How College Fails to Provide Real-World Knowledge

Where College Fails Students

Many graduates might find that they are having a hard time landing their first job. You might be answering the coding questions with the correct answer and you have the right attitude. So how come you are still not hearing back? If this sounds like you, the issue may be your knowledge of popular, real-world technology. While college gives students a base layer of knowledge, their curriculums are often outdated and do not teach real-world technology.

As those who have spent several years in the industry know, technology constantly changes and improves. To follow best practices and be as efficient as possible, it is crucial that you learn and integrate new technology. Unfortunately, new technology develops too fast for college curriculums to keep up with. Therefore, many college grads do not have a deep understanding of these core technologies, fundamentals concepts, and best practices that industries are moving towards. For this reason, candidates are being passed in favor of candidates who do possess this knowledge.

Standing Out Amongst Your Former Classmates

Many college students are under the impression that answering the coding interview question correctly puts them at the top of the candidate list. In reality, answering the coding question will only get you on the list. It is how you answer the interview question that will determine whether you are at the top or at the bottom and unlikely to get a callback.

Another crucial aspect of standing out among other college graduates is being experienced in real-world technology. You can have a lower GPA than your competitors, lower quality of code, and still end up receiving the offer over them. How? By having experience with tools like Docker, building your own CI/CD pipelines, working with popular clouds, and overall, being experienced with the tools that your potential team is using, you can stand out amongst your peers.

Learn more about how you can figure out what these tools are, and how you can become proficient in them.

How I Learned

I didn’t learn technology in school. I learned on my own, which gives me a unique perspective in this industry. I have learned that college graduates tend to all know similar things and lack knowledge in related core technologies. By learning on my own, I was able to learn these core technologies that my peers were missing, and, thus, propel my own career. On the job, I worked with other engineers who provided me with further guidance on how to improve and accelerate my growth as an engineer.

I have documented some of the DevOps-related tools that you can learn to better help you stand out from your peers.