CREDENTIALED, NOT EDUCATED: Why Corporate Recruiters Shouldn’t Be So Obsessed With Prestigious College Degrees.

One reason that businesses struggle to find capable workers is because they have increased their hiring from top-level universities, said Byron Auguste, CEO of the workforce training nonprofit Opportunity@Work. The problem is that these schools haven’t increased the number of students enrolled to match the demand, he explained.

Additionally, an education from a prestigious university doesn’t necessarily correlate to being a good worker, said Garrett Moran, the president of another workforce training nonprofit, Year Up. Companies that automatically ignore prospective job candidates who lack higher education degrees are simply being lazy and are merely screening for keywords on a person’s resume, he explained.

Moran said that there’s “so many young people who just never had a shot” that are getting lost in the existing hiring system. These youth and young adults are just “dying for success, dying for mentorship,” he said.

There’s a huge competitive advantage to be gained by companies willing to hire based on aptitude over pedigree.