Episode #125: “Degrees, Experience, and Opportunity: Understanding the Paper Ceiling”

Find "Your Fiscal Physical" the book on Amazon at: rb.gy/3shpfk

If you have suggestions or feedback, please email us at: Podcast@AlchemyWealth.com

And, as always, STAY THE COURSE!

Transcript

Welcome And Topic Tease

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Jonathan C2 is Mr. Founder of Alchemy Wealth Management and author of your physical physical. Ryan Nelson. Tune in to gain valuable insights and practical things as we simplify complex financial concepts into digestible lessons. From budgeting to retirement planning, this podcast is your go-to resource for mastering financial literacy.

What Does Paper Ceiling Mean

Aaron Hoisington 0:33

Welcome everybody to this week's episode of the Fiscal Physical Podcast. This is episode 125 for us as well. So uh uh I guess uh uh a hundred and a quarter if you want to look at it like that there. I'm thinking somebody checked my math on that there. But uh um fun stuff here and uh that we've been uh covering on the uh Fiscal Physical Podcast. Uh and I couldn't do this without uh Ryan, or I couldn't do it nearly as well, I suppose, as without uh Ryan Nelson here. Uh uh Ryan, how are you doing today, my man? I'm doing really well. How are you doing today? I'm doing excellent. I can't wait to dive into this week's topic. And uh hopefully all the listeners out there are uh on the edge of their seats as they they always are during these intros to see what we're gonna cover today. So um let's dive into it. You ready? Let's do it. Awesome. So uh recently, Ryan, we I was driving back from the Bay Area with my wife, and there was a big billboard. And you know, sometimes you're you're driving and you just like you just peek at the billboards and you just kind of move along. You're like, oh law office, whatever, like you know, it's something, something. Um, and then but this one was like it said tear down the paper ceiling. And uh my wife commented on it when she saw it, and she was like, Oh, that's awesome that they're promoting that. And I was like, I don't know what that means. Like, I I don't know what a paper ceiling is, like that doesn't seem like a very good investment if that's your ceiling kind of thing here. So um she kind of tried to explain what it was there, but um you know, I was hoping you could give like a pretty uh a breakdown of what that actually means, how it applies, it affects certain individuals and and maybe how it applies or compares to like a glass ceiling, because I've heard glass ceiling before. Um, but you know, specifically with like you know, higher education degrees and labor market, like I I I'm curious. I just I did a little bit of research on it, but got a little more confused, and maybe I'd like to admit. So hopefully you can break this down, Ryan's best structure, like how this kind of looks and what it impacts and kind of what goes into a paper ceiling, if you will.

Ryan Nelson 2:27

Sure. Yeah, so I don't know that I'm the the uh by any means like an expert on the topic or anything, or the most well suited to to chat about it, but happy to to give my two cents and my uh my opinion of what it is. Um but uh so yeah, so um when people are talking about a glass or sorry, a paper ceiling, um I I believe what they're talking about is the sort of like that invisible barrier that blocks uh qualified and capable workers from getting hired to a role that they are qualified and capable of doing because they don't have a degree. Um, so they have the skills to do the job, but they're not getting looked at or considered to do the job or hired to do the job because they don't have that degree. Um so they call it the obviously a paper ceiling uh because uh it's quite literally that piece of paper, um, your degree, um, not that not your talent or your work ethic or your results or any of that. It's the actual degree itself that's um sort of uh keeping you from being able to uh be considered for this job.

Aaron Hoisington 3:34

I I'm not gonna lie, I I uh maybe I should have done a little bit more research. I didn't even put the two and two together that's a paper, like a degree paper. Like I'm just like, oh my gosh, like this makes so much more sense that that's why it's called a paper ceiling, I suppose. So cool, awesome, good stuff. Maybe I'll edit that out because that doesn't make me sound very good. So uh but I won't. All right, anyway, sorry, continue.

