Is a degree still worth it? And how to stand out when everyone has one.

There was a time when you could be hired in finance without any formal qualification at all. That time is (mostly) gone. The few colleagues I still have who don't hold a degree are almost all past fifty, several of them on the way to retirement even. I've seen well over 300 CVs over the course of my career. Every one of them carried a degree, most of them from a well-regarded school or university. Not all of those candidates had studied finance or economics, though.

I see a lot of posts on social media arguing that there is no point in paying for a degree given that you can find all the knowledge they will teach you for free online: these posts often refer to Harvard, the MIT, or Stanford, all of which often share online and for free some of their lectures. Dantes itself is a testament to the fact that you can learn anything on your own.

So where is the truth? Can we actually learn everything on our own, without paying for a degree, and pretend to the job of our dreams? Similarly, if you're lucky enough to live in a country where higher education is (quasi) free, is there still a point in spending years on the benches of an auditorium, listening to teachers? Or should you rather follow the same curriculum, learn by yourself, at your own pace, which is possibly faster? This is what I would like to address in this article, with a perspective from what I see on the other side of the table, having read, screened and challenged finance CVs for more than ten years.

One useful caveat upfront: I'm not in HR. I only ever see the CVs that have already been preselected by my firm's HR department. For that reason, I've reached out to my friend Marcella Testa, who is the co-founder of Scale UP Services, in charge of the recruitment and talent management for their start-up clients. She also previously worked as a head-hunter for quant hedge funds, therefore has a strong background in recruitment, both for start-ups and for established firms.

The timing of this article is not just a coincidence. I keep meeting or discussing with fresh graduates, or students a few months away from graduating, who are lost and quite genuinely desperate. The job market in Europe is brutally competitive at the moment: a lot of candidates, very few seats. This is the sad reality of many sectors, not just finance. This article is my attempt at sharing what actually matters in that pile, and what you can realistically do to make your profile stand out.

It is also a warning against the people selling a dream. The entrepreneur route, the self-made man who never needed a diploma, the twenty-two year old posting that he clears ten thousand a month without doing much, from a villa in Bali. I don't disagree with everything they say. Some of it is accurate, and, for a few, they have genuinely succeeded that way. But I would like to bring some nuance, and a few warnings. There are big mouths out there who play on precisely the fear I described above, either to sell you a training or coaching programme, or simply to grow their audience for the clout. That serves their interest, not yours. Thankfully they are not all like that. A reliable way to spot the obvious frauds: they are the ones telling you it is easy and can be replicated in ten steps. There is no such thing as a free lunch. It all comes down to hard work, whatever you end up doing.

The degree certifies. That's its job, and it hasn't disappeared.

A top school or a well-known university on your CV doesn't matter for the intrinsic value of the diploma. It matters as a filter. You're signalling that you've cleared certain selection stages, that you've demonstrated certain aptitudes upstream, and that other people before the recruiting company have already done a first round of sorting.

You may argue this is true for white collar jobs only. I disagree. Almost every single sector has its own schools or institutions deemed more prestigious than the others, graduating each year the future talents of their sector. Look at Ferrandi: it is an internationally-recognized school of culinary arts, whose alumni have collectively gathered dozens of Michelin stars. The 2026 Michelin guide alone honored 12 former students.

You may also be familiar with Les Compagnons du Devoir, a French organization of craftsmen and artisans: there is simply no global equivalent that matches the prestige of the Compagnons for manual trades. It is an elite, centuries-old guild network. Apprentices undergo a rigorous, multi-year "Tour de France," relocating annually to master their craft under different master artisans. Earning the title of "Compagnon" signifies absolute mastery of the trade and unparalleled craftsmanship.

For hairdressers, Sassoon Academy in London is the undisputed global benchmark for hair education. It teaches the geometric, precision-cutting techniques that underpin modern hairdressing. Its intensive diploma programs are considered the ultimate passport in the international salon industry.

I work in the front office of a large international bank. Most of the CVs I've reviewed shared the same feature: they all displayed degrees from well-regarded or recognised schools. Not all, but most. The reason is simple. It is not that we do not receive CVs from applicants with a less prestigious educational background. It is simply that these CVs are unlikely to pass the first layer of screening.

The reason is mechanical. We currently receive more than 400 CVs per role, and anyone can write anything on a CV. The school is what allows that first cut, because there's no humanly possible way to read every application in depth. Does it mean we may be missing out on some great profiles? I'm convinced of it. Does it necessarily mean it is a bad system? I am less sure.

That is the view from inside one institution. It is worth testing against someone who sits one step earlier in the process, because Marcella runs that step. Her answer starts by taking my claim apart.

"The school is not automatically my first filter. What makes the first cut really depends on the client, the role, and the type of environment in which the candidate will need to perform."

— Marcella Testa

Her screening starts with the client rather than the candidate: their business, their culture, their ambitions, and what they actually expect the hire to deliver. Only then does she look for the combination of technical skill, relevant experience, learning ability, motivation and fit. The weighting shifts entirely with the mandate. For a quantitative hedge fund she may prioritise applied mathematics, statistics, physics or computer science, and the ability to research, model, code and make data-driven decisions will outrank polished commercial skills. For a client-facing role in a bank, communication, judgement, presentation and relationship management can carry more weight than the technical background.

Academic pedigree, in her reading, is one element of a profile rather than a verdict on it.

"A prestigious school can show that a candidate has been exposed to a selective and demanding environment, but it does not automatically make them a better candidate. I would rather present someone from a less well-known university who has demonstrated strong ability, relevant achievements, and a real fit with the role than exclude them simply because of the name of their school."

I actually agree with that, and it is worth saying plainly. I am mindful of not weighting the school too heavily when I review a CV, even though I cannot dismiss it either. I have worked with people from a far less prestigious educational background who turned out to be great at the job, outperforming colleagues with, on paper, far better education. Some of these people did not adapt to the school system and found their path later on. Some others were not offered the opportunity to study in more prestigious schools. This could be because nobody guided them. Or, and we tend to forget it, because not every parent can afford sending their child to another city to study, whether or not they are receiving government support or the school is free.

Where I would hold my ground is on the scope, and she names that scope herself.

