Is it really important to have qualifications? Or can you succeed in life without them? Is experience better than exam results or can you get by on plain old-fashioned street-cred and gift-of-the-gab?

When I was 16 and had the choice of whether or not to stay on at school to take A-Levels or go to college to study or even leave education completely and get a job, my first reaction was that I wanted to leave school and start earning some money.

My best friend, who left school at 15 without any qualifications, was working and always seemed to be able to afford the latest trend in clothes and go out to bars and clubs. These were very important factors for me to consider as an emerging fashionista if I wanted to be a cool, stylish teenager and have some of what my friend had – designer clothes, nights out and a queue of boys waiting to take me out.

My mother had other ideas though. And remember – this was all before the days of the school Career Adviser or Google where you could job-hunt online and get career inspiration.

My mother wanted me to go to college and get more qualifications to add to the three O-Levels (or GCSCs as they are now known) that I already had. She explained that, if I went to college and got more qualifications, I would then be able to walk into a top job and earn much more money than my best friend was currently earning.

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out that way and I am sure that it’s still not that simple or cut and dried. At the end of my two year OND in Business Studies college course, I came away with my Ordinary National Diploma, an A-Level in Economics, a certificate for typing 40wpm and a Pitman’s shorthand certificate. These qualifications enabled me to get a job as a shorthand typist in the upstairs office of a travel agency. My friend, working just up the road in an estate agency office, was already earning much more than me, as she already had two years of experience behind her! She had also been earning for two years and had managed to save some money for an enviable holiday abroad!

So, when I did start my first job after college, not only was my pay-packet far less than my friend’s wad of earnings, but I also felt I had wasted two years of affluence having had to scrimp along on pocket money handed out by my mother to fund my daily bus fares and sandwich lunches. At that time, it seemed to me that getting those qualifications was certainly not nearly as important as the work experience my friend had gained and the cash she had earned during the two years I had been studying at college.

I have often wished that I had spent those two college years of my life earning around £50,000 (calculated on the average annual earnings for the years 2020/2021) and gaining job experience rather than having undertaken further education with no practical experience and incurring large student debts.

Over the years, I have found that employers nearly always valued experience above qualifications. If you compare my best friend with two years experience behind her with my qualified, but rather naïve self and assume each of us are of equal intelligence and we both apply for the same job as clerical workers/shorthand typists in another office, I am pretty sure my best friend would win hands down!

Very often, when trying to fill a job vacancy, employers are more likely to overlook the lack of qualifications when candidates have sufficient experience of a similar type of job and can – more often than not – confidently talk their way into the role that they want.

Recruiters do often write job advertisements that specify qualifications are needed for the job and appear to value candidates with qualifications. But, although having specified that qualifications are needed, potential employers are generally not very impressed in the grade of the qualification. As long as you have English, Maths and Science GCSEs, employers don’t really care whether you’ve got a grade of A* or a C. The level of pass is not too important – just the subject.

Experience means you can hit the ground running. Qualifications were once a major deciding factor in who got the job but, as more and more people have gained qualifications, they become less valuable and employers have become less impressed with their worth and tend to favour experience over education. In many cases, employers won’t even check to see if your qualifications are legitimate! I don’t recall a single occasion that I have had to prove that I really did have the qualifications I said I had by presenting my certificates to an employer.

Sometimes, qualifications can be a distinct disadvantage.

After having my children, I decided to get myself a ‘little part-time job’ whilst the children were at school. I didn’t want a ‘top job’ with responsibilities – all I wanted was an easy, stress-free clerical job that I could leave behind when I clocked off at the end of my day. I was totally amazed when I was turned down after being interviewed for an undemanding, effortless office job. Wanting to find out why I had not been successful, I phoned up to get some feedback. Imagine my shock when I was told that I was ‘over qualified’ for the job and the employer thought that I would soon become bored!

I explained that if he thought I was clever enough to gain qualifications, then he should realise that I was clever enough to know whether or not I might become bored with the job.

During this time with my children growing up and me being in part-time work and not in a high-achieving career, I decided to get qualifications for pleasure and not for ambition. I had always enjoyed English Literature and History and decided to start studying for a BA in those subjects as well as studying for an A-Level in English Literature. However, since embarking on these studies, I have never ever had to use these qualifications in pursuit of a job. I continued to do unchallenging office jobs that got me out of the house and paid me some pocket money until I decided to follow my long-time goal of being a journalist.

I have no qualifications for being a journalist – just a burning desire to write. Luckily, I was accepted to write for a local weekly paper after seeing an advert in the paper for someone to write the weekly community news. No one else applied for the job, so they took me on. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time! There is no technique or skill in doing this type of writing but, over the years, I have expanded the remit and now write a whole page weekly about what is going on in my local area and elaborate the articles to be more interesting and less like a collection of where, what and when. I also write for other newspapers and magazines and support a PR guru with her press releases. No qualifications were necessary – just a lot of enthusiasm and perseverance to keep plugging away at something I wanted until I got it!

My husband is a good example of how little relevance is placed on qualifications. When he was in his early teenage years and living in Bahrain, he used to skip school and spend the day on the beach with his friends. His parents had no idea that he would jump off the school bus when it turned the corner and was out of sight to go joy-riding in posh cars with his Arab Sheik friends.

Returning back to the UK, at the age of 16 with no qualifications and also having difficulty with reading and writing, my husband joined the MOD Fire Service and worked there for over 40 years, gaining Officer status; working with the Red Arrows acrobatic team; going on detachment to Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and travelling to Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. Earning sufficient salary to provide a comfortable standard of living for himself and his family – all with not a single qualification in sight!

Between us, over the years, we have managed to acquire a secure and stable home-life, nice house, fancy cars and a couple of holidays each year.  Compared to some of our friends, we are relatively well off, but this is not as a result of being qualified.

So, the winner of this debate about qualifications versus experience is, I think, experience! It is by far the most valuable attribute you can have when applying for a job, but with a splash of blarney, a soupcon of ambition, a huge dollop of luck and a fair smidgen of enthusiasm to push you to strive for what you want until you get it.