Yes, it is possible to make money without possessing a college degree. And just about anyone can enjoy a wonderful and successful career without a college degree. Although it is widely perceived that you need a college degree to be successful but that may not always be the case.
While it has been proven that the more you learn, the more you earn. The employment market isn’t shut to you if you don’t have a degree, many jobs don’t require a degree. And some just depend on your ability and willingness to learn.
Earning without a degree is different. This is because often time, what you earn is determined by the level of skill you possess and not the degree itself.
In this article, I, Daniel Umeh will be providing you with a comprehensive guide on how to make money without a college degree.
Earn Certifications
The first step of course is to know the skill you have and getting certified in them. Although this is not an essential or compulsory process, it gives you an edge over the competition.
Getting certified in your interested area of work can be a good thing, either vocational or other specialized training certification. Once your field of interest is identified, make research on certifications that can help you stay ahead of others, and depending on the area of interest these certifications can be as important as a degree.
Having certificates helps one look formal.
Benefits of earning Certifications
- Opportunity to learn new skills: this is the basic benefit of earning certifications. Learning a new skill and getting a certification in that skill can be a good morale boost. It means you expand your job responsibilities and capabilities. Whatever new skill you learn, make it a priority to get certified.
- Gives an edge over the competition: certifications keep you one step ahead or gives you an edge over competitors. People only want to employ and work with the most qualified and trustworthy person.
- Improves your resume: earning one or more certifications will improve and polish your resume. Having a professional certification with whatever skill or experience you have will make you look more employable.
- Increased status level: having certifications commands a certain level of respect and authority. Certifications increase your status by increasing your knowledge.
Mentorship
Having a mentor that assists, advice, and guides you in your chosen field of career will come a long way. A career mentor can provide you valuable advice that will help jump-start your career to the next level. Mentors can help point of the area of flaws to fix and strong areas to continue to work on. This in turn can help define your career path better.
Benefits of Mentor-ship
- Mentor-ship fosters personal development: it gives room for self-development as you are been taught to be better and to improve on some personal issues and becoming a better person.
- Helps to identify and achieve career growth: your mentor guides you in what direction to take the business to the next level.
- Being helped to identify and fix errors in generic skills.
Engaging in Internships and Volunteer Training
Engaging in internships and volunteering for training can help you attain valuable experience. With or without a college degree, experience is most important in some fields. Being able to demonstrate evidence of experience in your resume proves your worth and value. This can go a long way in helping you secure a job.
Benefits of Internships and Volunteering
- Gain valuable work experience: interns receive valuable experiences that cannot be taught in classes, and this is one of the most important benefits of an internship. You get to apply acquired knowledge in a real-life work environment. Learning specific skills in a field such as communication, teamwork, and others are learned in an internship, and these prepare interns for a job.
- Option of exploring a career path: Internships are a way for people to acquaint themselves with career paths of their choice. Taking on an internship will help you decide or discover the right career paths for you.
- Create a professional network: internships allow the experience of meeting others most especially professionals in your chose career path. These connections can teach and later on recommend you for the job position. It is a practical way to form and expand your professional network.
- Internships often offer transition into a full-time job: in some situations, an internship can become a full-time job. This only occurs if those you intern for decide to retain you based on some reasons that will be profitable to them.
- Financial Compensation: A lot of internships are paid, which means you can earn money while you gain valuable experiences. A paid internship will provide money to fund some expenses.
Get on-the-Job Training
An individual can consider getting a job that requires you to learn a new in-demand skill or further sharpen existing ones. Entry-level jobs usually offer this form of employment. Simply getting a job doesn’t guarantee growth; you need to subject yourself to constant training and learning opportunities.
Choosing a career path: The No-Degree way
Perform a self-assessment
Before making any important decision, it’s a good idea to take time for self-reflection. Choosing a career is no different. In this step, you’ll reflect on what kind of work environment you want to be in, what type of work you enjoy, who you want to work with, and more. These can be helpful references as you’re evaluating job descriptions later on.
- What are you interested in?
Possible answers: Technology, writing, medicine, design - What are your key values?
Possible answers: Financial stability, helping others, independence - What soft skills do you possess?
Possible answers: Time management, communication, confidence, problem-solving - What technical skills do you possess?
Possible answers: Data analytics, planning, research, multilingual, photography - What natural aptitudes do you have?
Possible answers: Writing, leadership, selling, project management, communicating, planning, technical problem-solving
Make a list of jobs to explore
After understanding a bit more about yourself and your needs in a job, start looking for jobs that sound interesting or desirable to you. If there’s a job you don’t know much about, write it down and research it later. You may end up finding an interesting career path. Additionally, remember that job titles don’t always represent the actual job perfectly. You can tap into your network to explore jobs both they might hold, and jobs they think you may be interested in and/or good at.
Research and narrow down your list
After you’ve explored jobs that seem interesting, start researching each one to create a shortlist of serious career possibilities. The goal is to arrive at one or two career paths that you’re excited about. You can use the following steps as a guide for your research:
- Before choosing a career, you will need to know what certifications, degrees, training, or other credentials are required. You might decide that fulfilling certain requirements isn’t a good fit for you, thus narrowing down your list to careers that are more suitable.
- It’s important to know if there is an opportunity for growth in your chosen career. This means the availability you’ll have in the career to advance, gain skills, and take on more responsibility. Read job descriptions carefully to learn about job requirements.
- Another key piece of information is how your selected job stands in the labor market. This includes data like hiring trends and job growth. Search for news stories about the industry or job title that interests you. You will want to give favor to jobs that have steady hiring and growth.
