Experience helps, but it can pigeon hole you into a specific field.
I am a pretty good example. I work in Automotive finance and Insurance and it is a pretty specialized field. You have to be able to be a banker, a salesman, an administrator, follow some pretty major legal compliance's, and be a forensic accountant some days trying to figure out major problems on loans. Lots of guys are qualified on paper, but they can't do the selling part when put face to face with a client. I worked my way into it, with zero education, just going up through the ranks, where the typical person in my field usually has some sort of business or finance degree.
Within my field, I would be a pretty coveted property with my experience for another company, but anything outside of it, I am essentially useless, even though there are jobs in Finance that I could easily wrap my head around, excel at, be substantially easier, and dumbed down to what I am doing now. Without a degree though, they wouldn't even grant me the time of day.
Being a major car nut, naturally I generally like what I do, with the exception of having to work some Saturdays. So I have no issues being pigeon holed for the time being. But I have had some people sitting in front of me with finance degrees from Universities, that can't even wrap their head around the most basic principal of finance, the rule of 78s. I wonder how the hell they ever got a degree, let alone a middle management job with a bank. I get computers do it all now, but anyone working in a bank, should be able to calculate annual interest with nothing more than a pen and paper.
|