Real Life of an MSW

I work as a project manager at a tech company in the Midwest. I wasn’t hired for the role but got my position by internal advancement. I never graduated from college, so I wouldn’t have qualified for my position off the street.I’ve now been in the role for several years but might be ready for a change. I worry that not having a degree (I do have a few years of college education, however) will restrict future job opportunities elsewhere, solely because I wouldn’t meet the “college degree” requirement. I’m in my 30s now and think it’s silly that something like this can weed you out even if you meet all the other criteria, including job experience. While it’s true that many companies have moved toward a “college degree or X years’ experience” approach, the vast majority of jobs I see require a college degree (not a certification).

Is it wrong for me to answer application questions untruthfully to avoid being automatically screened out, assuming I am still forthright about my lack of a degree elsewhere? It’s very clear on my résumé that I never graduated. — ANONYMOUS

A: “Silly” is too gentle a word for a state of affairs in which an experienced candidate for a project manager position can be automatically sifted out, whether by a simple algorithm or a complex artificial intelligence system, simply for not having a philosophy B.A. from 2013. Companies that automatically filter out people without completed college educations are worse off for it, denying themselves a chance at talented and motivated applicants who don’t fit the limiting profile.

Unfortunately, the purported gains in efficiency offered by automated screening have apparently proved to be too enticing to businesses to overcome its potential for silliness, and the World Economic Forum claims that some 90% of businesses “use some form of automated system to filter or rank job applications.” Given this new reality, what else can an outside-the-box applicant do besides pretend to be an inside-the-box one?

On an ethical level, I don’t think it’s a problem to answer some questions untruthfully in this case. I know that many readers of this column believe lying is wrong in all situations, but my personal feeling is that you owe the recruiters to whom you’re submitting your job application as much care and respect as they are showing you. Which is to say, if they’re using automatic sorting systems for sweeping eliminations, not very much.

The problem is that on a practical level, it’s hard to say how much the misdirection you’re proposing would really help. Many companies (and their recruitment-focused subcontractors) now also use large language models to parse entire résumés. Whatever else you might say about ChatGPT, it will be able to tell that you didn’t graduate. So as long as employers insist on silly disqualifying factors like the lack of a diploma, you’ll be at their mercy.

As the automated sorting net becomes harder to evade, your options narrow. You could double down on deceit, claim to have a degree and hope it’s never checked. (But be aware that most large companies use third-party background-check services that investigate on their behalf.) You could try to network in person at the companies you’re interested in: An email from the right person is probably the quickest way to bypass the résumé slush pile.

Or, if you’re feeling particularly stuck, you could enroll at your local community college and start working your way toward the degree. I can understand that this would feel a bit like admitting defeat to the machines. But at least with a diploma in hand you wouldn’t have to think so much about them.