"The reality is that some clients still use school reputation as an early filter, particularly for junior roles or when they receive a very high volume of applications. Part of my role is to understand when this criterion is genuinely relevant and when it may lead the client to overlook excellent candidates."

Junior roles, very high volume of applications. That is exactly the pile I described, and I would add one narrowing of my own: for front office positions, and even more so in France (we will come back to the French specificities later), the school is not one filter among several. It is the core one. So we are less in disagreement than it first appears. She is describing what good recruitment looks like across many mandates; I am describing what a large institution actually does under volume pressure for entry-level hiring. The second is not a justification of the first.

The sad reality of being flooded is that you must apply a filter one way or another, and the diploma is usually the one that gets used. Which makes the more useful question what the other filter could be. My honest answer would be: a less standard approach to applying.

Your job search starts well ahead of the application

This may sound odd, but I have been recommending a method that I did not apply myself. However, from where I stand today, I believe it would have made my job search a lot easier at the time. So how could I possibly know it works well? First, because many of my friends successfully applied it. Second, because I recommended it to graduates who landed a few interviews that way, eventually leading to a job offer.

I am not about to reveal a magical secret recipe. This is something we're being told to do by the career centres when studying in a business school or engineering school. At least, mine did. It is a very simple process, yet time consuming and leading to a lot of disappointments: reaching out directly to people in the team you are targeting, well before any process opens, and having a genuine informal conversation about their day to day, their career, their company.

It helps understanding what the team actually does, what type of profiles are of interest, what kind of tasks you could be assigned if part of the team, whether or not they regularly hire interns.

Why is it time consuming? Because you need to reach out to many people before one answers positively, and even identifying the right people to contact is time-consuming. But also, because you need to prepare these calls. You cannot take the call unprepared: this is disrespectful to that person who does not know you yet has agreed to spend 15-20 minutes with you over the phone, to help you. Therefore, you must make the most of that opportunity. Ask very good questions and listen to the answers. The latter is more important than you think: there is nothing worse than a question for the sake of it, with no intent to listen to the answer because you already, or believe so, have the answer. And at the end of a genuine and friendly discussion with your interlocutor, mention that you would be interested if something opened up. Don't be pushy. Nobody will ever tell you: the job is yours after a random discussion, even if you sounded enthusiastic and knowledgeable. There are processes to respect.

I like receiving that kind of approach. Two caveats, though, and they matter. First, this works outside a live hiring process rather than during one: when we have a formal process running, I avoid taking those calls, out of fairness to every other candidate. Which means the people it works for are the ones who anticipated, who reached out when I had nothing to offer. That reads as far more genuine, but let's be honest about what it is: a bet. But when something opens, they are free to send their CV (or if I did like their profile and the discussion we had, I may even reach out to inform them that a position has opened) and I will recognize their name and remember our previous chat: they already have an edge.

Second, we cannot do this with everybody, and we do not always have the time. Some people don't want to spend that time either, and fair enough: they do not owe anything to anyone. I am selective about who I reply to on LinkedIn, and a good part of it comes down to luck: whether I am buried that week, whether I am in a decent mood, whether the message was polite rather than a generic copy-paste, whether we happen to have something in common. It is not a system. It is a door that is sometimes open.

I'd recommend reaching out to juniors in the team if you're contemplating an internship, and mid-level employees if you're looking for a permanent junior position. They're more likely to reply to you as they were in a similar position to yours not that long ago, and also are the ones the most familiar with what you'd be doing in that team and the most likely to be transparent about the team's culture. Reaching out to the team's head can prove useful but you have less chance to get an answer and you are unlikely to grasp a real understanding of your potential future day-to-day tasks: they're too far away from these.

I had the perfect profile yet no interview

Marcella's answer on what actually kills a good application takes this a step further, and it has nothing to do with where you studied.

"Good candidates are often cut not because they lack ability, but because their relevance is not immediately visible or because one key requirement is missing."

I had rather taken for granted that the application was relevant in the first place, so this is a genuine addition rather than a counterpoint. The missing requirement is usually something hard and unglamorous: seniority, location, languages, regulatory experience, compensation expectations, availability. The invisible relevance is the more common failure, and the more fixable one. A CV that does not clearly show market or product exposure, level of responsibility, measurable results, progression, and the value the candidate personally contributed will be screened out regardless of the person behind it.

And when the school genuinely is not there, what carries a candidate through is the coherence of everything else. Her example is a trading or portfolio management seat, where a candidate from a less prestigious school with a strong and consistent track record will generally attract more interest than someone from a top school with weak or negative performance. Though the client will still look past the headline return, at the risk taken, the drawdowns, the consistency across different market conditions, and the candidate's actual contribution to the strategy.

So why bother at all? A word on dropping out

Reading the above, a perfectly fair reaction would be to conclude that the whole thing is rigged and not worth playing. Which brings us to the argument you will have seen a hundred times online.

I understand the case for dropping out, that is, leaving university (or never starting it), in order to launch a startup or a business. Why not. It's not a bad idea in itself. But here's the reality: the entrepreneurial path is not for everyone. Betting your entire professional future on this single route is closing off all the others before you've even tried them. I'd go further. A first professional experience is often very formative before you launch out on your own. You hear about plenty of exceptions, but most of the entrepreneurs who succeed have had a first career before creating their own thing. That, by the way, is often where their best ideas come from.

That route deserves more than a paragraph, and it gets a section of its own later in this article. For now, let's stay with the more standard careers.

The art of standing out when you can't yet demonstrate the job

As hinted in the introduction, you can nowadays self-learn pretty much anything you want with a simple access to the Internet. With AI, it has become even easier to get a good grasp of any topic and even build entire roadmaps, test your knowledge, identify and fill the gaps on your own, which is something I covered in more detail in The bookshelf and the classroom. This requires dedication and discipline, but it is not an impossible task. For some domains, I could even argue you could learn faster, better, and deeper on the Internet than going through university or school.

Finance is the industry I know best, and it is a good example to use here. The defining feature of many jobs in finance is that you can't, before you are hired somewhere, prove you know how to do it. If you've read my previous article on structured finance and went through all the listed resources, you should now have good theoretical understanding, with some bits of practical knowledge if you built up a few financial models on your own. Yet, you're not going to structure a multi-millions financing deal at home, on your own, in the evening. The work is too technical, too regulated, too tied to an institution, and also too reliant on the work of other teams that are unlikely to live in your household. It's precisely because you can't demonstrate the craft directly that everything else takes on weight. Same goes for jobs in market finance or asset management (and I will come back to home-made traders).

