What do you do when you dream of coding video games but school is not for you? How do you become an electrical engineer without ever setting foot in a university? Self-teaching seems to be one solution… or nearly. Can everyone really be self-taught? How will employers see it?
Genesis of a self-taught learner
In the beginning, a young person abandons his studies and joins the 8.5% of young Canadians aged 20 to 24 years who have dropped out of high school. This can be because of financial problems, family tensions or maladjustment to classroom learning. What luck if this school dropout decides to take himself in hand to explore a discipline by himself, specifically using the many and varied resources such as books, the internet, radio, television, podcasts… not to mention youtubers and bloggers. And this self-taught learner is certainly not isolated from the world but on the contrary multiplies his discussions and communications. He also develops his knowledge base by empirical enrichment related to experiences, observations, trial and error…
Unprecedented qualities to be a good engineer
The self-taught learner has many benefits in the eyes of engineering firms. He has an eternal desire to learn, to deepen, to understand, allowing him to work for hours on a project or file without noticing the time passing. In other words, he is not counting his hours. In addition, he reacts well to the difficulties and obstacles that he encounters along the way. For him, this will be the opportunity, not to give up or get discouraged, but on the contrary to rise to a new challenge and overcome it. With the self-taught learner, time is not a problem. Passionate about his subject, he is involved and immediately invests himself to meet the deadlines imposed. Then, the self-taught learner is often full of new ideas, given the depth of his knowledge on a specific subject, and his imagination can be prolific, because he rarely lets himself be trapped in principles, theories and models that limit his field of exploration. Finally, the self-taught engineer, accustomed to autonomy and accountability, will not need as much supervision as some of his colleagues with university degrees.
Some caveats to consider
While some self-taught learners take responsibility for their career, others may express regret for not having persevered at school which, after all, gives an opportunity to access subjects that cannot be explored alone. This lack of education can lead to a problem of confidence that can be felt during interviews. How do I explain that I abandoned my studies? How to I raise the value of my application, with large companies giving more credence to a degree from 20 years ago. How will I be perceived by my colleagues? These questions are all the more legitimate given that Canada is seeing an increase in the number of adults with a university degree: 25.9% in 2011 compared to 22.9% in the previous census in 2006 according to the National Household Survey. However, let us remember that recruitment of self-taught learners is facilitated in SMEs – partly created by self-taught learners – and that it is more feasible in certain areas of activity (computers or electronics). In other cases, the self-taught learner can always offer his engineering services under the supervision of an engineer or pass the required exams at the order of engineers in his province to obtain an engineer’s license.
Often considered to be passionate, tenacious or even audacious, the self-taught learner is not short of assets to excel in the expertise he has developed. Trust him as well to know how to be appreciated by his employers and colleagues. It would be a pity to have to set quotas for hiring this type of profile…