What if You Just Lied and Said You Have a College Degree? Would They Even Know?

If you can lie about it and nobody catches you, does it even matter?

Of all the needless and infuriating barriers to my getting a job throughout my adult life, the biggest was not having a college degree.

For whatever reason, almost every single job I ever applied for had at the very top of the job description, “Bachelor’s degree required.” Many of them even said, “Bachelor’s degree required. Master’s degree preferred.”

So, I spent most years of my life as a husband and father; it seemed, scanning job openings for positions such as “marketing specialist,” “marketing manager,” and “marketing director,” yet the jobs I saw ALWAYS said: “Bachelor’s degree required” right at the top.

Some job listings were even nasty about it. I remember a few companies said something like, “A bachelor’s degree is required for this role. If you do not have one, do not even apply.”

I could never understand this obsession, and over the years, I spoke to many recruiters, career coaches, other job seekers, and even former hiring managers about how this was totally arbitrary and ridiculous.

Many of them agreed with me. Most of the time, the requirements made no sense.

It was JUST ABOUT HAVING A STUPID PIECE OF PAPER. That was it.

If I were applying to be a brain surgeon, sure, I could see that going to medical school might be a requirement. But even then, having a college degree still isn’t what makes a doctor a doctor, anyway.

To earn the title “doctor,” you have to take licensing exams, go through extensive residency training, obtain board certifications, and receive a license to practice medicine from your respective state, at least in America.

In other words, simply having a piece of paper that says “Doctor of Medicine” doesn’t actually make you a doctor.

The same goes for lawyers: you can’t practice law even if you earn a Juris Doctor degree but don’t take the Bar exam or aren’t admitted to the Bar, and you even have to do a character and fitness assessment on top of that.

So, what is this monomaniacal preoccupation with every company I found insisting that I wasn’t even worthy to talk to them or come in for an interview unless I had that magical piece of paper first?

This was the 21st century, yet it felt like they were still saying, “NO IRISH NEED APPLY.” It was all so insulting.

While I was in job search mode, I talked to a CPA who worked as a financial controller for a large company with thousands of employees and lots of human resources managers, and he said something I’d never thought of before.

“It’s not about you. It’s about them. All they care is: ‘Will I get in trouble if I hire the wrong person?’ If the higher-ups say, ‘We should probably have someone with a degree for this role,’ they won’t even question it. They’ll act like it’s a commandment straight from God on high.

Because if they bend the rules and hire you, even if you’re the best person for the job, and something goes wrong, they’re afraid they’ll get in trouble. All they’re doing is covering their own asses. That is literally all they care about.

They don’t even care if you’re the right candidate or a better candidate. If you don’t check the box on their little form, they won’t talk to you.”

I thought that was insulting, foolish, and extremely self-serving. He agreed with me.

A few weeks after that enlightening discussion, I spoke to a man at a much larger company. He was a Vice President at a Fortune 10 technology corporation. A friend of a friend, he heard I was looking for a job and offered to review my resume and give me his feedback and any advice he could share for how to get hired.

He was very generous with his time and also, it turned out, very candid. He finally removed the veil and showed me one of the ultimate dirty secrets of Corporate America™.

“Ron, do you know what I do when I want to hire somebody? I find the person I want to hire. Then I write a job description in such a way that nobody except that person can fill it.

For legal reasons, I submit it to HR so they can run it through their bullshit process and wait for the mandatory minimum amount of time required to pretend it’s actually open to the public and that any qualified candidates can apply.

When the time is up, I tell them to pull the job description, and I reject all the applications we received without reading any of them. Then I hire the person I originally wanted to hire in the first place.”

I was shell-shocked.

In other words, it’s all an unfair game; everybody’s cheating, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

This was absolutely demoralizing to discover, but I was still surprised: I had been more optimistic than that. As cynical as I already was, I didn’t know that it was that hopeless and that companies used such petty acts of favoritism and layers of useless bureaucracy, even at one of the largest tech companies on the planet.

The more I thought about this, the more I started to realize that Big Education, Big Tech, and Corporate America™ are all conspiring in this dirty racket together. It’s all one big farce with each player lying, cheating, and stealing, but nobody complains because everybody in power gets what they want in the end.

I was also annoyed because many people I knew—most, actually—who worked in marketing didn’t even have “marketing” degrees. But then I also noticed that this was true of many people I knew across a wide variety of industries.

This, to me, showed the clear disconnect of “higher education” and how it is one of the greatest scams of my lifetime. I started thinking about all the people I knew with various jobs and various college degrees.

My real estate agent had a degree in acting. My insurance agent had a degree in architecture, and his friend, who was also an insurance agent, had a degree in computer science.

One of my former coworkers who was a graphic designer had a degree in “organizational management,” whatever the heck that is, and, oddly, a man I knew who was a home remodeler had a degree in graphic design.

I knew a founder of a spirits distillery who had a degree in sociology, and my auto mechanic didn’t have a degree at all.