Hiring Filters And Hidden Tradeoffs

Paper Ceiling Versus Glass Ceiling

Ryan Nelson 3:55

So, like um, you know, in the real world, basically, so somebody could maybe um go, you know, learn through work experience, maybe through the military or get some certification or um an apprenticeship, right? And might have years of doing a job, but then they go apply for another job and they're just screened out before they even get a fair shot, right? And you know, I think some of the underlying issues here like surround the demographics of who like culturally the demographics of who have those degrees and who doesn't. This disproportionately sort of um screens out certain different demographics of people more often than some other demographics. Um so like more affluent people tend to have there more affluent people's kids tend to get degrees at a faster rate than less affluent groups. So then the less affluent might be qualified, but then not getting chances at getting these jobs because they don't have the degree. Um so I think that's kind of where the real uh sticking point here is, if you will. Um but you know, the kind of the the big um uh part of the big problem here is that it happens before the interview even starts. So again, like the qualified individual isn't even getting a chance or a crack at the interview and proving themselves. It's just getting filtered out. So you can imagine a business, if I put open up a position and I get a hundred applicants, I'm looking for, you know, so if I'm gonna hire somebody at Alchemy and I need and I get a hundred applicants for this position, um, it may not be practical for me to do a hundred interviews. So I want some way of identifying, like, you know, maybe I have the capacity to do 20 interviews. Well, how do I go from a hundred resumes to 20 interviews? And so one theoretical way might be I say, well, you know, there's 25 people with degrees, let's filter out the 75 without degrees. And then okay, of these 25 with degrees, which of the 20 are, you know, maybe I do another set of filtering, hey, you know, and then at least we have 20 people to interview. Um, so ultimately, like from a practical standpoint, I think that's like how this has come to be, right? Um, but it has some negative implications uh potentially culturally, and you can imagine if Alchemy used that hiring uh sort of that process, um, is it quite possible that the birth best person for the job was one of those 75 that I filtered out? Quite possible. So now I'm getting less quality, right? Like maybe I missed out on getting the best candidate, and the best candidate missed out on the job. Sure. It's not great for either of us, right? It's a lose-lose and that's right. Right. So we can see how it's not great for the candidate this, you know, me applying this filtering or you know, in that sense, me applying this paper ceiling. Um, it wasn't great for me. It wasn't great for the candidate that missed out on the job. Um, so it's yeah, like you said, it's a lose-lose. Um, so but you can also put yourself in the other shoes of like, hey, there's this company that has the capacity to interview 20 people. How do they get from a hundred resumes to 20 people? They have to filter somehow, right? So it's kind of an interesting um like dichotomy there. Um, but you did mention the glass ceiling, so maybe worth uh sort of the comparison here. So I think glass ceilings, uh, if I'm culturally up to date on it, um, you know, the glass ceiling is usually about filtering out qualified people or like qualified individuals again being blocked from advancing um to certain jobs because of a bias uh geared towards women or race. Um and so I think like, you know, uh oftentimes we'd say certain races that this glass ceiling applies to or um or certain genders, typically females, um, this glass ceiling would apply to. And so the paper ceiling is effectively that same exact dynamic, but instead of people being blocked from progressing to roles that they're qualified for, instead of them being blocked by race or gender, it's the lack of this like formal degree, uh the having the degree. Um so they're very, very similar, hence why glass ceiling, paper ceiling, right? This is kind of a play on words. Um, but it's sort of this um it's a it's a different metric that's that's that that's the limiting factor here, if that makes sense.

Aaron Hoisington 7:56

Yeah, no, absolutely does, and that's a that's a that's a solid breakdown kind of of of what those what those are. And yeah, I think you mentioned like Yeah, maybe we're not the most qualified to talk on these topics, but I mean it I think it's important to kind of know what they are and like kind of be able to think about them and at least understand like okay, cool, like this is how it can affect certain individuals, or this is how I I think you made a really good point of like how do you filter down, like if you're a company, like do you like look at like oh cool, like I'm actually gonna change that to be work experience instead. Like you have you know, X number of years working in the industry, awesome. Like you don't have a degree, doesn't matter, like you have this but but where does where you draw the line as opposed with what which job, which certifications and such and I don't know that I have any a single, I certainly know that actually I don't have any answers to this in the Sometimes it's better to be certain about that.