Therefore, your way in is to graduate from a recognised school. But these schools graduate each year hundreds of new candidates with very similar profiles, all getting into the job market at the same time. When you're looking at a pile of CVs from the same schools, with the same internships, ticking the same boxes, you can no longer sort them on academics alone. A "Cum Laude" or another distinction is a strong signal that will set you apart, of course, yet, by definition, only a minority of candidates achieved one.

We must resort to ways beyond the diploma to select the profiles we will interview: the extra-curricular becomes the only signal left. Marcella confirms this for junior candidates. Side projects, small entrepreneurial initiatives, coding, voluntary work, student organisations, competitive sport, an instrument played at a high level, mathematics and other academic competitions: all of it reads as discipline, commitment, resilience, and the ability to work towards a long-term goal. It also tells her where a candidate's interests genuinely lie, and how they choose to spend the time nobody is grading them on.

Where she corrects me is on the word "only".

"Extracurricular activities are not the only differentiating factor. Even when two candidates have similar degrees, we will also look at their internships, academic choices, technical skills, motivation and the overall coherence of their path."

— Marcella Testa

And she adds a gradient I had not accounted for.

"For more senior or experienced candidates, extracurricular activities generally carry less weight. At that stage, we focus more on the candidate's overall growth and progression, the coherence of their career path, the responsibilities they have taken on and the results they have achieved."

Everything that follows in this section is therefore about the beginning of a career. Hold that in mind, because it comes back near the end of this article.

Competitive sport or high level music

I particularly value candidates who have played sport at a competitive level or have played an instrument at a high level. You don't need to have been a national champion or won a major competition. Someone who has known competition or performed in front of a large audience in a rather serious setting will have developed qualities that finance recruiters appreciate: mentality, resilience, the appetite for always wanting more, discipline. The competitive spirit isn't welcome in every sector or every role, but it speaks loudly to finance recruiters. Candidates from team sports or who played in a band interest me equally: they have experience working with others around a shared goal, often under the direct order of a manager or a band leader for example, the pressure of the league or the festival audience, the need to perform week in, week out. This is a similar experience to what you'll find in the corporate world. Minus the trophies.

I remember a candidate who had competed in karate at a national level and had become a coach for younger athletes. His profile particularly appealed to me. The discipline that had let him climb demanding ranks in a sport known for self-mastery spoke for itself. And the fact that he was passing on his passion and his expertise to a new generation showed a willingness to share, a teaching ability that isn't always easy to put forward in an individual sport. Today, he has a successful early career.

Side jobs and varied experiences

Personally, when comparing a strictly academic profile against a practical one, I lean toward the practical. I particularly value non-finance experience in entry-level candidates. Managing a demanding summer or student job alongside academic coursework takes real resilience and adaptability. It shows an appetite for hard work and an ability to solve problems independently, traits that are forged in roles that are inherently difficult. At least, this is what we will be looking for in these when we interview the candidate.

These experiences can sometimes feel more relevant than three or four very short-term (i.e. a few weeks max) experiences in the domain: a few weeks in a role often does not leave enough time to actually do something meaningful enough for many white-collar jobs. I have in mind a former intern who had been a waitress or a salesperson in a bookshop over her summers and worked as a bartender during her studies. These so-called "low-prestige" jobs, often viewed as filler, in fact bring forward qualities you never see on a classic academic CV: customer contact, adaptability, stress management, teamwork, the ability to hold up in environments that aren't always pleasant. She had very limited finance experience but came from a very good university, and had an excellent attitude in interview. We brought her in as an intern. It was a clear success, and she has since been hired, into another team, for lack of an opening in mine.

Does this mean that every person who had a summer job will automatically perform well later? Obviously not. Yet, it remains highly enlightening to enquire about these experiences during interviews. The way a candidate speaks about those roles is revealing: if they dismiss the experience or speak poorly of it, it is a clear sign they were either uninvested in the work or failed to appreciate its value. Ultimately, that is a red flag.

I spent a few summers working as a rapeseed processing technician for a sustainable farming solutions provider. It was hard physical labor. The hours mirrored the farmers' harvest schedules, meaning we worked from early morning until late at night. The job was dangerous when handling chemicals, yet it also required sharp focus during invoicing to avoid costly errors, alongside strong sales, communication, and organizational skills: I was also there to sell more services.

From a practical standpoint, the day-to-day was entirely different from finance. For a start, I feel lucky to sit behind a desk most days; it is far less painful and exhausting than manual labor, even if it means seeing a lot less sunlight.

But from a skills perspective, that job taught me a few valuable lessons. It helped me adapt my organization and communication styles to handle highly demanding clients who were under immense pressure themselves. Much like my current role, I had to remain thorough and careful despite that pressure, as mistakes could be very expensive. In structured finance, those mistakes are at least unlikely to put anyone in physical danger, which reinforces how fortunate I am to work in a safe environment. Finally, it taught me resilience: performing the same quasi-automatic tasks over and over, from dawn to dusk, with zero room for complaint. Believe me, it helps when you're staffed on cleaning the format of dozens of slides at 1am. Or when you're proofreading this article, on a Saturday morning instead of enjoying a bit of sunshine.

My point is that even if you have limited experience in the sector you are targeting, and not only in that case, do not dismiss what you have already achieved. Just make sure each experience you keep on your CV shows a side of you that the rest does not already cover, and that this skill or competency or trait is relevant to the job. If it is neither, leave it out. The exception is if you have nothing else to put on the page, which is perfectly fine when you are starting: we all began on a blank sheet.

Student associations, volunteering, and their traps

Charity and other forms of voluntary work are also highly valued, provided you can demonstrate real action. In my experience, this is where most candidates fall short. If you attended university, chances are you joined a student association. But for many, that membership didn't involve much actual work. It mostly served as a way to pad the CV and socialize with new people. This is particularly true in French business schools, which I know well: I graduated from one, and I would find it difficult to argue that my own time in student associations added much professional value. I made great friends, though. And we cannot really blame students for that anyway, it is just a normal part of school life.

