Mastering Job References & The Decline Of College Enrollment (DF#103)

Hannah [00:00:00]:

Another point that I think is funny about this is people are concerned that the economy will decline if there are not as many college educated occurs. The irony being that when there was 8 when 8% of the population had college degrees, the American economy was arguably one of the strongest it's ever been.

Ryan [00:00:40]:

Well, folks, and welcome back to degree free where we teach you how to get hired without a college degree. We are your hosts, Ryan and Hannah Mariama. It is great to have you back on the podcast. Welcome back, everybody. Ryan and I are stoked to have you with us, as always. Yeah. Let's just jump right into it. The first thing that I wanted to talk about today is about job references and how to make the most out of your job references. I was scrolling the Internet as one does. As you do. And I was reading

Hannah [00:01:08]:

these horror stories of people that gave crappy job references because they actually didn't like the person that referred them. I've also heard of people not being prepared. someone put them down as a reference and then didn't warn them, so they just get, like, in the middle of just doing something and they're not expecting it. Right. Exactly. And so

Ryan [00:01:25]:

I thought about I was like, really, like, do people do that? But, obviously, people do unless they're just doing it for karma and just doing it for fake Internet points, which they might. They they they might be. It might be a completely made up story. But then I thought about, okay. Well, how can we make the most out of our job references. And job references are something that is controversial of whether or not they're even needed nowadays. There's so much information on the Internet. There's so much information to be had with digital background checks that employers do. just a quick Google of your name, looking over your LinkedIn, and looking over your resume. So a lot of companies don't even do reference checks anymore. That said a lot of people do. And so it's a mixed bag of whether or not this is even going to be relevant to your job search. But what I always say with references is it's really good to just have 3 references ready to go. That's how many references I suggest that you have. 3 to 5 references is plenty. to give them any more than that. It's like, what what is going on. Why do you need so many people to vouch for you? Yeah. Or what like, you can't pick anymore. You've given them too many people, and now you've given them the matured to pick. Whereas if it's 3, they can just make 3 quick phone calls. Hey. Do you know Ryan? Hey, Dino Ryan. Hey, Dino Ryan. Boom. Done. What I suggest you do is to have one from your current employer from your most previous one and then to have, like, a character reference, somebody that you have known for a long time. Yes. I know who you are, what you're about. And then 5 could be one more previous employer or 2 at your current. You can mix and match however you see fit. And the information on the reference sheet that you give these people is just gonna be their first and last name, their phone number, their email, and then you can give them their job title or how you know them. You can give them both as well. So very simple. I wanted to talk about how you can guarantee that you are going to get a good reference and avoid all of the horror stories. Please tell us how. So the first one is really, really simple, and it's the highest leverage thing that you can do. It's going to be choose people that are guaranteed to say something nice. That seems wise. The beauty about the reference part of this if they are asking for references is that you can choose who you put on there. You do not have to put your immediate supervisor. If you and your immediate supervisor get into kerfuffles all the time and Definitely don't put them. Don't do it. It doesn't make any sense. You can put a friend in the company, like a coworker, but, you know, that's a friend. who likes you, who works well with you. Exactly. You can put your boss's boss if you get along with your boss's boss better. There's a lot of options. You could even put somebody lower than you as well if you wanted to. Who likes to work with you? Right. Exactly. Those are all good options. You don't have to put just this person, immediate supervisor here. You can put anybody. So choose people that are going to say nice things about you. A good rule of thumb is if you're asking Is this person gonna say nice things about me? Wrong person. That's not the right person. You shouldn't have to ask that question. Yeah. That's the whole reason why you're using them to begin with. Yeah. If you're asking that question, you're like, man, wonder if Ryan's gonna say something nice about me. Don't put me down. As a reference. Not a good choice. Don't do it. It could I could like you, but you should know that I like you, and then put me down as a reference. The second thing is to just contact them prior, and this is for 2 reasons. The first is so that you have their current contact information. This is really important, especially if you haven't spoken to this person in a really long time. A lot of times what happens is that we don't update our reference sheet. We don't update the information that's on our job search materials for years. until we're looking for another job at a certain point down the road. And then you'll look at your reference sheet and be like, yeah. That's good to go. And then you'll give them that reference sheet when they ask for it. And all of the information is out of date because that person got married, that's not their last name anymore, or because their number changed or because their email change, whatever the situation is, you wanna make sure that you have the correct contact information. And the best way that you can do that is just by contacting them beforehand. The second reason is that you're going to let them know that you are using them as references. Do that now when you are applying to jobs or right before you give your reference sheet. so that they have a heads up and they know that a call is coming and so that they can prepare some words to say about you. When you contact them, you say, hey. I am applying to roles as a sales manager at this company, and I've given your information as a reference for me. Please say something nice about me. Please say something positive about sales management. Tell them explicitly that you want them to say something nice. And kind of what you want them to say. Exactly. And that you want them to say something nice specifically about the position that you are applying for, which is why you're gonna tell them the position that you're applying for. because you want them to focus on selling you and your skills to that company, but the only way that they could sell relevant skills to that company is if they know the position that you're applying for. The last thing I wanna talk about was not putting