Degree Inflation And Skills Based Hiring

Ryan Nelson 8:45

Yeah, and there's there's positive and negative implications to all that, right? So, like again, like if you were even to say, hey, we need every you know, we we're gonna filter, we need you to have 10 years of work experience. Well, then there's now a new, whatever you want to call it, a new ceiling being placed on the young generation. So now the people who are just graduating college, they may be brilliant, they may be super capable of doing the job, but they're not getting a crack at it because they don't have the years of experience. How do they get the years of, you know, I I I know there is, you know, kind of an old joke where it's like every single entry, like these entry-level jobs require five years of experience. It's like, well, how do you get the the only way to get and you need the entry-level job to get the experience? Yep. Um, so yeah, so you know, you can imagine sort of any filter you apply by filtering out some group of people, um, you know, you're now limiting, you know, there's some limiting factor there. So yeah, I certainly um don't propose to have any solutions to this. Sure. Um, but but what's one thing I find interesting is there's this this uh idea called degree inflation. And it was this like sort of culturally, um like we've gone through this uh element of degree inflation where where I think we've started quite culturally like really valuing college degrees, right? Right. And employers then started requiring these degrees that you then as more people get get degrees, it's it's more of table stakes, and then yeah, it's kind of this self-fulfilling prophecy. And so now employers start requiring these bachelor's degrees that in the past, you know, 20 years ago, you didn't need a bachelor's degree to do, and therefore and you really don't need the bachelor's degree to do the work. Um, but now the employer is requiring the bachelor's degree. Um so yeah, it's kind of a uh yeah, this degree inflation, just the we've sort of inflated the value of these degrees, um, which I think has uh kind of culminated in this um you know, it's resulted in in what we're talking about today.

Aaron Hoisington 10:40

Yeah. No, I think that that's that's a that's a solid I I almost think of like I mean you can kind of think of life or whatever, it's almost like a pendulum, like things swing back and forth. Like, oh my gosh, like we're putting all this value in, like, you know, you think about 40, 50 years ago, it was like, hey, do you have the experience in this? This is that's probably more of what's looked at versus like maybe now and maybe we're shifting back. I'm not really sure where we're at in the pendulum with this year too. But like it's like, hey, you you you know, you go on LinkedIn or Indeed or any of these places, and a lot of them ask for you know, college degree, higher education, higher degree, like preferred, like plus like seven years of experience. You're like, holy smokes, like we really get we're getting really specific on like what we can do with these here before you can even like get past the the the entry point, if you will, to these places. So like I said, I don't know if that's bad or good. I'm sure it depends on like the industry or the job specifically, because you know, maybe you'd you'd want someone to have a higher degree in certain areas, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ryan Nelson 11:41

I absolutely right. I think there's a time and a place, and I think that um, you know, so I mean like why this has happened, I think we kind of gave the argument for why it's like, hey, these employers are using this, you know, when they have these huge stacks of applications, they're using this as a fast way to filter it down, right? So we can kind of understand, like, okay, I the uh you know, whether you agree with it or not, you can understand how it's come to be. Um, and again, the downside of this is you're shrinking the talent pool. So you're the good talent's missing out on jobs, and the jobs are missing out on good talent. And so it's like, okay, that's clearly not good for the individuals, and it's also not good for the businesses. Right. So the both kind of want the this problem fixed, so to speak. Um, so there are employers that are moving more towards like skills-based hiring. Um, and so like it's like, okay, we don't need the, you know, they'll use like a questionnaire or a uh like a quiz type thing to identify who's the most like qualified for these specific skills for this specific role. Um, you can imagine that makes at these huge, huge organizations where they're hiring for thousands of different roles and they have, you know, the specific skills for each role are unique. You'd have to create a new skills-based hiring platform for each one. So you can imagine how like this isn't something where like as a community we can just switch over to tomorrow, even if the businesses and the individuals want to do it. There's a lot of resources that have to flow into this to be able to create a system to be able to do this, like Hill's skills-based hiring. Um, so the market you could say is like kind of behind on it, but it is something that like obviously the employer will benefit from and the individuals will benefit from. So it's like I think everybody sort of wants to figure out like how best to hire the best skill. Um, but to your point, like, yeah, there are still that then there are roles where you still probably want some people getting you know hired at level degrees. Um, you know, you you you yeah, that you're gonna have like still your doctors and your attorneys and your um CPAs and your engineers that like, yeah, they probably shouldn't be self-taught on YouTube. They should probably have gone through uh uh a structured uh education, right? Yeah, uh and I think that makes complete sense.