You can and should put such experiences on your CV, but don't be naïve about them: we know how to ask the right questions to assess your actual engagement. Simple yet very efficient questions.

Those who really were in the action can describe the problems they encountered, how they solved them, what proved hardest, and what was never solved. The level of detail doesn't lie. There will always be professional liars who pass this filter, but it skims off most candidates.

One question that also never fails to deliver: "Why did you decide to join that specific charity or association?". It separates those who are genuinely passionate about the cause from those who just want to put a line on their CV. You cannot fake it. Now, a bit of pragmatism here. You may have joined that charity or association for a reason that is not directly related to the cause itself, say, just to have something to write on your CV. That is fine, as long as you actually put in the work, and many did. I would even argue this is a great way to prove that, even if you didn't deeply care about the cause, you were able to work hard and deliver: after all, employees do not always choose the projects or task we work on.

Another common mistake is positioning yourself as the leader for every experience listed on your CV, especially regarding voluntary work. Be humble. Nobody expects you to have run the charity or association. You can absolutely be an active, involved member who drove concrete actions without being the one holding the wheel. Besides, your first job won't be a managerial role. Your leadership skills are relatively irrelevant at this stage, and you will have years to develop them. Some people may never acquire them, and that is perfectly fine, we cannot live in a world where everyone is a leader.

Conversely, if you genuinely did lead your association, your grasp of the details must be flawless. Be ready for sharp questions on budget and team management: How did you recruit new members? How did you get your projects off the ground? How did you handle fundraising and budget allocation? How did you manage communication across the team? How did you keep everyone engaged and handle the inevitable conflicts? Ultimately, what did the association achieve under your leadership, and can you prove it?

Hobbies, and the test of detail

The same scrutiny applies to hobbies and professional experiences already listed on a CV. When you dig, you very quickly identify what has been heavily embellished. A CV is designed to put you in the best possible light, of course. We don't expect every line to be a perfectly objective reflection of reality. But there is a massive gap between presenting yourself well and outright inventing things, and experienced recruiters spot that gap immediately.

Turning our focus to hobbies, I have a few pieces of advice. First, and it seems crazy that I even have to mention this, try to remain professional. I've seen CVs listing Netflix as a hobby. One CV even named a specific show. Let's be serious for a minute: what message does this convey? No, your binge-watching of Suits does not translate into a solid understanding of the job. And for the record, the specific CV I have in mind did not even mention a show linked to finance.

Unless you can share something interesting about a hobby, or use it as a way to bond with your future employer, avoid listing it altogether. Learn the unspoken rules of your industry: what are you most likely to discuss around the coffee machine with your colleagues, especially senior ones? In finance, for example, listing video games isn't the best idea, unless you played one competitively or you can frame it to highlight soft skills like teamwork or strategic thinking, which is easier said than done (even though, this would actually resonate with my generation: society is evolving, and so is industry culture). Conversely, listing long-distance running, triathlon, rowing, classical piano, or golf is far more likely to spark a quick friendly chat at the end of the interview. These hobbies are perceived as serious and disciplined, signalling perseverance, hard work, and sometimes a high level of competitiveness.

Crucially, resist the temptation to fake your hobbies. The likelihood of sitting across someone who is genuinely knowledgeable about that exact topic is high. You will struggle to answer their questions, leaving a poor impression as the interview closes. This would be a real shame to ruin a great interview simply because you stumbled on the casual part of it.

More broadly, be aware of the message your hobby actually sends to your future colleague. Try to view it from the hiring manager's seat rather than your own. If you are deeply immersed in a niche interest, the odds are that everyone in your immediate circle shares it and only sees its upside. You are biased, and you will not notice how it looks from the outside. Take the outsider's view before you commit it to paper. That said, don't sand off every edge either. Having a personality is not a liability, and a CV with nothing distinctive on it is its own kind of failure. Just don't assume the person reading it will see your quirks the way you do.

One case tests all of the above better than any other, and it is a finance-specific one. I am always sceptical of young applicants who state on their CV that they manage their family's or relatives' wealth through a personal trading activity. Not because the exercise is worthless, but because it is almost always listed as a trophy rather than as evidence of anything. For the sake of transparency, I work in corporate finance rather than market finance, so my colleagues on the trading floor may read this differently.

This is the point where I asked Marcella to tell me I had it wrong. She does not defend the candidate I have in mind, but she does move the target. Her argument is that I am looking at the wrong object.

"For a junior candidate, a self-directed trading project can be a positive signal, but not necessarily because of the returns generated. What matters more is the thinking and process behind it: how the candidate developed the idea, which data they used, how they tested the strategy, how they thought about risk, what did not work, and what they learned from it."

— Marcella Testa

Explained properly, she says, that kind of project demonstrates genuine interest in trading, real curiosity, mathematical or coding ability, and a structured, data-driven way of approaching a problem. Her scepticism is reserved for exactly the same thing mine is: the claim that cannot be defended.

"Simply stating that you trade your family's or friends' money, without being able to defend the strategy and results in granular detail, can create more scepticism than interest."

Which leaves the practical question of what defending it actually looks like, and here her answer is specific enough to use as a checklist. The candidate who can defend the record explains how the idea started, what hypothesis they wanted to test, which data they used, how they built and tested the strategy, and how they measured performance and risk. They can discuss transaction costs, drawdowns, market conditions, possible biases in the data, and the limitations of their own approach.

And they do not only talk about what worked.

"Being able to explain what did not work, which assumptions were wrong, and how they improved the strategy afterwards is often a much stronger signal than simply presenting an attractive return."

The candidate who cannot defend it gives themselves away in a recognisable pattern. They stay at a very superficial level, they lead with the profits, they use technical language they cannot unpack, and they come apart when asked how a number was calculated or whether the strategy would survive different market conditions.

"The real signal is not simply that the candidate has traded or built a strategy in their free time. It is whether they can demonstrate a structured and data-driven thought process, intellectual honesty, a realistic understanding of risk, and a genuine ability to learn from the results."

She attaches the same seniority caveat as before: for a confirmed or senior profile this type of personal project counts for very little, because there is a professional track record available to be examined instead.

