and then to see, okay.

Do I like this? Is this something that I want to do? Okay. Then let's go to a bootcamp because now that I've, now that I've tried to do it by myself, I'm struggling. I'm finding, I don't know where to go. I'm finding, I don't know what I need to do. And then, so you go to a bootcamp and then you do the financial analysis of whether or not it makes sense.

Okay. This bootcamp costs $15,000 at the, okay. At the backend, I'm going to make whatever you're going to make a hundred thousand dollars. They're going to make $80,000 gonna make 60,000 whatever it is right now, I make $40,000 a year. It doesn't make sense. And then a lot of people, the pushback that we get from this is that's.

What's your, what you're talking about sounds like college.

Hannah: Yeah. Except for you actually make money afterwards.

Ryan: You go a lot of times you're walking out what you said earlier, which is a lot of times you're walking into places that absolutely require a certain certification for whatever reason, for whether or not they.

They work with the government and they need somebody that's certified in this thing. Like they absolutely need somebody that I need you to have this cert they don't need, they don't need anybody that has a college degree. That's not necessary, but I need you to have this cert or, you're working for whatever the case may be.

And then what also, what we say to that too, is that a lot of times it's much cheaper. Much quicker than actually going to college

Hannah: I think with the bootcamps though. You're right. You're right. But I think with the boot camps, it's almost and maybe I'm wrong about this, but I think it's past the golden age of the boot camps, because I think that there was a time it was a few years ago.

Cause we had a friend do that. We had a friend that went through a bootcamp and it was a couple months. And then he got hired by. It was literally bootcamp to Facebook. It was right. It was right. I don't think that happens as much anymore. And not only that I think now the demand for the tech jobs is spread out so much that it's not that the one he went to I think was in San Francisco.

So obviously that's different than one, somewhere in the middle of Ohio where you're not going to have. Whatever that bootcamp is. If they're running a boot camp in San Francisco, with the likelihood that they can connect you to a company is probably a lot higher. We live in a different time now where the online learning has never, there has never been online learning like there is now never.

It is the most accessible it has ever been. I think when those boot camps were going on, there was less people interested in it, and there were less resources. The resources were harder to find. And so it was easier for people to go to boot camps. Whereas now I actually think that in a lot of ways, for the softer skills, especially, it's easier to go on.

Than it is to go to a bootcamp. And it's definitely cheaper.

Ryan: I think we're, we're just outlining options right now. We're just outlining options for people to explore. Some people are like, I like using the example that I said earlier, some people need personal trainers and some people don't, but that's just.

Hannah: It's not for everything. So you might like, like I said earlier too, I might, I would consider doing a bootcamp for coding before I would do an online search for it. So it's very individual.

Ryan: So moving on one of the things that we have to stress about tech certifications or obtaining any kind of certification is that most of the time companies don't require college degrees.

And so if you're making the decision, if you're not sure about whether or not you want to go to college or whether or not you want to pursue one of these certifications. Do some soul searching, figure out why you would want to go to college if you're trying to go to college, because you think you're going to get job training to get into one of these fields.

Maybe think about doing a certification instead, instead of going to college this semester, maybe take the semester off and see if you can get some certifications and then see if you can just go apply with that. And then save that money that you would've paid for that semester.

Put some of it into courses, but some of it into taking the test, you're probably going to come out a lot ahead on it. You're probably gonna come out a lot ahead on that investment. And then go ahead and get those certifications and then start applying to those jobs. There are, it's a something that we're seeing a wave of different not only tech companies.

Manufacturing services business, almost every field, less and less companies are caring about college.

Hannah: There's a movement going on. If you don't know about it, it's because you might still be in a demographic that people are trying to sell you a college degree because it is rapidly changing.

Ryan: Oh, what we talk about a lot is what happened was that.

So many people have college degrees. Now that is just so watered down the curriculum is not what it used to be. It's not maybe it maybe before, like I said, in history, it used to be job training, but it's just not anymore. You're most people go to college and they go and they get a liberal arts.

They go to college and get it.

Hannah: People don't like that. It is true. The majority of degrees that are issued are in the liberal arts and humanities, people can get as butt-hurt as they want about this. But that is just true, which is a huge reason why there's such a high unemployment rate for college graduates.

