Jeff Bagosy
Ms. Wilde
10/25/02
Dear, Jim Miller:
My name is Jeff Bagosy, I came in
for a job interview last week, and I do not feel that I was given a fair
chance. I was turned down for the job,
because I did not have the proper education that was necessary. What you did not
take into account was my experience in the field. It seems as if it did not matter how much
experience I had, because I never went to college. I think that it is wrong to
turn someone down for a job if you have not really seen what they are capable
of doing. In my opinion, formal
education is regarded too highly in most companies. I know what you are probably thinking, “This
guy is just mad that he did not get the job so he is lashing out at us through
this letter.”
That is not the reason I
am writing to you today. The reason I am
writing is not to make you reverse your decision but just to show you that the
word education can mean much more than the definition you hold now. I hope that
when I am done, you will regard other types of education in a higher
manner.
If you think about it, what is education really? “The knowledge or skill obtained or developed
by a learning process 1 (American Heritage Dictionary, p.784).” Nowhere in the definition does it say that it must be gained in
college. What the definition is saying
in simpler terms is that education is basically just acquired knowledge. Do not get me wrong, I am not trashing the
education that can be gained by going to college, but I do think that grade point
average or scores on tests can not accurately judge how well you will do in
that field later in life. Deborah Meier, a former educator, bemoans the current thinking that the definition
of being well-educated is your test score. “The skills and qualities most
resistant to being measured by tests, she says - initiative, for instance, or
responsibility, or critical thinking are the very skills schools should be
emphasizing.” (Paulson, p.14)2. I agree with the statement
made by Deborah Meier, the world has started to measure a person’s education by
the results of test scores, and I feel that is wrong. I think that many big businesses have
stereotypical views towards people like me.
Just because I haven’t been educated in a college does not mean I am not
educated in other things for example, the computer. I have been working in front of a computer
from the time I left high school. I know
my way around computers and the many systems frequently used in the payroll
department.
I have had extensive experience with working in the payroll department
throughout my life. I started to work at Rohm and Haas in the summer of 1996. At
the time I started, I did not really know much about the payroll department,
but I was good with computers, which helped me tremendously. The way Rohm and Haas went about hiring for
the job was not by only looking at their education but also looking at their
experiences as well as their knowledge of the computer and its various
systems. Maybe your company should think
of incorporating a system like that into your hiring process. I worked at Rohm
and Haas for over 4 years until I was let go in the fall of 2000. The reason I
was let go was because they were trying to eliminate costs in the company so
the had to let some employees go. During
those four years, I became very familiar with systems such as Microsoft excel,
Microsoft office, and with SAP. These systems
are the same systems used by your company. I know that your company likes to
hire young students’ fresh out of college because you feel they are better fit
for the job because of what they learned in school. That is fine but, there is no guarantee that
what they learned will help them in this particular field. Someone can read all the books you want and
take all the tests they want, but when it comes down to it, true education can
only be gained through practice or experience.
There are many forms of education besides just going to college. Who is
to say that education can only be gained in school? Other forms of education are completely
overlooked when it comes to trying to get a good job. It seems as if you want to survive in life,
you must conform to society’s bias view of education. To look at education in this way is like
having tunnel vision, focusing in on only one thing and totally disregarding
everything around it. There are many
different types of education, you can be educated in anything from the guitar
to knowledge you have about a certain band.
These are all forms of education, granted they are not taught in school
but they both fulfill the definition of education. When you put a tag on education as your
company does, you are only looking at one aspect of education, rather then the
definition as a whole. Even if you are
hiring based on education, should not you be hiring the most educated person in
that field and not just the most educated in general?
Jim, I am not contesting that you
were wrong in your decision. I just
wanted you to realize that there are many different types of education, not
just schooling. Looking at education
this way will make you more open minded when comes down to hiring someone
else. This experience has also opened my
eyes to other people’s ways of thinking.
It has helped me to consider other things that I had not considered
before this experience. I have learned
that people in this world have different views of different definitions and
their meanings. We can’t change this but
we can open their eyes to new ways of thinking about that particular
definition. I hope through this letter I
have opened your eyes to the many meanings of education. Thank you for taking the time out of your day
to read my letter I am sorry we won’t get to be colleagues, but maybe it’s for
the best.
Thank
you,
Jeff
Bagosy
Works Cited
- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000; pg.784
- Amanda Paulson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor; Christian Science Monitor, Boston, Mass.; Sep 17, 2002; pg. 14
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