I worked in a hardware store around 8 years ago. I worked in the electrical department. One of the products we sold was ceiling fans. We also sold different lengths of rod for attaching them to the ceiling, since they generally came with something around a foot long. There was one brand with a few fans that did not fit the rods that we stocked. The head of the department recommended that we open the box and make sure the rod would fit right when we helped customers with this particular brand of fan. One day, another employee was helping a customer with a fan, and I overheard the customer ask if the rod would fit the fan. The employee said yes, without even checking. I noticed that the brand of fan was the one we had been warned about, so I interrupted and explained what I had been told. I then went off to do some other task. A bit later, during my break, the employee involved decided to tell me off. He opened with "I am a certified electrician," and he explained to me that he knew exactly what he was doing. He complained that my comment had caused the customers to doubt his word, and he had been required to show them that the parts would fit.
Now, let me explain my thought processes. First, his antagonistic attitude did not help the situation. Second, when he stated his credentials, it made it worse. Certified electricians can make much more money doing electrical work than they can working at a chain hardware store. I have a hard time believing that a certified electrician who is worth his salt would stoop to what amounts to a retail job. Even if he did do it entirely voluntarily though, he had not been doing electrical work for many years, so it is again hard to believe that he had any personal experience with the products he was selling. Lastly, he did not start by stating his experience. He only stated his credentials. Credentials without experience is worthless, and if he did not have sufficient experience to state them, then the credentials are meaningless to me.
My second experience was on an internet forum. These are rife with people who claim credentials they don't have. Many people will try to settle an argument by explaining why they must be right, instead of proving it or explaining why they are right. I had been doing a chemistry experiment. If you put an electric current through water, you can break the molecules into oxygen and hydrogen gasses. Water is not naturally very conductive though, so this process is very slow. To improve the situation, an electrolyte can be added to the water, and a readily available one is table salt. So, I had a device with a pair of electrodes, some tubes for capturing the gasses, and a 12 volt battery, and I had filled it with salt water. It worked quite well, but I noticed something unexpected: I could smell chlorine coming off of the experiment. The water was well water, so it was not chlorinated. There was only one possible source for the gas, and that was the salt (which is made of sodium and chlorine). I decided to do some research on this. It turns out that this is not well documented, so I ended up looking through forums where people related their personal experiences. Indeed, some others had experienced the same thing, however not everyone had. An argument was ensuing about whether or not it was even possible. One group claimed that they clearly smelled chlorine coming off of their experiments. Another claimed that they did not. A third group was trying to convince everyone else that the voltages involved were way too low to break up the salt molecules, and thus it was completely impossible that the chlorine was coming from the salt (despite the fact that no other source existed). Many in the third group claimed to be chemists, and some of the rest claimed to have asked chemist friends. The fact is, however, that every single person in the third group was wrong. I could smell chlorine coming from my experiment, and the salt was the only source. The credentials were meaningless, because the people that had them (or claimed to...) were still wrong.
The internet is full of people who lie about their credentials to convince people that they are right. I sincerely believe, however, that at least some of those claiming to have various degrees in chemistry actually did. The fact is, all a degree proves is that you managed, one way or another, to get grades high enough to pass your required classes. Most modern colleges will graduate students with all Cs and Ds. In other words, you have to know between 60% and 70% of the material for a fairly brief period of time (4 years is the typical maximum for a Bachelors degree, but often you can forget material as soon as you complete the course without too much harm). Stated more plainly, a degree is evidence that you have been exposed somewhat to the subject. It does not imply either a working or a complete knowledge of the subject. Real world experience in a specific domain of your degree that applies to the discussion is what really matters. When someone says, "I have a degree in chemistry," what it tells me is that they are not confident enough in their knowledge or experience to cite anything meaningful, so they fall back on something that they perceive to have more value than it really does.
My last experience took place in a hardware store, but not the one I worked at. I was shopping for a shovel, so I could turn up the soil in our garden (essentially I was going to hand till using a shovel). I told the employee that I needed something suitable for digging about 2 feet deep. I had taken (and passed with a high grade) a college class on organic gardening, and we had learned about some research showing that digging that deep had proved, in experiments, to have a significant beneficial effect on crops. Some other guy shopping there overheard the conversation, and he interrupted to tell me that digging deeper than 1 foot was a waste of time. Then, he stated his credentials: He was an agriculture major at the local college.