Hannah [00:07:14]:

references available upon request on your resume or putting references on your resume at all? Yeah. I was gonna say, this is my opinion. Leave references off. I don't put them on there. I think people rarely do nowadays. What it does is it just adds a layer of complication. Yeah. There's just no need for it.

Ryan [00:07:31]:

They know that sentence references available upon request. It's redundant. And it's not necessary, and it takes up space on your resume. And it subtracts from what you're trying to do, which is trying to sell your to that company. If they want references, they'll ask. What some people do is they have their reference sheet as a second page of their resume. You could do that. and upload all of those into your application software, I think it's much better to just have that as a separate sheet altogether. and have your resumes and your references. So you upload your resume, and then when they ask you for references, you upload your references and then here you go. Here's the my character witness and then the two people that are from my current company and then the most recent company that I used to work for. So that is just a quick way of making sure that your references are good. You want to make sure that they know that they are a reference. You wanna make sure that they're gonna say something nice about you. Not something detrimental. Exactly. Make sure that they know that the call is coming and that they have something prepared to say about you and that that's something is positive and not negative. Yes. Yes. So that is just I'll get off my soapbox about that. Just take references off your resume people. That's my advice. Yeah. But I'm talking about when they ask for your references. When they ask for your references, this is how to get good references out of everybody every single time. Before we get into our next topic, if you wanna get more degree free, more degree free news, more companies who are down credentialing,

Hannah [00:09:16]:

more ways that you can get higher degree. Run over to degreefree.c0 forward slash newsletter and sign up for a free weekly newsletter, which will be delivered to your inbox once a week. Alright. Let's talk about America's cat --aclysmic drop in college enrollment. We love to see it. We, specifically me, love to see it. And What I wanna talk about is the fact that there has been such a drastic decline in college enrollment that the colleges are panicking. And actually, I don't know if you've seen this too, but I have seen a massive massive increase in advertising from colleges. And I don't know if it's just because they're ramping up efforts because they're trying to get people in there. They're just trying to claw these people back in. But I'm pretty sure that's what it is. College enrollment in the US has been declining since 2018 and is now at the lowest rate in decades. What is interesting about this is that people are worried that this decline in college enrollment is gonna have serious economic and social implications. I would agree. I think it's gonna have serious economic and social implications, and that People are going to feel much better when they're not in debt for something that's gonna make them a median of $47,000 a year. And people are worried that this decrease and educated workers is going to cause problems. I think what's actually gonna happen is everything is gonna get much better. People are gonna get they're gonna go to work earlier. They're gonna have more money earlier. They're not gonna have as much debt earlier, and I think all of those are good economic -- signals as opposed to poor ones. Another point that I think is funny about this is people are concerned that the economy will line, if there are not as many college educated workers, the irony being that when there was 8 when 8% of the population, had college degrees. The American economy was arguably one of the strongest it's ever been. Obviously, there's a lot of factors there, and I'm not an economist as we all know. But I think that it's interesting that people are so worried about the fact that people not buying college degrees is gonna put us into an economic decline. -- with everything else that's going on. It's that. If people don't go into a $165,000 worth of debt for five and a half years to get a degree, what are we gonna do? Yeah. The notion that education equals college and that we are gonna have a, quote unquote, less educated workforce and less educated population is Just hilarious and erroneous. Well, it's yeah. It's all just predicated. It's all predicated on the idea. Like you said, the education equals college and that people cannot be educated unless they go through the walls of a college campus. And that's the only way that anyone can learn anything ever. And so as long as you separate those 2 things, this fear kinda goes away. The funniest part of this is that the AP reported that fewer college graduates could, quote, worsen labor shortages in fields from health care to information technology. The irony being that the oft quoted MC Burning Glass Institute that you and I both saw saw that the down credentialing is happening across technical and health care fields specifically because that is where the greatest need is. And it's so funny. I just read an article the other day about how the DOD is actually looking into and actually, they use the word degree free. The DOD used certification warriors, degree free certification warriors. They used that phrase. They used our language to describe this movement. And the fact that the DOD is now looking at people to fill cybersecurity gaps because they realize that they can't just wait around for college graduates to fill those jobs. They're literally going back to high schools. because that's a better labor force for them than waiting around for college graduates. And what's so interesting about this is that not only that, but 56% of of developers are already partially self taught. This is a this is a hacker this is a hacker news survey that was done a few years ago. And it's so fascinating because what that tells you already is that people are self educating in tech sectors to the tune of half. I read recently that Aon and IBM are only requiring a college degree for 25 to 30 percent of their QA engineer roles. That was just across those roles. And so it's just funny to see this because you and I also both know that techs and CNAs are running. Our hospitals are medical system right now None of those jobs require college degrees, and that's what's happening. You've got cardiac techs. You've got sonographers. You have people that are doing health care technician jobs. Not tech jobs as in technology, but technician jobs, they're becoming a lot more open to apprenticeship, and the tech specifically has led the charge for the return of apprenticeship as we see it. So I just think this is a really interesting take in that, oh, if people don't go to college, we're not gonna be educated. No. I think more people are gonna be educated, and moreover more people are gonna be employed. So I actually look I think that this trend indicates economic recovery, not economic downturn. Yeah. A few months ago, we talked about Iowa increasing their budget

