David Meads, CEO of Cisco UK and Ireland, did not set out to become a teenage scholar. In fact, he was intent on furthering his education.
As it happened, on his way back from enrolling in college, he had a motorcycle accident that left him bedridden in the hospital for two months.
Sixteen-year-old Miz felt uncomfortable with being at a disadvantage, so he “went out” and started making money, much to the anxiety of his parents.
“I never did anything academic beyond GCSE (the British equivalent of a high school diploma) and never went to university,” Miz recalls. wealth. “But you can fast forward 40 years and here I am.”
By that, he’s referring to being at the top of the Cisco career ladder, having spent much of his career competing against 70,000 other colleagues to work his way up.
“To me, attitude and talent are more important than any letters after your name, or any qualifications you have on a form — and I’m an example of that, right?” Mize said.
Meades found his way into the software and cloud company’s corner office in an unconventional way. Starting out as a small tech company, Meades would use his lunch breaks to focus on the sales team.
“I learned a little bit about what they were doing and I thought, ‘This sounds a lot more interesting than what I’m doing, and it’s not that difficult,'” he said. “I started consciously taking control of my career when I was 17.”
Since then, Miz has found his footing. He joined German tech giant Siemens as a senior sales representative, where he found himself competing with his future employer for customers.
“Long story short, I lost the deal,” he said, recalling the 1996 interaction. “But as God provided, the Cisco manager I saw in the hallway hired me four months later.”
“Emotional intelligence is at least as important as IQ”
Although Mize was a business ambitious man without any formal qualifications, he still encouraged his children to go to college – partly because he feared his success would be a one-off.
“Some of it is my belief that just because I’ve been successful in my career, it doesn’t mean it’s the right path,” he admits. “That’s it for me.”
But now, with a range of apprenticeship schemes giving formerly exclusive businesses a foothold, Mizzi’s advice is to skip further education and start forging your own career.
“In college, no matter what degree you get, you’re almost certainly going to be in debt,” he said. “Is this better than rotating through different parts of our organization and getting real-life work experience instead of just theory?”
To the dismay of recent graduates, Mize isn’t the only one who thinks the once-hot qualification is less important than it once was.
Companies like Google, Microsoft, IBM and Apple are eliminating longstanding degree requirements for jobs in an effort to remove barriers to entry and recruit a more diverse pool of talent.
Global recruiters are now five times more likely to find new employees through skills than through higher education.
This year alone, the number of UK job ads on LinkedIn that do not list degree requirements has surged 90% compared to 12 months ago.
“I don’t think the capabilities and talent in our apprenticeship programs are any different than the graduates that go into our graduate programs,” Mize said, adding that he believes apprenticeships will surpass college degrees in the next decade.
“Emotional intelligence is at least as important as IQ, especially in a sales position or where you deal with customers on a regular basis,” Mize adds. “You need emotional intelligence to read the room and understand what is being said and what is not being said.”
Your peers are your competitors
Mize offers some advice on how to stand out from the crowd — a tall order for a company worth nearly $210 billion.
“I always make sure that no matter what job I’m doing, I do my best and try to be the best among my peers,” he said. “Once you do that, you can start lifting your head above the railing.”
Meades means networking, discussing development opportunities in other areas of the business with your managers, and taking on stretch assignments.
Opportunities will come your way once senior staff start praising you in your absence, he adds: “You can’t buy sponsorship, you can only really earn it by being very good at what you do.”
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