You don’t need a college degree to work in Tech
College can be a wonderful experience and investment, but that’s not true for everyone. Some people decide not to take that route after high school for one reason or another. While forgoing higher education used to mean many career doors were closed to a person, those hinges are starting to swing open — especially in the tech industry.
Lisa Gevelber, who is Google’s chief marketing officer for the Americas region, founded and runs Grow with Google to give back to the community (a.k.a. the world). One of Grow with Google’s main endeavors is Google Career Certificates, which allows people to train for promising careers in the tech industry at their own pace and from wherever they are.
Gevelber talked about the program, how it works and why people should consider it on the latest episode of Get Hired with Andrew Seaman. Gevelber also shared with LinkedIn News editor Andrew Seaman some of the best advice she’s received during her impressive career.
Check out the episode on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen. If you like the show, be sure to leave a rating and review. Your praise helps other people find the podcast.
Transcript: You Don’t Need a College Degree to Work in Tech
Andrew: From LinkedIn news, this is Get Hired, a podcast for the ups and downs of our professional lives. I’m Andrew Seaman, LinkedIn’s Senior News Editor for job searches and careers. Each week on Get Hired, we talk about leveling up. Sometimes we talk about finding work. Other times, we talk about excelling where you are right now. And through it all, we focus on how to stay true to yourself in the process. Something you should know about me is that I am a fan of higher education. I really enjoyed undergrad. And I even went on to get my master’s degree. I look back on my time at both of those schools as highlights of my life. I found myself during that time and I figured out who I wanted to be, but should everyone take that route? Of course not. Some people don’t thrive in those environments. And frankly, they shouldn’t be forced to go through all of that for a degree that they may or may not use.
There is no singular path to a successful and fulfilling career. What’s important is that you find the best path for you. Fortunately, those paths are more recognizable today than they have been in years past. Many employers are dropping degree requirements and focusing more on the skills a person brings to the job. Additionally, there is renewed interest in training and apprenticeships. Today, we’re going to shine a light on one of these training programs that helps people train for new roles in the tech industry. This one is known as Google Career Certificates. Students can earn a credential taking self-directed courses in Digital Marketing, IT Support, Data Analytics and more. My guest today, Lisa Gevelber, created and runs Grow with Google, which oversees the career certificate program. Lisa came up in Marketing, spending time at companies like Proctor & Gamble and Intuit before making the jump to Silicon Valley and, of course, Google, where she also serves as the Chief Marketing Officer for the Americas region. She is a busy lady. She told us why these types of programs help individuals and employers. Here’s Lisa.
Lisa: If you put a bachelor’s degree requirement on a job, you eliminate about 80% of Latino Americans, about 70% of Black Americans, and about 70% of people who live in rural America. And so we have this problem where we are excluding way too many people. And as Google, we thought, we could play a real leadership role in fixing that problem and in creating a more equitable and inclusive job market. And so we created a way, called the Google Career Certificate program, to train people without a college degree, for a variety of fields that were high paying, already in demand. you don’t have to have any particular educational experience. You don’t have to have any particular work experience.
We know that we can successfully teach you everything you need to know in one of those fields, regardless of your background. So we offer this program in some high schools around the country and community colleges around the country and now even in four-year colleges and universities around the country. So there’s lots of ways people can participate in the program if they want more of a classroom experience as well. And then we’re working with governments and workforce boards, we’re working with local nonprofit organizations. The good news is anyone can take these certificates online at their own pace. It was really built for working Americans, but also these other opportunities afford people a chance to learn either in a classroom environment or with a group of other learners. Sometimes people like to learn and support each other. And so that’s an option too.
Andrew: It’s really interesting because these are jobs that can really be incredible leaps in people’s lives, because that’s the type of roles that can really propel you into a higher income bracket. And I guess that is the hope because, like you said, there are these people who are often excluded from the candidate pool.
Lisa: That’s the whole idea, right? You know, about half the people who graduate from our program when they started the program or before they started the program were making $30,000 a year or less. And then when you complete the program, the four career fields that I just talked about, have an average entry-level salary of more than $60,000 a year. And that’s just the entry-level. Like we know that people who do these programs will grow even into more and more advanced positions. There are so so many examples of people who came from all different types of work and types of background, but now have landed in great jobs and are advancing in those jobs.
Some of my favorites that I’ve been really inspired by, is a woman named Natalie Burns she’s in Dallas. She had an associate’s degree from a community college, but she also had a mountain of debt and she was working, I think, a retail job making less than $10 an hour. And she enrolled in the Google IT support certificate at her local community college. And she is now a cyber security assistant at a company called Interstate. And so this is why we do this work. It’s to see really people’s lives changed for the better and their family’s lives changed for the better.
Andrew: Before we head to break, I just want to add a personal note about working in the tech industry. You may be listening to this conversation thinking that you can’t work in tech because you don’t know how to code or build a computer. Take it from me, someone who has two liberal arts degrees and now works in tech, there are a lot of jobs in this industry. So don’t discount the possibility that there is a place for you. When we get back, a look into the partnerships that Lisa’s built for Google Career Certificate holders.
Andrew: We’re back with Grow with Google’s Lisa Gevelber. One of the things I like about training programs like Google Career Certificates is that they usually include a career development program. In some cases, like Cisco’s Networking Academy, the company has matched graduates with their own clients to make sure there are people in the field who are trained to repair Cisco systems and devices. Lisa and her team have also included a career component into Google’s career certificates program.
Lisa: We built in a few very important things to help people go from learning mode to getting a job. One is that all of our career certificates have some sort of artifact that you produce as part of your learning journey that then you can take with you into a job application process. So if you’re a user experience design certificate graduate from Google, along the way, you will have built a whole portfolio of products that you made. So a website, an app interface, you could take those things as an artifact, a portfolio with you to your job interviews. If you do our project management certificate, you also have all these project management charts that you’ve created, and you can take those with you. And that stuff that you make is stuff that’ll also help you get a job.