Ryan: And it's I could count. I don't have enough fingers and toes to count how many people, when I when I was working in the restaurant industry, how many people had psychology degrees, communications, masters, all the civil, many masters degree, a lot of masters, a lot of master's degrees.

Hannah: Yeah, dude, what are you doing?

Ryan: What are you doing? And that they're not unemployed. They're not unemployed, but technically they're underemployed.

Hannah: So yeah, I would say underemployed and unemployed. They're there it's 50 and 56%. Under and unemployed of college graduates. And the thing is too, the people who I met that were like that in the industry, in the service industry, they were never engineers.

They were never people in stem though. That's different math but it was by and large people with liberal arts and humanities degrees.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely.

Hannah: Also, cause they'd look at the jobs available and they go I can't take a job for $37,000. I have a master's degree. That's all that's all that's available for you.

Ryan: What's funny. That's not funny. Cause it's tragic. But.

Hannah: It is. It is. It is really heartbreaking

Ryan: is that we've seen that a lot. That, that is unfortunately, that is not a unique story. There are, we have known a lot of people that are very proud. Because of the work that they've done in order to get conferred these degrees, these advanced degrees, and then they're too proud to take work just because exactly what you said.

I can't take this job because it doesn't pay enough. Unfortunately, that's what the market dictates your degree is worth.

Hannah: Which means that's what your degree is worth.

Ryan: It's unfortunate, and then I like, how do I, it's not my job to tell them, but they're coming to me and they're coming to us and they're talking to us about it.

I can't find work. What do you mean? He can't find work? Not just a job right there. That's just like your qualified. Oh, that doesn't pay enough.. All well, that's what you got a degree in, right?

Hannah: A lot of the times.

Ryan: That's what you're qualified for.

Hannah: Oh, and then actually in the last couple of weeks, a really exciting thing happened, which is LinkedIn release a beta feature called LinkedIn skills and what they're doing, is they are creating an entire funnel for people that do not have degrees to get guaranteed calls back from recruiters to basically just guaranteed get hired. The reason for that is there is such a shortage. I know a lot of people are like, oh, there's no jobs. That's not true. You're looking in the wrong spot.

You're looking in jobs where they're cutting people. Like again, liberal arts and humanities jobs. They're going to cut your pay and there's less of them. Why? Because right now people need people in different fields. You need to look in different fields. And so LinkedIn, what they're doing is in an effort to hire people in an effort to hire people, to fill these, this massive demand for especially remote work and tech jobs, they're going to LinkedIn and the recruiters that are recruiting people that don't have degrees, cause jobs are open for too long.

And nobody applies to them. That's the other thing, because a lot of college graduates will self eliminate from jobs that they don't fit every single requirement on the list because no one taught them how to apply for jobs.

Ryan: And we've talked about this a lot before, but that's actually a perfect segue of the last thing that I wanted to talk about, which is basically once you get these, once you get these certifications, You are going to, it's becoming less and less frequent where on the job listing, it says college degree required not being said on very many of them still, it still says college degree required.

It says, I need cert a, I need sir B I need cert C and then skills skills. And the last thing it says four year college degree required. And so the last thing that I wanted to touch on today was basically. If you fit the job description for the most part, if you have those certifications and the last thing that you do not fit is that college degree, you can still apply to that job.

Hannah:  Disregard college degree. Disregard it, if it said preferred, don't even read that sentence, it's completely irrelevant. That company has already embraced reality. The other company is just denying reality, which is that they need a job filled and there are not enough qualified people. And if you fit enough of the qualifications and you don't have a degree, guess what?

They're going to hire you anyway. They don't care. They don't care. Yeah.

Ryan: Are they going to use a pre-filter? Are they going to, when you put your job application in and you say you don't have a college. Are the recruiters or the HR people not even gonna look at it. Yeah, sure. Some of the companies are, but that doesn't matter.

You're not going to work for those companies, but a lot of the companies don't have those filters. A lot of those companies are your application is going to hit the hiring manager's desk. And when it hits the hiring manager's desk, okay. Maybe they look at it. Maybe they don't, it doesn't matter.

At least you're applying, don't self the biggest thing that we have to tell people all the time. Is to not self eliminate themselves from the job market. Just apply

Hannah: Don't deny yourself a job. Don't turn down a job that you could get. You're basically pre turning down or if you are applying for jobs, you're probably not in a position to turn down a job before you've been offered it.