Ryan [00:14:00]:

for apprenticeship and on the job training for the health care industry. And that is something that we are gonna see across all states. it's going to start happening because exactly what you said, the need is in the healthcare space and in the healthcare sector. And the fact of the matter is is you do not need to have a 4 year college degree to draw blood. You do not need a 4 year college degree to do the vast amount of work that's in the healthcare industry. What you need to do is you need to be trained specifically in that area. A good example or is gonna be, like, EMTs and paramedics. That's a perfect example. There are a lot of courses throughout the United States that you can take an intensive 6 week course and get out of there with your NREMTB, your EMT basic, and you can go and work at AMR or at your city and county public rig ambulance. and then go and work in health care. That's health care work if I've ever seen it, definitely. Right? You can go and run a rig from a 6 week course. It's all going to go back to that. And then over time, what happens is that you work as an EMT, you do that for a few years. and then

Hannah [00:15:09]:

you take your an REMT, you're paramedic, and then you become a paramedic. Right? When that's the progression. which is great too because you and I both love that is low risk cost training, and then you work and see if you wanna continue in that field, and then you go become a paramedic. It's interesting. I saw that same thing about the DOD and the degree free cert warriors.

Ryan [00:15:28]:

That was I mean, it's a few months ago, and, hopefully, we can find it while linking in the show notes here. You can see a degree free dotco/podcast. And if you want notes on anything that we're talking about here, you can go to degree free dotco/ podcast to get the show notes there. It was wild to see. Somebody else, like, another publication using our language, using the words that we created out there in the world, and that's amazing. It's amazing to see because 2 years ago, when we first started this movement, when we first started a podcast to TikTok in this business, we didn't really have those types of plan. We didn't really know anything about this. We didn't really have any plans past getting the information out there to a few select people, and now it's, like, really out there. And people are using the language that people on this podcast

Hannah [00:16:17]:

and on this show already used in your day to day life, and that's amazing. Okay. So in this line of falling college and role The only thing that has not fallen is grad student enrollment, which has risen by 4% since fall of 2019. A warning -- to all of you who are looking to enroll in grad school because you do not know what to do, and you're afraid to go look for a job. Do not go to grad school. That is the nail in the coffin. That is pushing you further and further into debt, it is gonna take you more time. Please go get any job. Do not go to grad school. Do not continue to dig your further in the pit because you're afraid of going into the job market. because I know there's a lot of fear. There's a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of things right now that and there's a ton of stuff in the news like, oh, I'm applying for jobs and they can't get jobs and blah blah blah blah blah. The job market's terrible and everyone's getting laid off and all these things. That is not a good reason. -- to continue to spend more money to go into more debt. More debt is not going to help you. It's just gonna make your situation more desperate when you -- finally do go out into the job market. Just bite the bullet.