On this one I agree with her, and it is worth being precise about where my scepticism comes from. Too many candidates arrive with a very basic approach, or spend the conversation boasting about their performance. The performance is the part that matters least to me: I am not about to hand you capital to manage, this is a structured finance position. What I am reading for is the attitude, and what the exercise lets you demonstrate.

Which is the whole point of this section, and it applies well beyond trading. A hobby or a side project earns its line on the page when it proves something about you that nothing else on the CV does. Otherwise it is decoration, and decoration invites the one question you cannot answer.

A concrete method: finding a project that matches the qualities required for the role you're after

So far, we've discussed ways to make your CV stand out, but this is often easier said than done. You might feel like you simply have nothing to add. Here's a practical approach that turns an anxiety-inducing question ("what sets me apart?") into a tactical exercise.

Pull together three to five real job postings for roles that genuinely appeal to you and drop them into an AI (I prefer Claude, but any model works). Ask it to extract the qualities, skills and character traits that come up most often, whether explicit or implied. Next, feed the AI a comprehensive list of your activities, side projects, and personal interests: be exhaustive, provided they are things you would feel comfortable sharing on a CV. Upload your latest CV alongside these. Finally, ask the AI to cross-reference the required skills against your current profile and suggest side projects that could bridge the gaps.

When I say "project", I do not necessarily mean launching a startup or undertaking something grandiose. The term is deliberately broad. It could mean taking up a new sport, learning a language, volunteering for a charity, completing a short online or offline certification, contributing to an online community, or pursuing an artistic endeavor. What matters is either building or demonstrating competencies, character traits, and qualities. This gives you a concrete example to defend in front of a future employer.

Keep in mind you will be doing this in your free time, in your own will, so make sure it is something you actually enjoy. Otherwise, you will drop it after a few weeks for something more interesting to you. Naturally, this is not a quick fix you adopt a couple of weeks before applying. It must be part of a long-term strategy designed to build a profile that genuinely attracts recruiters in your field.

Here is a prompt you can use as-is:

Here are several job descriptions for roles I would like to apply to:

[paste 3 to 5 job descriptions here]

And here is a summary of my current profile:

Studies: [detail]

Internships and professional experience: [detail]

Sports, activities, hobbies, ongoing projects: [detail]

Technical skills: [detail]

Work in three steps.

Extract the 7 to 10 qualities, skills and character traits that come up most often across these job descriptions. Rank them by frequency of appearance.

For each quality, indicate: (a) the ones I can already demonstrate via my existing experiences, citing the specific experience; (b) the ones I cannot yet demonstrate.

For the qualities under point (b), suggest three to five side projects or activities that would allow me to demonstrate them. Favour those that are compatible with my time constraints and that have a chance of producing something visible on a CV or in an interview. For each suggestion, explain precisely the quality the project demonstrates, and why a recruiter would read it as a relevant signal.

Do not suggest generic or filler projects.

The result won't be perfect on the first try. Iterate. Refine your profile. Add your constraints: available time, budget, city, current level. The point is not to let the AI decide for you. It is to see the ground more clearly, and to force yourself to articulate, in concrete terms, what you want to demonstrate.

Finance isn't alone: the other professions where a degree remains essential

Let's get back to our main question: do we still need a diploma? The finance case is interesting because it isn't even regulated in the strictest sense. The degree there is a market convention, not a legal requirement. But there are entire sectors where the debate is moot, and where the absence of a degree closes the door by law.

Medicine is the obvious one, of course. To practise, you need a state qualification, validated by a residency and then a thesis, at least in France, although the picture is broadly similar in most countries. The same is true for pharmacy, veterinary medicine, and regulated paramedical professions: midwife, nurse, physiotherapist. Legal professions follow the same logic: lawyers, judges and notaries all go through dedicated entrance exams and schools. Architecture is governed by enrolment with the professional body, which requires the state diploma. Regulated accounting roles are only accessible after a long, codified path: chartered accountant and statutory auditor. More broadly, professions with a protected title follow the same rule: psychologist, engineer in certain contexts, airline pilot, air traffic controller.

For all these jobs, the question "is the degree still useful?" doesn't apply. Without one, you simply don't practise. The filter isn't a market convention here, it's the law.

That said, inside these professions, the same logics of differentiation continue to apply. A young doctor, a young lawyer or a young architect is no more shielded from the avalanche of candidates than anyone else. Some schools are more prestigious than some others, giving you an edge. And at equal credentials, it is once again the side activities, the sport, the association work, the personal projects, that will tip the scales when being hired at a firm, a hospital or an architecture practice.

The counter-model: creative and manual jobs

Everything I've described so far concerns jobs where you cannot demonstrate the actual work before entering the field. But there are entire sectors where direct demonstration is not only possible, it is expected.

In creative and technical professions, your work speaks for itself. I am thinking of fields like design, video editing, graphic design, software development, and even the creative (rather than regulatory) side of architecture. You build a portfolio or a personal site. Your technical aptitudes become visible. So does your creativity.

That is why I encourage anyone aiming for these sectors to complete small personal projects outside of their standard curriculum. This does not necessarily mean paid work. If you manage to land paid clients, great, but do not put pressure on yourself. Offer your services for free to associations or charities that could not afford them otherwise. You won't be stealing a job from a professional, as these institutions would otherwise just go without, and you will be contributing to a greater good. Ask your relatives if they need your skills for their own personal projects, or simply build things for the pure pleasure of it. What matters is producing something visible and letting people know about it.

A word of caution here, as I know the backlash I risk otherwise: I am not advising you to work for free or at below-market rates for corporations. Know your worth, and ensure you are paid for it, even if you start at lower end of the band to reflect your lack of experience. Working for "exposure" has rarely resulted in a positive outcome for the volunteer, so be mindful of that!

With that in mind, share your work on social media. Engage with people who are already active in the field. People are much more receptive than you might think, and you'll get valuable feedback. Expect criticism, of course, and sometimes sharp criticism. It's the internet: you'll always find unpleasant people who criticise for the sake of it. But in the right communities, you will receive feedback that improves your work faster than you ever imagined. And it may well open doors.

I've seen people contacted directly after showcasing their skills through personal projects online. Take the case of the data scientist Guillaume Rozier, who built the CovidTracker platform. The platform went viral, and he was subsequently contacted by the French President to advise the government on its digital strategy. Without that side project, the opportunity would, most likely, never have materialized.