So that's what you're doing when you are not applying for a job because you don't fit one of the requirements on the long list of requirements, you are turning down a job that you want to apply for before the company has turned you down. Stop doing that apply.

Ryan: And one of the things that we like to just talk about is that: you're in good company, two thirds. If you don't have a degree, you're in good company. Two thirds of Americans don't have degrees.

Hannah: There's a lot of people, by the way.

Ryan: That's a lot of people and  the country's still running.

Hannah: And the country still ran before people had college degrees.

Ryan: The world is still running. The companies are still making money.

They're still hiring.

It's not, you're not alone. You don't have to feel like, just because you don't have that one thing that you're less than the other job applicants, you're less, so much that you don't even put your application in. I know I've been there. I've literally self eliminated. I've talked about this before, but I have literally been that person when it said college degree required and didn't apply.

So you're not alone. Apply.

Hannah: Apply, apply, apply.  One last story about that is that it took me as somebody who believes this in my core. I believe what we're saying right now, obviously, because we're sitting here talking about it and I have. I've worked my way through these things. And on my last offer letter, the job that I still currently have, it says.

On my offer letter. And this is actually a good one, too. A good one to note, as far as getting the certs, but on my offer letter, it actually says Salesforce developer. I'm not a developer. I was an admin, but I had a Salesforce certification. It said Salesforce certification. And then it specified several certifications, but I had one just right below that.

And that was good enough because if you're applying to the right job and no one else is applying. You're the only candidate people, I think don't realize too, how often you are the only candidate. You're the only one because people are not going to call back. They're going to self eliminate. And at the end of the day, you're looking at jobs where there's only three applicants and one of them doesn't call back and the other one's late.

And then there's you. And if you show up on time and you're glad to be. And you're close enough. Also, so on my offer letter, the thing that was really crazy to see was where it said they wanted somebody with a requirement was an advanced computer science degree. I have zero degrees. I have no degree. I am Degree Free.

I have no anything from college. And that was really where I think for us, it locked in where I was like, you don't have to, you don't have to listen to that. You can just completely ignore it. And you're not going to get called back every time, but you're going to get called back a lot more than you realize and apply. Apply apply.

Ryan: Yeah. You definitely don't have a computer science degree.

Hannah: No, I don't have any of them. Yeah, really. It is really important though. And I know it's hard. Like I've been there where I broke into a cold sweat, clicking and apply button to send a digital resume because I felt like I was breaking the rules.

You need to keep breaking the rules. If you're still breaking into a cold sweat, you haven't broken them enough. And not only that, but you need to, and this is self-talk too. You gotta, you are not inferior. You are equally able to do that job as anybody.

Ryan: So I think, yeah, I think that's a perfect place to end it today.

Thanks for hanging in with us guys. This is just a general overview of different certifications tech certifications. Specifically tech certifications that we're talking about just cause that's one of the fields that we see it most in, but there are certifications in our, in, in any field right.

Manager or in most, and a lot of fields nowadays, licensing and certs management, business processes, things like that.

Hannah: Home inspections, even if there's a wide variety of things.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. And so basically Google it. Do your research, figure it out what it is you want to do, figure out if there is a certification for you, figure out, look at the job requirements, look at the job requirements of a job that you're thinking about getting, and then attack it from there.

See it. Okay. So I need, sir, I need certification a and I need certification B. But I don't need certification C. All right. Then just go get those two certs and then go apply to that job. And then you look at the next job listing and then you're like, oh, okay this job listing says that I need to certification C and certification.

Hey, I already have cert a I'm gonna go get a cert C go get cert C now. And you just attack it. You can reverse engineer it and then go in and talk it and go ahead and attack it. But that's probably another episode that we're going to be talking about. That's probably a that's for another time, but yeah. Thanks for listening.

Hannah: Like we  said before you can Google and keep a list of the stuff that we've mentioned in the podcast, but if you want all of this information in one place, so you can use it and go through and just have a guide, we did make one it's on our website it's degreefreenetwork.com and you can buy the guide on there.

Yeah. If you guys have any questions or anything like that, we'd love to, we love to get them. Leave us a message. If you guys liked what you guys hear, please think about subscribing and then also giving us your honest review. It really helps other people to find us. It really helps to get the word out until next time, guys.

Aloha!