Aaron Hoisington 13:49

I think so. We were just we were talking earlier in uh one of the breaks we had, we uh were talking about like eye sur like eye surgery and such too. Like, I probably don't want somebody like giving me LASIK or putting in a permanent contact, and like right before they're like, I just saw this on YouTube. I've really I've really boned up on my knowledge through YouTube. Like that's not really something you want to inspire confidence on in versus like, hey, I went to school for four years to be this, to do this, blah blah whatever. But like I I do think there's still a time and a place for those certain ones where you you don't really want to hear that. Right. Oh, I I I learned this on YouTube. Like that doesn't really inspire confidence with something. But I think about like you know, like a like uh uh like mechanical stuff and such too, like like with the um, yeah, I think there's absolutely there's a but you can like changing a headlight, like for a layman like myself, I can look on YouTube and figure that out. Like so I think that there's a time in a I don't need to go to mechanics school. I don't even know if that's what it's called, like it shows my ignorance there, but um, but I do think that there's it it it's a give and a take. And like you said, like it benefits the employer to find the right person for the role. Yeah, and if if they can find that of what that actually is and what the qualifications are, sometimes it's hard to know like what that is. So it it is it's a it's a difficult game, if you will. It's kind of what I'm kind of thinking of. Yeah.

Ryan Nelson 15:05

Yeah. Yeah. So tough, yeah, like I said, I don't know that we've we have any uh we have any solutions or answers, or I don't even know that I have any strong opinions on the topic. Um, but it is interesting and it does seem to be like a gap in the market. And you want, you know, you like in theory, if you believe in the invisible hand and supply and demand, um, you know, you want the the the you know, in theory, the best talent should be getting those jobs. And so um I'm confident that uh like societally we'll we'll work something out because yeah, like we said, everybody wins when when you're connecting the best people in the best roles.

Aaron Hoisington 15:39

Like absolute, super well said there, Ryan, for sure. So awesome. Well, hopefully you guys learned something with this. Um at least kind of got intrigued by this. Definitely do your own research. I I'd be curious to hear, you know, if people have been affected by this as well, too. I'm always just uh super fascinated by people's stories when it comes to uh you know certain instances that have happened in your life, whether it comes from employment or or otherwise. So let us know. And also let us know if you guys want to hear any other topics here. We'd love to cover them for sure. And uh uh we'll go ahead and uh take a quick pause here, be back on the other side of this.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

And now to put the personal in personal finance.

Most Rewarding Conferences And Why

Aaron Hoisington 16:17

Welcome back to this side of the fiscal physical podcast. We're on the personal side here, and uh um it's a personal question, Ryan, but it's kind of professional, I suppose, for you. Um so uh my question to you is what's the most rewarding business conference or just conference in general that you've ever attended? I don't I don't know how I I think you've been to a few, but uh I I don't know. I'm curious what your what your thoughts are.

