[11th_VA]

The best ones turned out to be the self-taught ones.

Totally agree - that's why I got out of hiring. My company now requires new hires to have STEM degrees - about 50% of the hires I made, never would have been hired; Most didn't have STEM degrees but had great technical, self-taught skills.

[Karma_Sherab]

The best ones turned out to be the self-taught ones.

We would give our applicants a simple programming test, signing them on to our system, giving a simple problem and having them code it. The best guy we ever hired, went snooping, found screen specs and a program that seemed to do what we asked, copied the code and modified it to work.
Many, many of the "edumacated" ones were not able to finish the test

The test was basically prompt for a number, look up the employee, grab all the payroll recs and display....simple stuff