Exploring Credentials vs. Personal Qualities

I’ve been thinking a lot about my past in what I could have done differently, especially with regards to education (who hasn’t in some way I suppose). In the context of today, sometimes I wonder if formal education could be considered a sales tool for an entrepreneur. I consider myself more of a self-taught skilled person, and in combination with the talents I have been given, can do some pretty great things.

I’ve been frustrated in the past with some people I encountered, with a very high level of education, but in a subtle way, lacked some kind of intangible quality. I suspect that there are many people with the most basic level of education, possessing this intangible quality in a huge way. Do you know what I mean?

During my downtime, sometimes I use StumbleUpon to explore entrepreneurial material. Yesterday I came across very interesting article that is related to this topic:

http://www.paulgraham.com/credentials.html

The article speaks about the historical use of credentials in the workplace, and its relation to academia. Particularly in large companies, the performance an employee is hard to gauge, therefore credentials are used as a yardstick to measure future success of a new employee.

However, in a small company this does not work. If the person does not have that ‘intangible quality’ that I mentioned.

Furthermore, if you are a one person company, a freelancer, or any other situation where your talents (or lack of!) are in the spotlight, this phenomenon is accentuated even further. If you lack that intangible quality, it will become evident very quickly.

The article closes with the suggestion about the emerging type of marketplace, a new era based on measurement. The new model has advanced rapidly because it works so much better, and it shows no sign of slowing.