Another example is Nicolas Lacombe (disclosure: Nicolas is a friend and I'm an investor in his company), who created his own community around productivity and deep work, capitalising on his own struggles with procrastination during the early part of his studies. He has since built on that community, created a first paid product (a Notion dashboard to track habits), and iterated on a second one, Prométhée, and is now a full-time entrepreneur leading a successful fundraising with well-known VCs and business angels, having put on hold a promising career in an M&A law firm. This example is actually quite interesting because it shows that you can do a law degree, i.e. studies in a very traditional field, and successfully pivot to a tech role, all of that by building on the skills you developed through your side project.

I appreciate that this takes time and is not an easy journey. If you are studying full-time or holding down a side job, finding the hours is difficult. But do not be shy: share whatever you create, whenever you can. If you're aiming at a creative or technical job, you will not run short of options. Plus, there is a massive side benefit: these projects help you build relationships with people in your targeted industry, which can prove essential when you start job-hunting.

This is why the question of whether a degree is useful can legitimately be asked in these fields. If an employer must decide between two similar candidates, and one showcases their work on a personal site or on a public platform (like GitHub for code or Behance for design), there is a strong chance they will choose the latter. It comes down to coherence and visibility. In these domains, the degree still offers initial credibility, but it is the body of work and the reputation you build that makes the difference over the long term. The same is true, incidentally, of certain research careers, where publications, contributions, and international collaborations often matter far more than your university grades.

I am arguing this from outside those fields. Marcella hires into them, and opens portfolios for a living. Her verdict is narrower than mine.

"I would not say that a portfolio automatically substitutes for a degree in technical and creative fields. However, depending on the role and the client, it can sometimes have a bigger impact than the degree itself."

— Marcella Testa

The distinction she draws is between what each artefact actually proves. A degree is the more theoretical of the two: it shows an academic foundation was acquired. A portfolio shows what the person is able to put into practice, and it gives a hiring manager something concrete to assess, whether that is code, a product, a design, a website or another finished project. Neither survives contact with a candidate who cannot explain their own work.

"A portfolio has very little value if the person cannot explain how the work was produced, the decisions they made, the problems they faced and their actual contribution. In the same way, a degree can lose value if the candidate is not able to apply the knowledge in practice."

Then a detail I did not expect, and probably the most encouraging line in this entire article for anyone considering a non-linear route.

"For some of my startup clients, particularly in tech, I have even received requests to look for candidates who came through a professional career change rather than a classical academic and professional path. For some clients, successfully completing a career change can be a strong signal of motivation, curiosity and genuine passion for the new profession."

Not tolerated. Requested.

On what a portfolio has to look like before anyone bothers reading it, her answer is short and worth following to the letter. The link has to be clearly visible on the CV, with a line explaining what the reader will find. Once opened, it should be easy to navigate, and built around a few relevant, well-presented projects rather than a graveyard of unfinished ones. Each project should state the objective, your contribution, the tools used and the result. For GitHub, a clear README is not optional, because recruiters will rarely review every line of code. And the rule that runs underneath everything she says:

"Candidates should only include work they genuinely understand and can defend during an interview."

So, no need for school for creative or technical jobs?

Does that mean you should skip school if you're aiming for one of these jobs? Absolutely not. Quite the opposite, in fact. At eighteen or twenty, we are still young, lacking maturity, and often unsure of what we want to do. We rarely possess the baseline skills to succeed in a given field, either. School gives us the time to train, professionalise ourselves, and explore new possibilities. It is also an excellent environment for building relationships and putting together an early network.

Moreover, formal education provides a framework and forces a certain discipline. Not everyone is wired to sit at home and self-motivate to work on projects. Even those who succeed without a formal degree have likely spent hundreds of hours on self-education and practice. They simply chose to seek that training through their own means, whether through books, articles, videos, or podcasts, but they absolutely recognise the necessity of the training itself.

If you doubt this, challenge yourself to spend the next two weekends teaching yourself a new skill, ideally one whose value you do not immediately see. The reality is that it takes immense motivation just to start, and even more to push through mastery. This is entirely normal: learning is uncomfortable. Without a clear understanding of why a specific piece of knowledge is useful, we struggle to justify the effort. Think back to Pythagoras' theorem: many of us wondered why it was taught, only for it to prove useful years later when we needed to calculate the exact diagonal for a strict visual grid.

School is not a magic solution, nor is it the only path. But it remains the most obvious and accessible place to train, learn, professionalise, and develop the discipline required to succeed. It also provides a safe place to fail.

Finally, once again, some of these manual or technical jobs require degrees and other qualifications. Typically, in France, you can't open your own hair salon unless you, or one of your employees, hold a Brevet Professionnel or a Brevet de Maîtrise in hairdressing. Many trades (for instance, plumbing) in France require some kind of official certification, or alternatively several years of employed experience in the field, and even then, the employer will often ask for a certification to limit the hiring risk.

But let's zoom out a little and look at what happens elsewhere to see if the picture is truly different. In the UK, in theory, many of these trades don't require diplomas or certification, but you can't get professional insurance or register with certain industry bodies without holding a diploma or having followed a recognised training course. In the US, it varies State by State, but typically, hairdressing is often heavily regulated, as is plumbing, to keep the same example.

The general conclusion from the research I did across several Western countries is that technical and construction trades (such as plumbing) are regulated everywhere in order to protect public health, safety and infrastructure, whether through the law (US, France, Germany) or through insurance and water and energy distribution networks (UK, Sweden). Personal-service trades (such as hairdressing) are treated as purely aesthetic and low-risk activities in the UK and much of Europe, while they are rigorously protected in the US and France through strict training-hour requirements.

The entrepreneurial path, with or without a degree

To come back to the special case of the profiles who want to build their own project from the outset: if you have a good idea but, beyond that, a strong sense of self-drive and of self-reliance, why not launch early. But the nuance is worth setting out.

I would argue that we are not all made to be entrepreneurs. I have got relatives who have gone the dropout way and are today regretting not having pursued, in parallel to their primary activity, some form of a degree. They today struggle to find a job as many require some form of certification, and getting back to school at their age is a less appealing but also a more difficult option.

