IELTS Writing Task 2 - Academic qualifications vs Life experience

Prompt: Nowadays, some people think that formal academic qualifications are more important than life experience or personal qualities when they look for new employees. Why is it the case? Is it a positive or negative development?

These days, when looking for potential employees, many companies claim that academic credentials outweigh personal qualities and experience in life. This might result from subjective perspectives of employers and can do more harm than good to their own enterprises.

To begin with, this situation might stem from the appreciation of the employers towards intelligent candidates since a clever mind is usually associated with excellent working aptitude. Therefore, most employers choose to look into the candidates’ degree as there is virtually nothing else that can assess one’s intellectual ability more accurately than a degree. Furthermore, academic results can also help the employers to define whether a candidate is hard-working. This is because a student does not only need a brilliant mind but also has to go through a laborious process of studying to achieve high scores in college. For instance, for optimal study results, that one has to listen to every lecture in class, read additional materials and keep practicing over and over again before examinations. Because of such qualities of a degree, it is deemed plausible why many employers prioritize qualifications over other criteria.

However, despite the mentioned merits of academic qualifications, the employers can incur dire consequences if they do not take other elements into consideration during the recruiting process. Firstly, the companies may lose their opportunity to hire competent workers if they underrate the importance of personal qualities and experience. To be specific, one might not have a good record of academic results because they invest their time to perfect their communication skill, which can help them to build sustainable rapport with customers, thus increase revenues for the company they are working for. On the other hand, the employers can also run the risk of hiring inept employees as high performance in academic context does not always promise high performance in work environment. Every year, there are an excessive number of employees who could not fulfill the company requirements because of lack of practical knowledge even though they have an excellent degree. Therefore, it is detrimental to assess one’s working ability based merely on their academic performance.

In conclusion, although academic qualifications can have certain values, it should not be regarded as the only and the most important factor to select the best workers.