Career Jobs that don’t require a Degree
The above are tips to help you make money without a degree. You also need to know the jobs that don’t require a college degree. While having a degree is not compulsory for these jobs you still need to possess a desire to learn, alongside other basic skills. You can as well refer to our more informative article on jobs that do not require a degree. Here are a few jobs that don’t require a college degree:
Home Health Aides
One job that doesn’t require a degree to perform is a Home health aide job. These are people who take care of persons with chronic illness, disabilities and cognitive impairments, and other forms of illnesses in their own homes rather than in a hospital.
Home Health Aides provide daily assistance with day-to-day activities to help make sure that clients remain safe in their homes. Home health aides perform simple medical services that include administering medications, checking vital signs, changing bandages, and several others.
Responsibilities of Home Health Aide
- Administering medical prescriptions: home health aides assist in overseeing and administering medical prescriptions of clients.
- Assist with tasks such as meal preparations, light housekeeping chores.
- Help client with movement in and out of the bed, bathroom, and automobiles.
- Accompany clients to medical appointments.
Home health aides must possess:
- Interpersonal skills most especially attentive listening. They must be able to connect on some personal levels with their clients. A client needs to trust his/her health aide.
- Effective time management skills are also important as you have lots of tasks to complete. The ability to prioritize them will be an advantage to you.
- Physical strength: a health aide must possess physical stamina. The job will require you to lift clients and assist them in moving around.
Sales Consultants
The sales job is a high-paying job that doesn’t require you to have a university degree. Being a sales consultant selling cars, houses and even getting consultation gigs from big organizations can make you wealthy in a short amount of time.
A sales assistant must constantly be in training, there are lots of sales training programs and videos that are free online and improve your skills. The only way to make more money is to invest yourself and your time in training.
Benefits of being a Sales Consultant
- Limitless Opportunities: The sales business is limitless in the sense that there are lots of commodities that can be sold, and as a consultant, you can choose a few of them and make sales. The more commodities you sell, the more money you make.
- Great income: the money you make is for you alone. Sales can make you rich within a short period.
- Continuous learning: As a sales consultant, you get the benefit of continuous learning because the only way to improve your skills and make more money is through training, and in training, you get to learn more things and increase your knowledge bank.
- Possibility of Employment: organizations can be impressed with a sales consultant’s performance and decide to hire them.
Medical Assistants
Medical assistants are health care professionals who alongside doctors mainly at clinics and outpatient facilities. Although they work directly with doctors, they can’t give medical advice. They simply take your health information and pass them on to the doctor. Medical assistants are trained to do to perform a series of responsibilities both clinical and administrative duties. Medical assistants are trained at vocational schools and this ranges from 10 months to 24 months.
Clinical Duties
Medical assistant clinical duties include:
- Directing patients to the exam room.
- Recording patient’s symptoms and updating medical history.
- Prepare patients to see the doctor.
- Preparing laboratory specimens.
- Attending to injury and changing dressings.
- Preparing prescribed medications for patients.
- Explaining medical treatment to patients.
- Conducting electrocardiograms and other medical tests.
Administrative Duties
- Using computer applications.
- Answering phones and scheduling patient’s appointments.
- Handling patient billing, bookkeeping, and general office mail.
- Preparing hospital admissions and laboratory tests.
Air Traffic Controllers
It may come as a surprise that air traffic controllers don’t need a university degree. They deal with coordinating airplanes. While a degree is not needed air traffic controllers undergo a serious amount of training, screening, and psychological evaluation to make sure they are fit for the job. Air Traffic controllers get paid a lot.
Benefits of working as an Air Traffic Controller
- College Optional: as stated above a college degree is not compulsory, but they must undergo intensive training for them to perform their job.
- Excellent pay: air traffic controllers are highly paid professionals, and this a good form of earning for those who don’t have a college degree.
- Job Satisfaction: Air traffic controllers can take pride in the job that they do as essential. They can have the satisfaction that the job they do save lives.
Landscaping
Landscaping can be as simple as lawn mowing and it can be run as a business. It can also create awesome and amazing landscapes. Landscaping exists in different forms but we can focus on the simple landscape business that doesn’t require too much and can still make money without a college degree. Let’s shine more light on Basic Landscaping services and Yard-scalping services companies.
Basic Landscaping Services
A lot of landscapers start at this level either by lawn mowing, leaf blowing, and a few other simple services. A landscaping business like this visits their clients once a week to perform these tasks which include lawn mowing of walkways and driveway edging, leaf blowing and trimming, and some other services that they provide may include transplanting, weed spraying, tree branch trimming, managing flower beds, weed pruning and application of fertilizers to plants. They have a fixed payment rate or they can charge based on the number of tasks or hours they work.
Yard-scalping Services
As basic landscaper companies grow their businesses, they begin to employ more staff and get more machines and equipment and at the same time, they update and upgrade their range of services which may include irrigation system installation, Sod installation, waterfalls, fish ponds, and a host of other services. With this type of service, these companies can charge clients substantial amounts for their design, services, and installation.
With the above tips and a list of jobs on how to make money without having a degree individuals can make their choices and start to work on them. Also remember that these jobs require time, hard work, and consistency for them to be a success.
Conclusion
Earning money without a degree is possible and now that you know how to go about it, we hope you utilize some of the tips provided here. Whichever field you find yourself in, ensure to always learn and develop on the job. Keeping up with the trends and development in your industry is important.