I have successful entrepreneurs in my entourage as well, but I must admit they all graduated from top schools before starting their entrepreneurial journey. They are definitely not a good sample to argue that a degree is not useful. Some even worked a few years before taking the plunge and starting their own business. This is only a sample of people I know well, hence not necessarily representative: my only point being, there is no one-size-fits-all.

A first professional experience inside a company teaches you to structure yourself. You understand, from the inside, how an organisation works, and that perspective will serve you when you build your own. Many entrepreneurs, who have known significant success, launched in their forties, on the back of a fully formed career in one field or another.

That said, we're seeing more and more young people launch without going through salaried work, and successfully. AI plays a big part in that. It helps fill knowledge gaps, and it functions, in a way, as a first employee available twenty-four hours a day, adaptable, ready to take on a task as many times as needed. It's a recent shift, and it's probably underestimated, but don't expect it to be a magic wand either: you'll still need to put in the work, know what you're doing, and be able to organise yourself to take a project to completion. Not everyone is built for that, and you shouldn't lie to yourself about your own capacities.

An entrepreneurial experience, if it's run seriously, documented, and if it ends in something tangible, can very well be sold to a recruiter later, even if your business did not succeed. I've got a couple of friends who tried the entrepreneurial route and ended up back in salaried work, with flying colours. They both stated that the experience had been highly valued in the interviews they went through. It demonstrates initiative, the ability to execute, the management of uncertainty. The day you decide to go back to salaried work, it will be a real asset.

Yet again, the degree remains a back-up. It certifies certain skills, and it reopens doors that entrepreneurship alone would close. I encourage young people to pursue a degree alongside their entrepreneurial project, assuming they have the time to combine the two. Otherwise, the risk has to be taken with full awareness, not by default.

The French exception: the master's at all costs

One final point I want to raise, because I have changed my own perspective on the topic after experiencing the job market from both sides of the Channel. In France, a master's degree is required for an enormous number of jobs. It's a very French thing. In the UK, where I live, most young people stop at the equivalent of an undergraduate degree. A master degree is not needed in the majority of cases, and not having one closes no doors. Some people work for a few years and then go back for a master's later, at which point they know what they want and are much more motivated to do well and pull out the best possible results.

The French problem goes deeper than the length of studies. We attach far too much importance to the type of studies followed, and not enough to the real question: did those studies shape a mind properly?

Take a concrete example. In the UK, in finance, I see plenty of profiles who studied history, philosophy, literature, chemistry, etc. No connection at all to finance, clearly. In France, it is much harder for that kind of profile to apply for finance roles. Is it because the Anglo-Saxon mentality starts from the principle that demanding studies, whatever the subject, have forged critical thinking and the ability to learn, qualities that will transpose to a job which is then learned on the floor? Almost certainly. These candidates start with a small handicap compared to someone who studied finance, but the reality is that they end up performing just as well as the rest. On the whole, I would say the French system is less open to non-standard profiles. Less open, or more suspicious? I'm not entirely sure.

This logic holds for many intellectual professions. Of course, it doesn't hold for the very specialised professions we discussed earlier: medicine, law, architecture. There, the non-specialised profile is the exception, and even in the UK, you barely ever see it. And just as well: nobody wants an architect in the operating theatre, do they?

The lateral benefit: a personal project pays off beyond the CV

The job market is brutally competitive right now. Any way you find to stand out will be a good one. When I was starting out, it was a lot easier. The competition was, I will admit it, far less international as well.

If you must keep one piece of advice from this article, let it be this: take on personal projects. Beyond the CV logic, they make you more interesting day to day. They lead you to discover fields you might end up loving, and in which you could even build a career. You never know.

More prosaically, they let you spend your time intelligently, find new communities, discover new hobbies, new ways of doing things. All of which will, at some point, translate into your CV, but more importantly will help you build a richer character.

If the projects are serious enough, even if they're far remote from the job you'll end up doing, talk about them in interview. It is a sign of motivation, of determination, of an ability to act without being told. You started it on your own, you kept going, you tried to take it to a certain degree of complexity. That kind of discipline speaks.

To take a simple example: imagine launching a YouTube channel on a subject you care about. It will teach you public speaking, community management, and communication, on top of video production and edition. These soft skills are the exact skills that will serve you in your career, and especially when facing a client. You learn how to listen to them, understand them, speak comfortably, and stop fearing the judgment of others.

Finally, it would be absurd to write an entire article without mentioning AI, a quick closing note on the subject. Learn to use AI properly in a professional context: it will truly set you apart from other candidates and future colleagues. You will find a list of resources I've tested and recommend at the end of this article. Most people only scratch the surface of AI. It is crucial to know how to use it well, and just as importantly, when to choose not to use it. But to do that, you first have to understand how it works, which means studying it outside the traditional academic framework. Do this, and you will be a step ahead of the majority. Despite what the AI gurus on social media would have you believe, we are still in the early stages of the use of AI across many sectors. Never forget: they are just trying to sell you their courses.

A word for the older readers

I am aware that most of the above is directed towards the younger generation, the one about to enter the job market or already in it but only for a few years. This is naturally less accurate for anyone with over ten years of experience: your degree is now far behind you, it matters a lot less. What matters is the weight of your experiences, your reputation, your network.

The logic of going back to school to reorient your career rarely makes sense at that stage, unless it's a very specific case such as retraining for a very different profession, where your current skills will be of limited use or interest to your future employer. In that case, it's a calculated risk. But in the majority of cases, your experience will speak for itself, and it's through it that you will differentiate yourself.

Now, I have often seen people in their thirties or even forties returning to school or university to obtain a certification or diploma. I witnessed it first hand with both my parents, at different stages of their lives. Both had not been given the opportunity to pursue a higher education.

My dad made the choice in his mid-thirties to go back to school: it was not a traditional master's degree but rather a practical training that allowed him to get an equivalence and open new doors for himself. He later on kept getting back into various shorter-term trainings to keep on climbing the ladder in his company and worked his way up. I must however highlight that he himself reckons that if he had had the opportunity to get a degree earlier in life, it would have allowed him to achieve a similar career much earlier in life.

