Distance Traveled: A New Way To Identify Exceptional Non-Degree Holders

Conventional wisdom is that you have to have a four year degree to be qualified for most white collar jobs. We’ve seen this play out over the last 30 years as the number of people working in professional or managerial positions has more than doubled, but the share of people who enjoyed that job growth without a college degree is only 13%. This creates a two-fold problem. First, 62% of working age adults who are without a degree are effectively shut out of a large segment of the job market. Second, companies are losing out on an entire group of otherwise well-qualified candidates who could bring a wealth of learned experience and skills.

By defaulting to this way of thinking, hiring managers exclude the largest and most diverse part of the workforce. It’s not hard to understand how something like this happens: degrees and certifications are quantifiable measures that speak to the exposure an applicant has had to particular theories and training. They don’t, however, measure an applicant’s skills or ability to learn new skills. Thankfully, there’s another quantifiable metric that can help hiring managers identify the best and brightest non-degree holding applicants: distance traveled. What is distance traveled? Distance Traveled reflects the skills, attitudes, and abilities someone has learned as a result of their lived experiences. It focuses on qualities like grit, resilience, and resourcefulness, traits that often don’t appear on a resume but are critical in today’s workplace. Employees with higher distance traveled are better able to adapt to changing circumstances and new challenges.

Non-degree holders: untapped potential

In the grand scheme of history, limiting professional and managerial opportunities to degree holders is a pretty new phenomenon. Before the mid-twentieth century, it simply wasn’t feasible: in 1960 only 7.7% of American adults had a bachelor's degree or higher. In fact only 41.1% of Americans had a high school diploma. And it wasn’t an issue; in the 1960s the United States GDP grew annually by 5% on average, and average wages grew by 32%. In the intervening six decades the percentage of adults with a college degree has risen to a staggering 37.5%. There’s a lot of debate about how this happened, but the most common factors cited are the creation of government backed student loans and a bipartisan progressive movement that prioritized access to education.But in the last two decades, another factor emerged that created immense pressure to get a degree: degree-inflation. To quote the Harvard Business Review:"Early in the 2000s, a significant number of employers began adding degree requirements to the descriptions of jobs that hadn’t previously required degrees, even though the jobs themselves hadn’t changed. The trend — sometimes known as “degree inflation” — became particularly pronounced after the Great Recession of 2008-2009[.]"This has created a so-called “paper ceiling” that has only gotten worse. Today an astounding 44% of new jobs in the US require a bachelor's degree or higher. But underneath this paper ceiling is a massive well of great job candidates.We shared earlier that 62% of working age Americans are non-degree holders. To put that number in perspective, that’s over 109 million people between the ages of 25 and 64. If we factor out retirement age, which is an increasingly arbitrary and irrelevant number, that number balloons to 168 million people, the vast majority of which top out at high school diploma. This is the largest and most diverse cohort of Americans in the workforce.Though they may not have a degree, or indeed because of it, many of these individuals bring something just as valuable to the workplace: grit, resourcefulness, and resilience. These qualities are not typically taught in a classroom but are developed through life experience, adversity, and a relentless drive to succeed despite obstacles. Candidates who have navigated nontraditional career paths often possess a unique ability to adapt, problem-solve, and persevere in the face of uncertainty.These skills are essential in today’s rapidly changing work environment. They are self-starters who have learned to thrive without the structure of an academic pathway, demonstrating a level of determination and creativity that a degree cannot always capture. Businesses that recognize and harness these qualities can benefit from employees who bring fresh perspectives, innovative problem-solving approaches, and a deep sense of ownership to their roles.

New tools to measure distance traveled

Identifying non-degree holders who may be a great fit for your company could feel like a daunting prospect, but considering traits like resourcefulness and self-efficacy offers a solution. Distance Traveled has always been a meaningful factor in hiring, but the ability to quantify it at scale is a new development. Thanks to ethical assessment tools like CLARA’s, hiring managers now have the ability to use distance traveled as a meaningful metric for degree holders and non-degree holders alike. With a wealth of experience that can’t be taught in a classroom, non-degree holders shouldn’t be held back simply because they took nontraditional routes. By prioritizing distance traveled, hiring managers can shift the focus away from a candidate’s formal credentials and towards the effort, ingenuity, and perseverance they used to get where they are today.

Want to measure your distance traveled?

Take the quiz here: https://getclara.io/distance-traveled-quiz