Bachelor's Degree Required: My Story, From GED to Microsoft and Google
Podcast Services & Where to Listen
Spotify - Apple - Google - iHeart Radio - Stitcher - Podbean - iTunes
I’m Kristen. I’m a Woman in my 30’s. I’ve traveled to over 50 countries, I’ve led recruitment and human resources for San Francisco Bay Area companies/locations, and I’ve contracted and consulted on-site for Google, Microsoft, Activision, and Rakuten. I’ve lived and worked in both the US and Canada, where I’ve also run successful independent consultancies. I’ve accomplished all of this with a GED, and an Associate’s Degree from a community college.
I don’t think I’m unique in comparison to anyone else. We all have different stories that make us who we are, and although the totality of events that accumulates to my life may be unique, each event that crafted who I am from my childhood or young-adulthood is a common one. I promise not to go over my whole life, but there are some significant landmarks in my story that outline why and how I got to where I am.
I’m the product of a high-school pregnancy, and from a small-town in Oregon. My brother, who is seven years younger than me, was the first in my extended family to get a four-year college degree. Only he and one cousin of ours has a bachelor's degree today. This includes my Mom’s and Dad’s side and both of them have multiple siblings, some have children of their own. The family branches are extended and full, and there’s some success for sure, but a limited number have left home for college and a career.
My parents are divorced (like a lot from my generation) and they’ve lived on opposite coasts since I was eight years old. Going back and forth and having so many changing dynamics really came to a head when I was a teen, and with a three-point-something GPA, I moved out on my own at the beginning of my senior year a few weeks before I turned eighteen. Partly rebellion, and partly a difficult home-life from having young parents, the combo felt catastrophic at the time. Because I had bills to pay, I eventually stopped going to school. I obtained my GED the same month I would’ve graduated High School and I scored between the 90th to 99th percentile in every test category without studying.
My story is one that my family of course knows, but it’s not one that I advertise or even tell colleagues for fear that they will see my autodidact education as less than their formal ivy league Master’s Degrees… In a lot of ways it is less, and I don’t want to take anything away from their accomplishments because those landmarks are huge. I would rather they continue to view me as an equal contributor to whatever we’ve done or will do together. That’s my biggest concern. This is a big leap of faith for me to put this out there, but I’m willing to take the risk that telling my story can inspire others more than drag down my career.
I didn’t always think or feel like I was going to be successful. I especially didn’t feel this way through my early 20’s. Even admitting now that I’m successful feels unsettling, because I expect some people from my network to read this, and in the Bay Area and my network, everyone is highly intelligent and well-educated with brilliant resumes. I’ve finally pulled myself back to the perspective that I didn’t have the jump-start and foundation to be set-up for success, so yeah, it took a lot to get to this place, both professionally and emotionally.
After earning my GED, I didn’t go to college right away. I lived in Florida at the time and I was the front-woman, vocalist, and lyricist of a mildly successful local band. I waited tables, bartended, was a banquet server at nice hotels and worked in the VIP club and sky-box suites at the Tampa Bay Times Forum / Amalie Arena, the home of the NHL team the Tampa Bay Lightning. Because Hockey is seasonal, my Summers were free, and I used that time to travel and backpack Europe on my own.
When it comes to my education, it wouldn’t be fair to advertise myself as a person with only a GED. I have an Associate’s Degree from Saint Petersburg College (SPC), which is a great Community College that offers a handful of four year degrees as well as the standard two-year degrees city colleges typically offer. After graduating from SPC, I transferred to The University of South Florida and majored in Psychology. My accumulative education totals around three years of a four year degree.
I was one of those people that started college a couple years late. I gained education in other ways. Instead of reading about the Sistine Chapel or the Louvre, I went and saw them. I also learned from my travels that this was a very normal experience for young-adults in Europe, Australia, Canada, Asia… well, a lot of the world. It’s even relatively normal for the small portion of upper-class America. This was not a normal experience for many Americans in their youth around 2005-2008. I asked all of my friends, and no one found the value I did in these experiences.
Because my education was more tactile, I’ve become an advocate for non-traditional learning. For a lot, the best avenue is to go right from high school to college, but we have a school-debt problem, and oftentimes youth are going through the motions because they feel they’re supposed to instead of doing things because there’s a passion or drive for their experiences. So many people end up with careers that are different than they went to school for. By the time I went to college, I was ready and I enjoyed every bit of it. I paid for city college with my own money or loans (with the exception of a few books my family bought). I was immersed in every experience… Traveling, singing in a band and writing music.... then later, going to college.