My dad has a degree in biology but worked in medical sales and then at a prison. The web development instructor from the coding boot camp I worked at before had a degree in psychology.

I knew multiple people with law degrees who weren’t working as lawyers. One opera singer I met had a degree in medicine but wasn’t working as a doctor and never had.

I knew a man with an MBA who first worked for a paper company (yes, for real) and then managed rental properties and a woman with an MBA who sold cell phones at a retail store.

On and on it went. The connection between educational tracks, college degrees, and actual careers was tenuous in many cases. Sometimes, it even seemed absurd.

I am not saying all degrees are worthless or that nobody I’ve ever met with a college degree works in their chosen field.

But I am saying that it’s not that cut and dry. Many people went to school and studied something completely different than what they were doing now, and it didn’t make any sense that simply having a piece of paper with fancy writing on it magically unlocked doors that were closed to me.

I was relating my frustration about this to a family member at one point, and he asked me a question that caught me completely off guard.

“What if you just lied and said you have a college degree? Would they even know?”

Whoa… I was not prepared for that. I had never thought about anything like this before. He continued.

“Really; what are the odds that any employer you apply to would actually check to see if you really have a degree or not?”

This… was… an interesting idea. “But that would obviously be wrong,” I protested.

“Yes, of course, it would be wrong. You’d be lying. If they ever found out, you would probably get fired. But really… just as a thought experiment: would anybody ever know?

What’s to stop you from simply saying that you have a degree in marketing from a local college? Would they ever ask for proof? Would they want report cards or transcripts? How would they ever catch you? You’re a good enough marketer that you already know whatever they need. They’d never have a reason to even question you.”

This was such a novel thought. I wasn’t going to do it… but his point was incredible.

It’s all such bullshit anyway that there was probably a 99% chance that I could just start telling the companies I applied for, “Yes, I have a bachelor’s degree in marketing.”

…and they would never know otherwise. All they were trying to do was check a box in their hiring process anyway.

To me, this helped prove what a scam college is in the first place. I could easily fill any of the roles I was applying for and do a great job. I had extensive work experience in marketing already, and all of my employers loved me.

The most annoying point about all of this was that more than one of the jobs I’d already had by this point did require at least a bachelor’s degree. However, I was able to sidestep this requirement purely through the random fact that I knew someone who was friends with or related to the CEO or owner.

In other words, by knowing the right people, I was able to skip to the front of the line. So, of course, I did take advantage of this when I could, but it’s still a dirty trick that this even works, and you have absolutely no control over it.

It’s all about luck: who do you know that knows someone else who runs a company that’s hiring, who has the power to throw away the rules they initially put in place?

For both of my jobs where this applied, I was nervous that even though the hiring managers told me it wasn’t a big deal that I didn’t have a degree, I wanted to see that in writing.

One company owner laughed at me.

“Wait, you want me to write down that I don’t care that you don’t have a degree?” he asked in confusion.

“Yes, please,” I said.

“Why would I fire you over this when I’m clearly signing off on hiring you even though you don’t have one? Don’t you trust me?”

Ignoring the last question (because, no, I don’t trust anybody), I did explain my reasoning.

“Yes, it’s true that you and I are in agreement about this. But, the job description for the position I now have states that the role requires a bachelor’s degree or greater. If this company is ever sold or taken over somehow by someone who isn’t you, they may look through these records and decide that I am ‘not qualified’ (on paper) for the job I have.”

Both times, I printed out the job description, handed it to my boss, and asked him to cross out the educational requirement and sign it. Both did.

Yes, I do believe Corporate America™ is just that stupid that they might pull a stunt like that. If those dumb HR hacks at big companies were only concerned about covering their own asses, I might as well cover my own.

Now, in a dramatic twist of events, one of those companies was indeed sold to a new owner very shortly after I was hired! So, my intuition was proven to be absolutely spot-on.

The funniest part about all of this is that years later, I finally did earn a college degree: a real Bachelor of Arts degree from a bona fide University. It took me sixteen years to complete it, and when I did, my wife and five kids came to watch me graduate when I was in my thirties… but I did eventually get it.

And you know what? From the very moment I was handed that diploma, I have literally never used it on a job application because I will never, ever work for a dirtbag company in Corporate America™ that plays games like requiring college degrees to even apply for jobs.

So, in a sense, finally graduating meant all that work was for nothing.

But in another sense, I proved to them that I could actually get that magical piece of paper they always held over my head like I was a second-class citizen, while younger, far less experienced kids could just walk right into a hiring manager’s office, “show their papers” and walk out with a job offer.

But still… the fact that someone could even raise the question of whether there would even be repercussions for lying about having a degree just shows how ridiculous the whole system is.

Honestly, I took a photo of my degree once, right before I stuffed it into a box.

I haven’t seen it since. I don’t even know where it is. I may as well have just put it in the paper shredder; that’s how unimportant degrees are.

And that’s just one more reason I’m self-employed and will be for as long as I am physically able.