My mom's situation was slightly different: she had been out of the job market to raise my brothers and I for a little over a decade. She eventually decided to join back the workforce as a childcare assistant, for which a State diploma was required. So she went back to school as a mature student in her mid-thirties to get it. It was a challenge, going back to studying after so many years away from school or from work, but she persevered and obtained the diploma.

These are two close examples I have, but have met with a few more people in similar situations, and the logic remains the same. You are never too old to go back to school or to reinvent yourself. It nevertheless takes a lot of courage and determination to do so. I must also stress that it is not always doable depending on your very own situation: I did not grasp the full weight for it when my parents went back studying, but I recall it was not the easiest for them, neither for my brothers and I. It eventually paid off and they achieved a life they could not have dreamt of without these sacrifices and I am deeply grateful to them for that.

But beyond these examples that clearly advocate for a need for a diploma, there are also other profiles I met, who achieved a career turnaround solely relying on their determination and ability to deliver regardless of the diploma they had. I've seen many of my ex-colleagues, in their fifties, deciding to quit early and try something completely new. They either went for more managerial positions in a different industry, building on their previous leadership experiences and learning about their new industry on the spot, or they decided to start their very own business. That latter route did not always work out, but once again, it all depends on your circumstances and does not mean that they did not succeed in another endeavour afterwards.

The reader who is 35 and switching fields

All of the above is my own experience of watching people go back to school, or choose not to. What I cannot speak to is the reader who is 35, competent, and trying to move sideways into finance, tech or AI without stopping to retrain. Marcella places those people for a living, so I put the question to her: does the argument of this entire article survive contact with a mid-career candidate?

"The logic still applies, but the signals change. At 35, nobody expects you to join a student association or suddenly take up a competitive sport to strengthen your CV. What matters more is how you use the experience you already have and whether you have started building a credible bridge towards the field you want to enter."

— Marcella Testa

What gets examined instead is transferable skill, progression, achievement, and the coherence of the transition itself. Projects, certifications and outside activities still help, but only where they visibly support the move. Completing a course in AI is positive. Building a small product, contributing to an open-source project, or applying AI to a problem drawn from the industry you are already working in, is a different order of signal entirely.

"The question is no longer only, 'What makes this person interesting?' It becomes, 'What have they already done to prove that this transition is realistic?'"

I asked her what the mid-career version of my karate candidate looks like.

"Probably someone who has already started acting like a professional in the new field before receiving the official job title."

A finance professional who has automated part of their own work and built an internal data tool. An operations manager who has developed a real understanding of AI and applied it to an actual business problem. Someone moving into finance who has produced detailed company analyses, completed relevant technical training, and built relationships with people already working in the sector.

"The equivalent signal is not necessarily an impressive hobby. It is the discipline required to learn something new while continuing to manage an existing career and personal responsibilities."

Which brings her to the mistake she sees most often, and it is not the one I would have guessed.

"The most common mistake is presenting themselves as if they are starting again from zero. They focus so much on what they do not yet have that they fail to explain the value of the experience they are bringing with them. A career switcher should not try to erase their previous career. They need to translate it."

The translation is the work. The CV has to draw the line explicitly between what has already been achieved and what will be useful in the new role: industry knowledge, leadership, client management, problem-solving, commercial understanding, project delivery, or experience of operating in complex environments.

The second mistake happens in the room rather than on paper, and it is leaning too hard on enthusiasm.

"Saying that you have always been passionate about finance, tech or AI is not enough. The interviewer will want to understand why you are making the move now, what you have already done to prepare for it, and why the transition makes sense. The strongest mid-career switchers are not only enthusiastic. They can show that they have thought carefully about the move, tested their interest in practice and built a credible story connecting their past experience to their next step."

To close

The job market is generally hard and even harder today. Any way you find to stand out will be the right one, and that includes self-directed learning. You will find dozens of free resources in the Explore section of Dantes.io, in whatever field you choose, to complement your existing skillset.

Start now, while the others are still arguing on social media about whether the degree still matters. Use AI as a lever, both in your learning and in delivering projects that will demonstrate what you can do.

The degree remains the door. What gets you through it is what you build alongside.

With thanks

The recruitment perspective throughout this article comes from Marcella Testa, co-founder of Scale UP Services, a Swiss company helping fast-growing startups and scale-ups building, funding and scaling their business. Marcella leads recruitment and talent management for their clients, providing agile, tailored recruitment solutions designed to deliver results.

My thanks to her for taking the time, and in particular for disagreeing with me where she did.

Resources

A few resources I've tested and recommend for learning to use AI properly, building a proof portfolio, rewriting your CV around achievements, networking systematically, and cultivating focus. Pick what suits your goals best.

Anthropic Learn — Interactive tutorials and guides on prompting and developing with Claude.
Skills with Google — Free courses and learning pathways for fundamental digital skills and AI.
How to Rewrite Your Resume for Accomplishments — Alison Green’s Ask a Manager guide on transforming passive duties into impact-driven achievements, complete with before/after examples that make invisible relevance visible on paper.
Steve Dalton, The 2-Hour Job Search — A systematic networking operating system by Duke University Fuqua Career Services Director Steve Dalton, providing step-by-step, time-limited workflows and the famous "5-Point Networking Email" script.
Best Developer Portfolio Examples & Principles — Concrete advice on portfolio structure and principles (focusing on 3–6 projects with context/live links, deep case studies explaining problem/role/outcome, fast load times, mobile response, and clear storytelling) to build a proof portfolio that attracts hiring managers.
Good Beginner AI Projects for a Portfolio — An actionable guide offering buildable project ideas (receipt analyzer, stock sentiment tool, email classifier, resume parser), scoping guidance (2–4 weeks), and evaluation criteria to help select and execute the right AI project.
Real-World AI Projects That Get You Hired — A practical project roadmap listing buildable, portfolio-ready AI ideas (such as Document Q&A using RAG or conversational AI with memory), paired with evaluation criteria to help you meet recruiter standards.
Deep Work Strategies Complete Guide — A practical implementation manual with distraction-blocking app suggestions (Freedom, Cold Turkey, Focus), time-blocking techniques, and actionable advice on avoiding mid-task AI distraction using cognitive attention residue principles.
Promethee — Waitlist for Nicolas Lacombe's tool designed to enable deep work. Early access is limited — email me at team@dantes.io if you'd like to try to secure a spot.