So, why don’t I have a Bachelor’s degree by now? I’ve had the time and means by now, right? Well, it’s not that simple. After the last major recession in 2008, I transitioned away from the hospitality positions and into an HR and Program Manager role at the Tampa Bay Times Forum. The arena housed hockey games, concerts, and held things like Disney on Ice, the Circus, and family events during the day. This made my schedule non-constant and inclusive of days, evenings, weekdays, and weekends. I completed all the online courses my degree offered, and I had to make a choice between my job and my education. At the time, I thought of formal education as a means to a job, and since Florida was hit particularly hard during the Great Recession, I felt lucky to have any job at all. The erratic schedule of my job didn’t allow for me to continue both, so I chose the job over my degree.
I knew I wanted more though, and I was capable of more. I also really missed the Pacific Northwest, so I started to look for jobs in Seattle. I applied online for a bunch of jobs, and when I realized that I was getting phone interviews, I took one of the biggest risks of my life. I sold everything I had in my two bedroom home in a yard-sale, rented out the home I recently purchased, packed my Kia Rio to the brim with the essentials, and drove across the country to move to Seattle. I didn’t have a home picked out or a job lined up. I only had the knowledge that I was getting more phone interviews from my Seattle applications than my Florida ones. I carried that with me, along with a lot of faith.
Things quickly came together, which was a combination of calculation and luck. When I arrived, I found a position working with Volt, consulting on-site at Microsoft in an Employee Relations role within Human Resources. I also met the love of my life, Matt. We shared the experience of coming from less-than and powering through. I know I wouldn’t be sitting here without my hard work, but he’s been essential in helping me realize that I belong at the table, because I see that he belongs too.
Matt & Me December, 2014
At the Kixeye Kixmas Party
After moving to Seattle, I realized I was well beyond the age that most university attendees had graduated with a bachelor’s. I did look into going to the University of Washington (UW) though. My credits wouldn’t have transferred well, and my three-point-whatever GPA from a Community College while working full-time didn’t seem impressive to the counselor. He was pretty discouraging, and the process was even more-so. The transfer would’ve totaled less than two years in any of their four year programs at UW. In their defense, at the time, I didn’t know then how reputable the University of Washington was and viewed it as any other state school. It’s a difficult college to get into. I decided having a good job was a great accomplishment and I could focus on school later. We were still in the heart of the recession, and I was yet again grateful for the job.
After Matt and I joined forces and were together for a little over a year, he was offered a job in Toronto, and we moved to Canada together. I was lucky enough to get a work-visa attached to his, because a bachelor’s degree was required to get my own. I used this to start an HR and recruitment consultancy way too early in my career. I was freshly 27, and I started a corporation in Canada. I may’ve only made enough to equate to a moderately successful salary on-my own, but I learned a lot very early in my career through some skillful faking it until I made it. My Associate’s Degree wasn’t recognized in Canada, and it wasn’t realistic for me to continue my education there unless I was going to start completely over, and working for myself was going well.
We only lived in Canada for two years. One year it snowed on June 3rd, and I remember turning to Matt and telling him that we need to “get the hell out of here.” Toronto was an adventure, and such a cool city with so much culture, but Niagara is Canada’s Florida and that was only an hour South… The weather doesn’t get much better than where we were living, and I was a snowflake in much need of some melting.
Luckily, Matt was a snowflake too, and he got a job in the San Francisco Bay Area. We moved and have been here since. At first, my intentions were to start-up the same HR and recruitment consultancy. Fate had other things in store for me. When I arrived, a recruiter at Nielsen Staffing reached out to me for a contract role at Google. I interviewed, and got offered a contract role that I ended up accepting. I was later told by that recruiter that only one in seventeen candidates Google interviewed for that contract role got offered a position.
This may seem wild for most people to hear, but I didn’t love the Google experience, at least as a contract Recruiter around 2013. It was a very structured position with limited room for creativity or independent thought. There was this built in training program that made me question my own worth or abilities all the time, because I never did it the Google way before. Contractors were holding positions that only a few full-time employees held, and all the contractors were vying for permanent jobs. The competitive environment of everyone reaching for the same dangling carrot didn’t make me feel comfortable, and I wasn’t falling for it. I had overcome too much to opt into this. I also questioned that if I had clamored my way to one of the full-time spots, would I have been denied it because of my lack of education? I was able to not openly disclose education beyond my initial (likely forgotten) resume submission because I was technically employed by a recruitment agency, working on-site at Google. Applying for a full-time role would have brought that to the forefront.
