Forget about formal education

I have never let my schooling

interfere with my education.

--MARK TWAIN

There are plenty of companies out there who have educational requirements.

They'll only hire people with a college degree (sometimes in a specific field) or

an advanced degree or a certain GPA or certification of some sort or some other

requirement.

Come on. There are plenty of intelligent people who don't excel in the

classroom. Don't fall into the trap of thinking you need someone from one of the

"best" schools in order to get results. Ninety percent of CEOs currently heading

the top five hundred American companies did not receive undergraduate degrees

from Ivy League colleges. In fact, more received their undergraduate degrees

from the University of Wisconsin than from Harvard (the most heavily

represented Ivy school, with nine CEOs).

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Too much time in academia can actually do you harm. Take writing, for

example. When you get out of school, you have to unlearn so much of the way

they teach you to write there. Some of the misguided lessons you learn in

academia:

The longer a document is, the more it matters.

Stiff, formal tone is better than being conversational.

Using big words is impressive.

You need to write a certain number of words or pages to make a point.

The format matters as much (or more) than the content of what you write.

It's no wonder so much business writing winds up dry, wordy, and dripping

with nonsense. People are just continuing the bad habits they picked up in

school. It's not just academic writing, either. There are a lot of skills that are

useful in academia that aren't worth much outside of it.

Bottom line: The pool of great candidates is far bigger than just people who

completed college with a stellar GPA. Consider dropouts, people who had low

GPAs, community-college students, and even those who just went to high

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