Proving You're Qualified: Strategies for Competent People Without College Degrees [Paperback]

Charles D. Hayes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1995

Proving You're Qualified is a career book for competent people who have learned their jobs, on the job. More than 75 percent of the workers in America are without college degrees. Many are highly skilled and capable, yet they are often passed over for promotion for lack of a degree, which has nothing, whatsoever, to do with their performance. This book offers a frank discussion of educational merit and actual performance in a workplace caught in the grip of frightening change. Proving You're Qualified enables the reader to better understand the nature of power in hierarchies, to gain insight into methods for fighting credentialism, and to save time and money by utilizing alternate methods of adult continuing education.

Editorial Reviews

Review

How can people without college degrees prove competency and overcome common barriers to job advancement and success? Don't let missing, often arbitrary, credentials hold you down: Hayes provides a program of demonstrating competence in the workplace, emphasizing basic understanding of management systems and company politics in the process of making one's worth known to the right people in an organization. An unusual, excellent approach to ensuring job security. --Midwest Book Review

Proving You're Qualified is like a mystery novel. I couldn't put it down. It's a page turner so compelling you feel forced to write comments on the side of the pages as you go along. If you would like to have the confidence of a guide who has been there, and who can show the way to realize closure, this may be the most important book you ever read. -- James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D., author of The Worker Alone! Going Against The Grain and Work Without Managers: A View From The Trenches.

For more than twenty years, I have been writing about the disparity between learning and credentials. I show people with skills but no credentials how to earn the degree that will open doors for them. Now comes the perfect complement to that work. Charles Hayes' wonderful Proving You're Qualified , shows people with skills but few credentials how to parlay their skills into employment and acceptance without benefit of degrees. -- John Bear, Ph.D., author of Bear's Guide To Non-Traditional College Degrees

From the Publisher

What Others Are Saying About Proving You're Qualified

"Proving You're Qualified is like a mystery novel. I couldn't put it down. It's a page turner so compelling you feel forced to write comments on the side of the pages as you go along. If you would like to have the confidence of a guide who has been there, and who can show the way to realize closure, this may be the most important book you ever read."

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D., author of The Worker Alone! Going Against The Grain and Work Without Managers: A View From The Trenches.

"For more than twenty years, I have been writing about the disparity between learning and credentials. I show people with skills but no credentials how to earn the degree that will open doors for them. Now comes the perfect complement to that work. Charles Hayes' wonderful Proving You're Qualified, shows people with skills but few credentials how to parlay their skills into employment and acceptance without benefit of degrees."

John Bear, Ph.D., author of Bear's Guide To Non- Traditional College Degrees.

"A superb editorial analysis of a basic part of an aging educational system that needs some radical changes. This book should be studied by all of those who accept responsibility as facilitators, assessors or credentialers of learning."

Urban Whitaker, Ph.D., author of Assessing Learning: Standards, Principles and Procedures.

"This is the wisest and most useful book I have ever read on this subject. Anyone smart enough to have gained knowledge and skills on their own will be able to get recognition and advancement using the powerful strategies offered by Charles Hayes." Ronald Gross, author of Peak Learning and The Independent Scholar's Handbook.

"Deserves a place on the sociology shelf." Library Journal

"An unusual, excellent approach to ensuring job security." The Bookwatch

Product Details

• Paperback: 166 pages
• Publisher: Autodidactic Press; 1 edition (June 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0962197912
• ISBN-13: 978-0962197918
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,615,441 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Offers an excellent approach to ensuring your career security in the 21st century!, August 20, 2006

By 

Lee Say Keng "KNOWLEDGE ADVENTURER/TECHNOLOGY... (Ho Chi Minh City/Singapore) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Proving You're Qualified: Strategies for Competent People Without College Degrees (Paperback)

In the realm of many books covering self-directed learning, I would like to single out two books which I have read on this subject.

They are:

- Self University: The Price of Tuition is the Desire to Learn, by Charles Hayes;
- Proving You're Qualified: Strategies for Competent People without College Degrees, by Charles Hayles;

After having spent twenty-four years in the corporate world, I really consider them to be the wisest & most useful books I have ever read on the subject of self-directed learning.

'Self-University' is a heart-warming book. It encourages all of us to think of education as a life-long, self-initiated venture instead of a lifeless, institutionalized affair.

Let me recap the author's catchy metaphor from this book: "The caterpillar is condemned to crawl, but the butterfly has the potential to soar above with an all-inclusive view of the world. As humans we complete our caterpillar stage when we reach mature physical growth. If we are to soar like the butterflies, we must do so through the development of our minds."

'Proving You're Qualified' is a career book for competent people who have learned their jobs, on the job...& yet they are often passed over for promotion for lack of a degree, which has nothing, whatsoever, to do with their performance. This book offers readers a frank discussion of educational merit and actual performance in a workplace caught in the grip of frightening change. It can help you to better understand the nature of power in hierarchies, to gain insight into methods for fighting credentialism, and to save time and money by utilizing alternate methods of adult continuing education.

My favourite chapters from 'Proving You're Qualified' are:

- Chapter 6: Leverage, Options & Choices;
- Chapter 7: Learning to Live with Change;
- Chapter 8: Me, Inc.;

These three chapters alone are worth the price of the entire book!

The above two books are very thought-provoking. Each chapter of the two books are so compelling that you may feel forced to write comments in the margins of the pages as you go along.

To sum up my review, these two wonderful books offer an excellent approach to ensuring your career security in the 21st century.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Provocative Analysis from a Unique Perspective, August 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Proving You're Qualified: Strategies for Competent People Without College Degrees (Paperback)

In this work, Hayes examines the world of academia and the credentials it confers through the eyes of the working person. Hayes references personal experience, philosophical wisdom, and pure common sense to form a work that, if nothing else, will challenge the reader's view of the credentialing process and stimulate one's thoughts. A valuable read for anyone, credentialed or not.

5.0 out of 5 stars A world rich with promise for the degree-less!, April 30, 2011

By 

Harry Desi "Writer, Proofreader & Tutor for H... (SYDNEY, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Proving You're Qualified: Strategies for Competent People Without College Degrees (Paperback)

For practically minded workers---those with an eye on production and delivering sterling value---the situation today is rich with promise. Employers are waking up to the truth that University degrees---even those from prestigious universities---are as good as counterfeit. Just one reason is that, today, anyone can go to university. And many graduates don't even have a firm grasp of the language in which their years of coursework was conducted. Here in Australia that language is English, of course, and the number of "English-impaired" students graduating from prestigious Australian Universities has been a big question mark. And it doesn't stop there; I've found university coursework that was outdated, riddled with errors and learning material that I could not map to actual workplace skills.
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I once came across a text book (in use at a prestigious university) which was written in unnecessarily complicated and twisted sentences; so much so that it would make the professors who wrote it laughing stocks in international academic circles.
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The remarks of other reviewers so far---"Lee Say Keng", "'A Customer' [on August 26, 1999]" and "Gian Fiero"---are well-worth reading, and I shall not repeat those same praises here.
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To summarize, I should say simply that this book is a good starting point. Internet based facilities (not available in 1995 when this book was published) can now be leveraged in adapting the strategies covered in this book.
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Good luck! But better still, "good strategy"!