> “I know I am a creative person who can do many of these jobs, but I think employers have these expectations that an applicant must bring a mid-level professional’s work experience and technical skills — even though it’s only an entry-level job,”
Well if they can find people who do have that experience and skill level, why would they hire you instead? It's simply a matter of supply and demand.
The issue is that when they can't, instead of compromising and training up someone with less applicable skills they simply crow about a "talent shortage".
I partially agree.. I think that one of the challenges is that lots of blue chip firms use a degree as a gating process to get an interview.
Faced with tens/hundreds of thousands of CV's, there probably has to be some kind of coarse filter to get past that and get them down to a meaningful number that a person can review. I know some companies in the UK still use UCAS points (A-Level results) as a gate to get from one stage in the process to another.
If you don't have a degree - even if you are a superstar/10x person, then it's going to be hard to get through the scripted screens that will block you from getting your CV in front of a hiring manager.
Generally after 7 or 8 years of experience, I guess a degree counts for less and its more about peoples experience.