Ryan [00:17:29]:

Start now. Do not continue to buy more paper. Here's what happens when people go to grad school just to go to grad school. When they think, oh, I need this graduate degree to break into this industry. Right? That's what they're thinking instead of I've hit a wall in my career that -- -- company said. Yes. My company said, you need and I have it in writing, you need this graduate degree to move up. And if you this graduate degree, you will move up and here's the pay that you'll get. You know, get that in writing because otherwise, it's really not worth the risk. So what happens a lot of times is you're looking at your career situation, you are stuck. You are stuck and you don't know where to go. And you're looking around And you're like, man, I need to get out of this situation that I'm in. I don't know how to do it. The only way that I know how to do it is to go back to school. and get a graduate degree. I go online and I look at all these job postings. All of these job postings say graduate degree required. They say MBA required. They say master's degree required. A lot of them don't even specify what the masters is in. It's just the same thing with, like, bachelor's degree preferred. bachelor's degree require bachelor's of what on the podcast. So stick around for that. I've been working on that episode for a long time. I wasn't sure exactly how to frame it, but it's gonna be basically about if you're thinking about going back to college, if you're thinking about going to college for the first time, how to think through that process and how to just see what it's actually going to cost you and whether or not you should go for your individual situation. Because the fact of the matter is is you and I can't tell anybody

Hannah [00:19:12]:

to do anything. And it wouldn't make sense that we that we do that because we don't know your specific situation, and we don't know who you are as a person and your goals are. No. I agree with that. But I also do think that if you're if you're thinking about going to get a master's degree or a graduate degree in something, Just start applying for those jobs that you want. Because if they hire you, you obviously didn't need it, and you'll never know until you apply for them. I wanted to go back to what you're talking about, seeing more advertising

Ryan [00:19:36]:

for colleges than you've ever had before. And I think that that's accurate. I'm not sure. It makes sense to me that it is because it has never been easier to attend college. On the flip side of that, it's never been easier to charge for college. The reason why is because their product can get to you wherever you are now. So you have these national colleges now. Do you have these online only universities? So you can earn that degree

Hannah [00:20:10]:

Sitting in your living room, but they can also take your money now sitting in your living room. That is literally what the ads are saying. They're all ads, and they're definitely targeted. They're definitely targeted to women, obviously, because I'm seeing it. But the these ads are just targeted to young women, and it's like, get -- get your masters from the comfort of your own home, and it's like, why? For what? And it's like, oh, here's something you can do with your day, and it's just crazy to me because I see these ads, like, who is doing this? Like, please. And it's almost like I wanna make a maybe I'll make a video about it or something like that. But It's like, I I wanna take the ads and just go, yeah, don't fall for this. Don't fall for this. They're trying to just grab your money. You're not even gonna do anything with it. It's not gonna help you. It's just gonna cost you money. It's not gonna make you money. They're just trying to grab you back and pull you back in one more time. Yeah. So that is the reason why you're seeing more

Ryan [00:21:01]:

Or I think that's the reason why you are seeing more advertising is because it's never been easier for them to take your money. They can take it from anywhere in the country now. Any you can you could be in Alaska. You can be in Hawaii. Doesn't matter. You can attend quote unquote a university all away in Maine, and it doesn't matter. They'll take your money because they don't care about the borders. Whereas before, you would only see advertisements for your local college because it was a proximity thing. They would only advertise to people within a hundred, two hundred miles -- They could physically get there. Exactly. Because they knew that the vast majority of the people that we're going to attend their university were from those places. And obviously, this is different if you're looking at the major brands for universities, the Ivy League Schools and those of universities that have, like, one letter I mean, one word names. But if you're looking at University of whatever, University of whatever, then those people, their market was always 100 to 200 miles or so. That's their demographic. That's their targeting pool. But now they've realized, okay. Well, COVID has accelerated the online learning and the remote learning. And we're part of that. People are used to it already. What we've learned is actually people prefer it, and we can also get them the knowledge -- In quotes. -- in their living rooms. On the flip side, like I said before, they can also take your money from the from your living room now instead of you having to travel to their campus. One of the biggest things that we hear all the times that I don't have a network. If you want to start building your network, connect with us. I'm Ryan Mariama degree free. She's had a Mariama degree free. When you connect with us, leave us a note. Let us know that you're listening to the podcast. Let us know what episode. And tell us what you like about the podcast and more helpfully tell us what you don't like. We make this podcast for you, so We definitely wanna know what you don't like, and maybe we can start doing things differently. Okay. What I wanted to talk about is related to this decline in college enrollment, we don't plan these episodes out. So it just happens that this is my point too. This is about The 3 year bachelor's degree. Did you see this? Have you seen 3 years bachelor's degrees? I did