That’s the first piece. The second piece is none of us are naturally great interviewers or interviewees. And so practice is an important part of that. So we offer every one of our Google Career Certificate graduates an opportunity to practice through this software called Big Interview. And then the other thing that we teach people is how to put on paper the things that you have learned. And importantly, the 150 big national employers who are part of our employer hiring consortium, also all participate in the job board. So there’s actual jobs from companies who are eager to hire Google Career Certificate grads, just waiting for you when you graduate.
Andrew: One of the things that, for programs like Google certificates where people go back, there’s something really nice about it because it’s not like college where you’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars and you maybe go through the motions to get a degree, it’s self-propelled. The people who finish it really do want to finish it, I think.
Lisa: I mean, anything you do online at your own pace, you better be really driven to do. You have to be motivated. And as you said, I think employers understand that. That people who have taken the initiative and really mastered a pretty extensive amount of content and invested in their own skills are exactly the kind of people that these employers want to hire.
Andrew: If this type of program sounds interesting to you, how do you know if you’re the right type of person for one? For example, who ends up being the most successful during and after these programs? Here’s Lisa.
Lisa: There is like no one kind of profile of people who are graduating. And that’s kind of what’s exciting about it. People from all walks of life, from all different life experiences, all different backgrounds, all different economic status, and all different racial backgrounds as well. And I do think kind of the consistent thread is personal motivation. People who are self-starters, self-motivated, and who are really excited to learn new things and take their professional career kind of to a new level.
Andrew: It does seem like it definitely needs to be a personal journey. And I know your own journey… you’ve been at influential places from Proctor & Gamble to Google. What would your advice be in terms of something people should do to really excel in their careers?
Lisa: I think when I look at the people around me who are really successful and I think also in my approach to my career, one of the things that’s really common is something called growth mindset. And this is a concept that a professor named Carol Dweck came up with. And really, it’s about not always feeling like it’s about getting the right answer or getting something right the first time. But that the people who are most successful in life are ones who embrace the setbacks or struggles along the way and use them as learning moments. Even when I hire people, it’s actually one of the things I try to look for, is people who have this kind of growth mindset approach to their lives because these mindset things really, I think, carry a lot of weight in terms of how we show up, how we approach our career, but also how we approach our work every single day.
And the good thing about growth mindset is as professor Dweck talks about, it’s like a muscle, you build it over time, so you weren’t like born with it or born without it. You get to develop it. And if you approach it not as, “Oh, I have to hide the fact, I don’t know,” but rather as, “This is a cool opportunity for me to learn how to do something new.” And the journey is learning those things and figuring out over time too, which of those things you enjoy doing and over time investing in your strengths. I’ve started telling people that if you don’t know what you’re good at think a little bit about things you’ve really enjoyed doing because I think we tend to enjoy the things we’re good at.
Andrew: Yeah. And I think that’s such a wonderful piece of advice because especially during the darkest days of the pandemic when people were contemplating career changes or trying to figure out what their next step was, I think a lot of people asked themselves, “What am I good at? And what do I enjoy?” And what they found was that they could identify what they enjoyed, but it also had some roots in what they enjoyed really throughout their life. So a lot of the people they told me, “I really liked putting on plays during my childhood” or “I loved going to the aquarium.”
And these people who’ve made these successful career pivots during the pandemic, it turned out that it was because there was just something in them where they sort of found happiness in something they did. And it doesn’t mean that their job has to be their identity. But if you’re going to spend 8 or 12 hours a day doing something, it’s usually nice to somewhat enjoy the things that you do. And it sounds like you enjoy what you do. So it’s always nice chatting about that.
Lisa: I do love what I do. I’m very lucky. Very, very lucky in my job. And I’ve been very lucky in my career.
Andrew: Well, thank you so much for sharing it with us.
Lisa: Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for having me.
Andrew: That was Lisa Gevelber, Google’s Chief Marketing Officer for the Americas region and the head of Grow With Google, which oversees the Google Career Certificates program. You can learn more about their program on their website. Also, don’t forget to check out other training opportunities in the tech fields as well. Many of the big tech companies offer programs of their own. Now, if all of this interested you, that’s great. But, you may still be nervous. Taking a leap to a new field can be daunting. So to help you get pumped, that’s right, it’s time for Career Coach Corner! This week’s Pro Tip comes from career development expert Brenda Bennett.
Brenda Bennett: My tips are, one, be your true, authentic self. And, two, reach out to your network. You can apply to 100 jobs without hearing a thing, but if you reach out to the right person or somebody within that company, they are more likely to get your information in front of a hiring director.
Andrew: Thanks, Brenda. Like we said last week, we’re still looking for more wins from the Get Hired community. So if you’ve had a job search or career win big or small, send us an email or a voice memo to gethired@linkedin.com. That’s gethired@linkedin.com. We’d love to celebrate you on the show.
Remember, it’s up to you to put our advice into practice. Still, you always have a community backing you up and cheering you on. Connect with me and the Get Hired community on LinkedIn to continue the conversation. You can also join my weekly Get Hired live show every Friday at noon Eastern time on the LinkedIn News page. And if you liked this episode, leave us a rating on Apple Podcast. It helps people like you find the show. And of course, we’ll continue this conversation next week, right here, wherever you like to listen.
Get Hired is a production of LinkedIn News. The show is produced by Michele O’Brien. Joe DiGiorgi mixed our show. Florencia Iriondo is head of original audio and video. Dave Pond is head of news production. Dan Roth is the Editor in Chief of LinkedIn. And I’m Andrew Seaman. Until next time, stay well, and best of luck.