Ryan Nelson 16:41

Yeah, um I think you know, I think a lot sometimes um people will go to these conferences and like want the silver bullet or something, and like, hey, what's like what's the shortcut? Or like, you know, there's a bunch of different sessions, and like it's like, oh, I need to identify like the one session that like you're looking at all the different things you could attend, it's like, oh, yeah, this, you know, and you you see something and you're like, oh man, this could solve all my problems, and I think like that's just us not the world way the world works, right? Um, and so to me, the most rewarding thing or like the biggest benefit of bus these business conferences is just like the energy and the motivation and being around like-minded people. And so I find pretty much every conference I go to um that my biggest takeaway is just like a renewed sense of energy and drive, and you see other people doing good, impressive things, and you get a couple good ideas, and you're like, oh yeah, like I should do that, or that's something I've been thinking about. I never knew there was a way to do that or quite how to do that, or I just thought it would be a ton of work, but now I see somebody else doing it. I guess like, yeah, it can't be that much work. I can't do it, right? Sure. Um, so yeah, that's I I I don't know that it's uh to me, I don't know that a single conference stands out. Um they're all to me, they're all kind of the same, and it and to it's just the value is um being around l similar like-minded people, and to me that's motivating. Yeah, um what about you?

Aaron Hoisington 18:05

No, that's a that's a super I I think you hit you're gonna hit you hit on all the points that I'm also going to make too. I I I've been to a couple of conferences. I went to one like last last year on a technology to like review like calls and interactions with customers. I work in a kind of a customer service industry, and it was super cool. Like the the the what we learned about, like you mentioned, like I didn't learn anything groundbreaking at this thing. Like, I I but uh what I did learn is like how other people use this technology or what their focus is or where they like put their efforts into yeah and that was really interesting. Put their resources of like comparing, like, okay, well, we put X amount into this, you guys put don't put as much into that. Where do you put that or what what happens to that? Or how do you how do you manage this day to day, also like week to week, month to month, quarter to quarter, and such too. So I've I always find that super interesting. Plus, I really enjoy the networking piece of it. Yeah, for sure. I think it's awesome to kind of meet people. I I still like I've only been to a a few of them these days, but uh um I still like have good contacts that I built up through these that I'm like uh like I'll get a LinkedIn message or like uh someone would send me a text or whatever, because we went out for drinks afterwards and like had a good time. And and so I I think that there's a lot of benefits to like meeting people with like like-minded ideas or like are in the same industry as you. I I think that's it's always super fascinating to me to kind of see that. Like, so I think there's there's benefits you you get what you put into it or get what you get out of it if for the lack of a better term. But I think the networking piece and also like just learning is just fun. It's it's always just fun to me too. And I think you share the same way of like like, yeah, I like I I'm 35, but I like I still think I'm going to continue to I learn like every day, and like I feel like that like fills my cup, if you will, like from doing those kind of things. So like doing this podcast with you too. I feel like every time I come home, I think I've mentioned it. I'm just buzzing with energy. And my wife's like, okay, like let's calm it down. I was like, Did you know about the the glass or the paper ceiling? She's like, Yeah. I was like, oh okay, cool. Yeah, you bozo kind of thing. Like, but um, I I think that that that's the biggest takeaway I can kind of see um with that when it comes to those kind of conferences too. So um, I don't know, just some advice out there for the listeners or a suggestion, I'd say, like if you're have the opportunity to go to something like that, yeah, maybe check it out. Like it might be for you, might not be for you, but I think the the more knowledge you can gain, I don't think there's really any I don't think there's ever been a bad thing about learning too much. It probably is, but I don't know. But awesome, man. Well, appreciate it, Ryan. Appreciate all the listeners out there. And uh um, anything left here, Ryan, before we uh wrap up? As always, stay the course.

Listener Next Steps And Disclaimer

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Thank you for joining us for the Fiscal Physical Podcast. Until next time, happy listening. And as always, stay the course. If you have a question or topic suggestions, please email us at podcast at alchemywealth.com. If you enjoyed today's discussion, subscribe to the podcast to ensure you never miss an episode. And consider leaving us a rating and review on your favorite platform. This helps other listeners like you find this channel. For more resources, you can visit Alchemy Wealth Management's website at www.alchemywealth.com or find your physical physical deployment on Amazon. We'd be remiss if we didn't mention the personal finances just then. First of all, please don't take anything we say as advised. The presenting content is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It's not an offer or a solicitation, nor should it be construed or relied upon for tax, legal, or investment advice. It doesn't consider your personal financial situation or objectives and may not be suitable for you.