I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin at Google, or like I belonged at all. However, I did transition that experience to a full-time role leading recruitment for the San Francisco and Seattle offices at Essence Global - one of Google’s media agency partners. So, the Google experience was a blessing in disguise... Educationally, I needed to wait a long time to gain residency again after living in another country and I was yet again doing well without school.
Eventually, I also did respond to the calling to operate my own recruitment agency and HR consultancy in the San Francisco Bay Area, the mecca of all places tech and recruitment. I also consulted at Activision, from the Sledgehammer Games office in Foster City (a prior Call of Duty studio), and developed clients like WeightWatchers and Supercell (makers of the Clash of Clans video game) along with tons of gaming, media and advertising agencies and start-ups.
At another point in my career, I lead recruitment at frog Design for the San Francisco and Seattle offices (Seattle has since closed). At this job, I worked very closely with people with degrees from places like MIT, Harvard and Stanford and they challenged me, and expected to be challenged in return. The designers were also effectively management consultants, and there was a fantastic team of business strategists. I learned to speak their language to move things forward. I got a glimpse into the world of design thinking, and that has forever changed my perspective on problem solving.
The main reason I left the position at frog was because there were limited (if any) opportunities for growth. After two years, I decided to leave that role and I went to a medical technology start-up where I lead global HR.
For the sake of not telling my whole life story, I left off a couple jobs and details that didn’t feel relevant to telling this story. I’m outlining the major landmarks to paint a picture of how I managed to progress my career one step at a time, until one day, I looked back and realized I had accomplished a lot for someone with far less education than anyone else around me. There really wasn’t a good point that I could feasibly pause my career to go back to school without my career taking a substantially larger blow than what I would have gained from going back.
Every time I looked into it, the credit transfer would take a considerable hit or I needed to gain residency in or after Canada etc, and that one year left of school that I had in Florida was two or three additional years at any West Coast University. My life is here now. I’m not moving back. I’ve crossed a point in my career where I would be taking a major financial risk to halt work for a few years, and anyone that has to pay a Bay Area mortgage knows about the handcuffs of needing income. I’ve looked into getting an MBA without going back for my B.A. too. I think I would get much more out of an MBA. For now, I’ll have to settle for more self-educating. I know skipping steps may seem selfish or unfair to some, but I’m being honest here. The answer is no by the way… It doesn’t look like a viable option.
I’ve spent a good portion of my career hiding the truth. My resume doesn’t lie at all, but I keep my education vague. I’ve obviously never stated that I have a GED on my resume. I’m sure it’s come up in background checks after an offer has been given and accepted by me. I think it’s admirable that employers that have seen this have hired me and nurtured my growth.
When looking back now, I’ve realized that I’ve been quite the risk taker. I traveled Europe by myself at a time when not many young women did that and with limited technological connection to home. I bought a home during the Great Recession on my own at 25, and I rented it out and managed the property as a landlord at that age. I sold everything I accumulated to move across the country with no home or job lined up. I drove that little car across the country on my own to make that move. I started my own company in another country. I had the guts to leave a job at a major tech company that didn’t make me happy, when I knew it would be better for my resume to stay. I didn’t always take the best risks when I was starting adulthood (one included chasing a boy for a while...yikes!) but the big ones were calculated. I scared my family a lot. I take it as a good sign that they don’t get that scared anymore.
Even in my earned path to where I am, I do understand that I had some luck… It’s actually privilege... That’s the right word for it. I took those steps forward, but I had people advocating for me, referring me, accepting me, pushing me, challenging me, and supporting me. That comes from a certain amount of privilege, even if it’s less than others. I try to keep this in mind when I’m recruiting for others that may be less privileged. The ability to showcase great unique resumes and challenge people’s ideas of what they think is best fitting for their department or company… well, it’s one of the things I love most about my job. I know that comes from somewhere personal to me, even if I don’t advertise it to them.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever get my Bachelor’s Degree and I don’t know if the imposter syndrome will ever subside. I do know that (1) I’ve deserve everything I have, (2) I wouldn’t be who I am without my experiences, (3) hardships build useful character, and (4) if I can achieve success, so can others that have obstacles to overcome. Those that feel doubt, insecurity, have less than others, learn in different ways, or that have obstacles in their way… We can all elevate ourselves to more.
If I can get only one thing across in this, it would be this; For those writing job descriptions, rethink your education requirement line. People with a different educational path may just bring a diverse perspective to the table that can add value to your organization. You never know who you’re missing out on because the position lists a “Bachelor’s Degree required.”