Hannah [00:23:25]:

See, I made a video about that a couple months ago on TikTok, and my only commentary was, why didn't they do that before? Yeah. It is

Ryan [00:23:33]:

really interesting. that it is being brought up again, and it's being brought up because of the declining enrollment rates. So really, when you think about it, why are they doing this? They are thinking about creating a 3 year bachelor's degree because enrollment is declining. If enrollment was going up, there would be no reason to shorten the amount of time. They're trying to attract new customers. College is a business. They are trying to attract more customers that are currently not purchasing. And the way that you do that, as with any business, is you do that by marketing

Hannah [00:24:18]:

and then tweaking your product. The funniest thing about this is that the colleges are rolling out a 3 year bachelor's degree. But you and I both know that for most college graduates, these are people that actually graduate college. It takes them five and a half years to graduate from a 4 year program. That means that this 3 year program is actually gonna take four and a half If college is really cared about accessible education, and that's so funny because the talking point for the 3 year bachelor's degree is, oh, we're making it more accessible. No, you're You're trying to claw back the people who have escaped your clutches. What they're what they actually should do is it should be a la carte. If you wanna learn economics, you can go, and you can only take economics classes. That's it. That's it. And you can list out the economics courses you have taken, and you do not have to take a set amount of them in order to have proof you went and went and actually purchased and sat in those classes and passed the exams. That's exactly how it should be because if colleges wanna compete, that is what they need to do immediately. It's all a cart. You don't have to take all these all these nonsense things. But the problem is that colleges don't wanna do that because if they do, they'd actually have to operate -- as an ethical business. They'd actually have to watch their margins. They'd actually have to reduce administrative bloat. They'd actually have to stop being the corrupt industry that they are, and they have no interest in doing that. And also, if they continue to charge people and put people in debt, the more likely they are to get student loan forgiveness at some point and get a blank check from the government, so that they can continue to inflate their pricing. So they have no incentive to actually make it more accessible. Yeah. The question that I have here And I have think I have more questions and answers on this is how does

Ryan [00:25:51]:

creating a 3 year bachelor degree How does that affect the validity of the degree itself? And then how does that affect the value of your degree that you are getting in 3 years, and then also the degree of everyone else that came before you. It's an interesting thought and it's not something that I have an answer to and maybe you have a thought behind it. I'm I'm not sure that I do. in my very uneducated opinion in my very, you know, I'm an idiot, so don't listen to me. But in my opinion, it seems like it's just simple supply and demand. Right? So as supply goes up, the value of that thing goes down. So you're inflating supply and the value of that degree goes down. So now are the people that getting 3 year degrees? Do they have, like, an asterisk? by their name or by their degree. Like, oh, that's a 3 year degree.

Hannah [00:26:54]:

That's not like our 4 year degree. If you got our 4 year degree, you don't get that asterisks by it. I don't I don't know. That's that is that does bring up a lot because it brings up a it brings up a few things, which is is it the time on campus, right, to A TOC, time on campus that matters, or is it actually the information? Is it the education? Right? because if it was the education, There would be no time. It would just be you learn the information you need to learn and you leave, and that's it. But the other thing is that As you and I both know, as I said, that 3 year degree is gonna take at least 4 years. That that's how that's gonna work. There's no way people are gonna finish that 3 year degree in 3 years. it'll just be, like, regular 4 year degrees where most people don't finish until almost 6 years. And so the 3 year degree, it doesn't need an asterisk. It's gonna be a 4 year degree anyway. It's just a marketing tactic, I think. Yeah. Maybe. I'm not sure. I think about my experience with the PMP, and I've talked about that. in a prior episode with Nashicatano

Ryan [00:27:52]:

