The collar is no longer blue and white. New collar jobs are those that don’t require a degree but can pay well. Tom Merritt explains.
In the past, if you wanted a high-paying job, you needed to go to school, get a degree, and get a white-collar job, so called because the management wore white shirts. Other jobs are known as blue collar jobs for the blue shirts often worn by uniformed workers.
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But people are giving up those stocks and showing that if they have the skills, they don’t need the degree. This is sometimes called a new collar job.
Here are five things to know about the new collar job.
- The phrase “new collar” was coined by IBM President, President and CEO Gina Rometty at the world economic forum in January 2017. She said future work will not be white or blue collar but new collar.
- New collar jobs measure your skills, not where you were trained. And many jobs related to technology. Theladders.com lists a number of jobs that typically only require training or certification, not a college degree. Among them are information security analysts, database administrators, system administrators and more.
- The conversion has begun. The Wall Street Journal cited research from Oliver Wyman shows that more than 10% of people in the United States who work in low-paying jobs have moved into higher-paying skilled jobs. during the past two years. That includes people in warehouses, manufacturing, hotels and other hourly positions.
- A survey in December 2021 by Oliver Wyman also found that 59% of workers who moved or plan to move to a better job acquired new skills using a free course. The same, similar, LinkedIn Learning reports that the number of completion of certificate-eligible classes has increased by more than 1,300% from 2020 to 2021.
- Companies are changing their policies to accommodate. Examples include Okta, which eliminated college-degree requirements for some sales positions last year and established a business development affiliate program to train candidates on the job. . Another example is the Flatiron School, which offers a training program in coding that costs $15,000 and in nine months can get you certified as a software engineer.
I know many people who have done this and they all have successful tech careers. Here’s hoping it works for even more people.
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