The question from my hiring team
One day, someone from my hiring team asked me a simple question:
“Does a degree matter when we are hiring someone?”
I paused for a moment before answering.
My answer was: sometimes yes, and sometimes no. It depends on the role.
A degree should not be treated as a universal pass or fail condition. It should be considered together with the work someone needs to do, the risks involved, the skills required and the evidence that the person can perform well.
When a degree matters
Some jobs require formal education because the work depends on technical knowledge, professional standards, safety or a regulated qualification.
For example, medical roles, engineering roles and other specialised fields may require formal study, professional training or licensing. In these cases, a degree is not simply a piece of paper. It can represent years of structured learning and a foundation that the job genuinely needs.
If a person is responsible for a patient's health, the safety of a structure or another serious technical outcome, the hiring process needs to take formal education and professional requirements seriously.
In those roles, the right combination may be:
- Relevant degree or formal qualification
- Technical knowledge
- Practical experience
- Required professional registration or certification
- Good judgment and communication
A degree alone is not enough. But ignoring the need for formal technical preparation can also create serious problems.
When skills can matter more than a degree
There are also many jobs where the strongest evidence of ability is the work someone can actually produce.
Think about graphic design, video editing, photography, website development, copywriting, social media, animation, sales or some forms of marketing.
For these roles, a person may have a degree in a different subject—or no degree directly related to the work—but still be highly capable.
What matters may be:
- The quality of their portfolio
- How they solve a real problem
- Whether they understand the audience
- How quickly they learn new tools
- Whether they can take feedback
- How reliably they complete work
- Whether they can explain the decisions behind their work
A certificate can tell us that someone completed a course. A portfolio can show us how someone thinks and what they can produce.
That does not mean education is useless. It means the hiring decision should measure the thing the role actually needs.
Skills are more than knowing a tool
When people say “skills matter more than degrees,” they sometimes reduce skills to software knowledge.
Knowing Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Figma, WordPress, React or an advertising platform is useful. But tools change quickly.
The deeper skills are often more important:
- Understanding the problem before starting
- Asking useful questions
- Thinking clearly
- Communicating with the team
- Managing time and priorities
- Taking responsibility when something goes wrong
- Improving after feedback
- Learning when the tools change
Someone may know every button in a software program but still struggle to create useful work. Another person may have less formal training but understand the customer, learn quickly and deliver consistently.
That is why a practical task and a thoughtful interview can reveal more than a qualification list alone.
Experience matters, but years are not the whole story
Experience is valuable because it exposes people to real decisions, pressure, mistakes and collaboration.
But experience should not be measured only by the number of years someone has worked. Two people can have five years of experience and have learned very different things during that time.
When assessing experience, I prefer to understand:
- What kind of work did the person actually do?
- What problems did they solve?
- What was their personal contribution?
- What changed because of their work?
- What did they learn from a difficult situation?
- Can they show examples or explain the process clearly?
Real experience is not only time spent in a job. It is the judgment built through doing meaningful work.
The best candidate is not always the one with the strongest certificate
Hiring becomes easier when we stop asking, “Who has the most impressive background?” and start asking, “Who is most capable of doing this role well?”
A candidate with a strong degree may be the right choice. A candidate with a strong portfolio and practical experience may be better for another role. Sometimes the strongest person will have both formal education and proven ability.
The answer depends on the work.
The mistake is using the same filter for every position.
If we demand a degree for a role where a portfolio and practical ability are more important, we may reject talented people unnecessarily. If we ignore formal qualifications for a role that requires technical foundations or professional responsibility, we may create risk for the team and the people we serve.
A simple way to evaluate a role before hiring
Before writing a job description, the hiring team should ask a few questions:
1. Does the role require formal technical preparation?
If the answer is yes, define the relevant degree, certification, training or registration clearly.
2. What outcome must this person create?
Do not only list tasks. Explain what success looks like after the person joins.
3. Can ability be demonstrated through work samples?
For creative, technical and digital roles, a portfolio, test project or practical discussion may reveal more than a degree title.
4. What kind of judgment does the job require?
Some roles need careful technical decisions. Others need customer understanding, creative thinking, speed or problem-solving.
5. How will responsibility be measured?
The candidate should understand what they will own, how the work will be reviewed and how they will work with others.
This is connected to a broader principle I believe in: titles do not build companies—roles, responsibility and accountability do.
A fair hiring process looks at the whole person
Education, skills and experience should not be treated as competing identities. They are different kinds of evidence.
A thoughtful hiring process can consider:
- Formal education where the role genuinely needs it
- Skills demonstrated through practical work
- Experience solving real problems
- Communication and collaboration
- Reliability and ownership
- Curiosity and ability to learn
- Alignment with the responsibilities of the role
The goal is not to lower the standard. The goal is to measure the right standard.
We should not hire someone only because they have a degree. We should also not reject someone only because their education does not look traditional, especially when they can demonstrate strong ability and responsible work.
People can grow when the company gives them responsibility
Hiring is only the beginning. A good company also helps people develop.
People become stronger when they receive clear expectations, useful feedback, room to make decisions and the support needed to improve. A person may join with technical ability but need help with communication. Another may have strong education but need more practical exposure. Someone else may have excellent work samples but need to learn how to work within a team.
The responsibility is shared between the individual and the organisation.
The individual must keep learning and take ownership. The organisation must create an environment where learning, accountability and good work are possible.
That is how a company builds a trusted and expert team—not by collecting titles, but by developing people who can think, decide and deliver.
My short answer
So, does a degree matter while hiring?
Yes, when the role requires formal technical knowledge, professional qualification or regulated responsibility.
But when the role is judged mainly by practical output—such as design, video, websites, marketing or other creative and digital work—skills, portfolio, experience, judgment and learning ability may matter more than the degree itself.
The best approach is not “degree versus skills.” It is the right evidence for the right role.
A degree can open a door. Skills show what someone can do. Experience shows how they behave in real situations. Accountability shows whether people can be trusted with responsibility.
Good hiring looks at all of these together.
You can also read why many Nepal businesses stall at the founder bottleneck and how I think about building companies and systems in Nepal.