In typical 37signals fashion, the wisdom in these pages is edgy yet

Years of irrelevance
We've all seen job ads that say, "Five years of experience required." That
may give you a number, but it tells you nothing.
Of course, requiring some baseline level of experience can be a good idea
when hiring. It makes sense to go after candidates with six months to a year
of experience. It takes that long to internalize the idioms, learn how things
work, understand the relevant tools, etc.
But after that, the curve flattens out. There's surprisingly little difference
between a candidate with six months of experience and one with six years.
The real difference comes from the individual's dedication, personality, and
intelligence.
How do you really measure this stuff anyway? What does five years of
experience mean? If you spent a couple of weekends experimenting with
something a few years back, can you count that as a year of experience?
How is a company supposed to verify these claims? These are murky
waters.
How long someone's been doing it is overrated. What matters is how well
they've been doing it.

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Forget about formal education
I have never let my schooling
 
interfere with my education.
--MARK TWAIN
There are plenty of companies out there who have educational
requirements. They'll only hire people with a college degree (sometimes in
a specific field) or an advanced degree or a certain GPA or certification of
some sort or some other requirement.
Come on. There are plenty of intelligent people who don't excel in the
classroom. Don't fall into the trap of thinking you need someone from one
of the "best" schools in order to get results. Ninety percent of CEOs
currently heading the top five hundred American companies did not receive
undergraduate degrees from Ivy League colleges. In fact, more received
their undergraduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin than from
Harvard (the most heavily represented Ivy school, with nine CEOs).
*
Too much time in academia can actually do you harm. Take writing, for
example. When you get out of school, you have to unlearn so much of the
way they teach you to write there. Some of the misguided lessons you learn
in academia:
The longer a document is, the more it matters.
Stiff, formal tone is better than being conversational.
Using big words is impressive.
You need to write a certain number of words or pages to make a point.
The format matters as much (or more) than the content of what you
write.
It's no wonder so much business writing winds up dry, wordy, and
dripping with nonsense. People are just continuing the bad habits they
picked up in school. It's not just academic writing, either. There are a lot of
skills that are useful in academia that aren't worth much outside of it.

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Bottom line: The pool of great candidates is far bigger than just people
who completed college with a stellar GPA. Consider dropouts, people who
had low GPAs, community-college students, and even those who just went
to high school.

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