This situation is absurd. The guy did not even have a degree. The only credential he stated was the fact that he had told the college the he intended to get a degree in agriculture. He was using a future degree as his credentials. For all I know, he could have been a freshman taking only generals his first semester. Even if he had been a senior though, the agricultural knowledge taught in most of academia applies very specifically to industrial farming, not to organic gardening or even run-of-the-mill home gardening (I was applying some organic gardening techniques to home gardening). Things like the depth you dig the dirt depend on a lot of factors, including things like what crops you are growing, the climate you are in, how frequently you water, and what you use to fertilize. Even a degree in agriculture would not have qualified this guy to tell me how I should garden. The fact is, I had one class, many hours of research, and some real life experience on the subject as my credentials. This guy had made a tentative commitment to learn about the subject.
Americans seem to place far too much value on credentials and not enough on experience. This is not just a pet peeve. It is a real problem with serious economic implications. I know people with tons of experience in a field who were laid off merely because they did not have a degree. In fact, in some fields it is becoming common practice to require older workers to go back to school for a degree that did not exist when they started working. The employers generally pay for this, but often the employees have far more experience and knowledge in the field than the people who are supposed to be teaching them. This is stupid and wasteful. A degree is supposed to be evidence that a person knows a bit about a specific subject. Experience is far better evidence of that. In my field, this is fairly well recognized. I have a BS in Computer Science. Most employers don't even look at a degree if you have significant experience. Many (but not all) will still discard a resume without looking at experience, if there is no degree, but with a few years experience, it hardly matters what the degree is in, so long is it is there. Of course, since the mid 90s, business experts have been recommending that software companies look for employees that are self taught, with or without a degree, because self taught people do far superior work.
Anyhow, next time you are tempted to spout credentials, consider these lists:
It is only appropriate to share credentials if:
- Someone asks. It is almost never inappropriate to share your credentials if someone asks, though you might consider also mentioning experience, if it is relevant.
- You are filling out a job application (or a College application). Even in companies that care more about experience, credentials can make the difference between two candidates with the same work experience.
- You have been asked to share something about yourself and either the credentials are relevant to the situation or you cannot think of anything about yourself that is more interesting. In the second case, please consider rethinking your life. Again, experience is better, if it is relevant.
- You have no other experience in the field and the credentials are relevant and meaningful. For the sake of honesty, you should admit that you have no actual experience in this case.
- You don't actually have them yet. Being a "major" in a subject is not a credential. It is a commitment to obtain credentials. Undergoing current training in a subject (maybe as an apprentice) is also not credentials. If you know about the subject being discussed because you took a class on it, cite the class or the teacher. Likewise, if someone who is training you told you something relevant, cite that person as a source, don't claim that participation in the training itself makes you a qualified source until the training is completed.
- You don't have them at all. If you claim to have credentials that you don't have, you are a liar. Aside from being morally and ethically wrong, you will eventually ruin your reputation. Do this too many times, and people won't believe you even when you do have the credentials you claim to have. It is not worth perjuring yourself to convince people that you are right, whether you are or not. Even if you are right, let them be wrong if they want to.
- You are not absolutely certain your claims are true. If you make an incorrect claim and then use your credentials to back it, not only do you make yourself look stupid, you also make anyone else with similar credentials look stupid. If one chemist makes a false claim, people will start to assume that most or all chemists don't know what they are talking about.
- The credentials don't guarantee the knowledge you are claiming to have. A chemistry degree does not mean that you completely understand how electrolysis works. An electrician certification does not mean you have experience with every fixture and brand of electrical device that exists. Even PhDs don't know everything in their field (I had a professor with a PhD who did not know some of the features in a very common programming language that he was very experienced with). Credentials are evidence of general knowledge. For specific knowledge, you should cite either personal experience or a reliable reference. (PhDs tend to have more focused knowledge, but instead of citing their PhD, it is better for them to cite the research and thesis that earned them the PhD. That is the real experience.)
- You have actual experience. Experience trumps credentials. You might be able to show me math that "proves" my machine cannot produce chlorine, but I have experience proving that chlorine is actually being produced. My experimental evidence proves your math wrong (in fact, this is largely how science advances; someone figures out a theory about something, and someone else proves the theory wrong through experimentation). The only place where experience does not trump credentials is in job applications for companies that are too stupid to realize that experience is more valuable.
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