from SaaS. You can go and watch that episode. I definitely suggest you do. If you're thinking getting certifications. That was a really good episode on the different certifications that SaaS has, but also you get to look behind the curtain of what takes to actually build one of these certification programs. He is the certification manager for SAS, and it was a really, really informative episode. But I think about my own experience with the PMP and I think, okay. Well, I took the PMP about 2 years ago, I think it was. It was the year that they changed it, apparently. They had changed the whole Pimbach, the book of which you study to get your PMP. Okay? I didn't take the one in 2020, I just learned about it in 2021, and I took that test. I passed it, flying colors, fine, whatever. From everything that I read, it was easier than the tests prior. Okay. Well, if it is easier, hard to tell. But if it is easier, what does that say about the PMPs that are coming out now? And how does the PMP is coming out now? The people that have their PMPs and the certification that is the PMP now How does that look stacked up against the PMPs before? The old ones, the really, really tough ones. Yeah. Allegia really tough because I don't know. I didn't take that one. So I I have no frame of reference here. And as Matt Shiketano said on the episode, that we did together. They try in the certification space. They try to steer away from easier and harder because all they're trying to do is be accurate with what they're assessing. Oh, that's interesting. Exactly. It makes sense for a certification, but does it make sense for a degree when a degree is a 4 year degree. And if you can do all of that in 3 years, well, then why can't you do all of it in 2 years? Why can't you do all of it in 1 year? Why exactly, as you said, Why is it time bound at all? Yeah. Because education and mastery shouldn't be. And let me tell you why it's time bound. It's time bound for predictability of revenue. So they can measure their budgets, and so they can they have time to sell you more. Exactly. And it's it's easy to predict. Okay. Well, if I get them into the journey and I get them buying from me this year, they will not stop buying from me until this year. And this is the lifetime value of the customer. over that amount of time. That is why they do it. Right? Or seemingly, that's why they do it. You can sit there and tell me, no. That's how long it actually takes for you to know the knowledge. Well, can't you just do that by testing people at different phases like all of these other self pay certifications do? All of these other self pay certifications

Hannah [00:30:37]:

They just give you a knowledge test, and that is the gate of whether or not you go on to the next thing. Right. You should in theory, you should be able to go to a college and take an exam. And if you already know the material, you just pay a $100 and you get a paper that says you can do whatever this is as verified by this standard exam test. Call just should definitely not be the gatekeepers of those tests. But in in theory, that would be one way that you could do it. Right. Exactly. But then that would water down the revenue and it would also water down the value of of their products. So Anyway, that's a long winded way of saying, I don't know. Let us know what you think. Though, we'd like to hear what you think is gonna be the result of this 3 year bachelor's degree. 1, do you think that people are actually gonna graduate in 3 years? And then 2, do you think that gonna affect the value of other people's bachelor's degrees. Yeah. Exactly.

Ryan [00:31:31]:

Because

Ryan [00:31:32]:

it seems to me as an idiot. So when you preface things like that. Well, because I don't know. No one either was true. It's fine.

Ryan [00:31:40]:

It seems to me that it would water down what it is. And it would water it down for everybody else. Like, I got a I got a 4 year degree in economics. And it seems like if somebody got a 3 year degree in economics, be not because they were so smart and they took all of the classes in order to get that degree conferred to them within 3 years, but rather because the institution shrank down the curriculum down into 3 years, it seems to me that that value of that 3 year degree isn't the same as a 4 year. Right? That's how that's the mentality that I would have. It's not the mentality that I actually have. It's not at all. But I'm just saying as somebody who doesn't think the way that I do, I could see that that would make sense. Because that makes sense. Okay. Well, it's a 4 year degree. I spent a year more learning all of this material, I must know more than you. Mine must be worth more than yours. Yeah. It's I don't know. I see I see this headline 3 year bachelor's degrees, and I see how they've packaged the press release about this. And it's, oh, we just care about accessibility and education. And all I see when I see that is they got greedy, and now they're getting desperate because they're losing people. And people don't need them anymore. And that, I like to see it. I like to see it because that is gonna bring down the price of things. It will. And if you are part of that population that is not going to college, not going back to college, and you're not about that 3 year degree, but you do not know what you wanna do. And you're stuck in the situation that you're in right now. We have a couple of free courses available to you. you can go to degree free dotcoforward/pathways, and that is a course about 5 degree free pathways. That is everything that you can do instead of go to college. And like I said, that's absolutely free. You can go and take that course right now and figure out which pathway you want to start walking today. The second course that we have available to you, if you're trying to find a job and you don't know how to get there, you can go to degree free dotcoforward/ get hired. and you can sign up for our 7 day get hire challenge. And that will be a great start

Hannah [00:33:36]:

of how to get the work that you want and working towards changing careers, changing jobs so that you can change your life. And if you wanna get more degree free news, if you wanna know how to get hired without buying a college degree, And you just want more stuff that Ryan and I think is cool. You're gonna wanna go over to degree free.z0 forward slash newsletter and sign up for their free weekly newsletter that's gonna get delivered straight here inbox. Yep. And that's pretty much it until next week, guys. Aloha.