In-demand Jobs For 2021 That Don't Require A College Degree

While a university degree can open many doors, it’s also not the only door to having a successful career. Experience and skill-based labour will always be more valuable in certain fields. With the skyrocketing costs of a university degree and the student loan crisis, many are wondering about the alternative paths in life that don’t go through a university’s hallways.

There are in fact many in-demand jobs that don’t require a university degree. And no, we’re not talking about menial labour factory jobs. Many of these jobs can become lifetime careers, proving that there are many different paths to success.

It’s worth mentioning that there are many individual jobs that don’t require a university degree, but I’m going to focus on industries that have these types of jobs in different sectors.

 

Project Manager

Project managers, especially in the digital sphere, are in super high demand. Many online startups and small businesses are in need of good project managers, and they’ll serve as great stepping stones up the ladder of your career.

Organizing, delegating, and team structuring skills are only a few that a solid project manager will possess. If you have no experience as a project manager, you can cut your teeth as a digital assistant. It’s important to remember that project managers are essentially middle-management, so business management certificates will always look good on your resume.

You can take PMP training courses online to become a certified project management professional. The tech and digital industries need project managers that add value to their business the most, but you can also find project management work in finance, manufacturing, business services, and many other industries.

You won’t go from project managing for an online creativity agency to working for Google or Adobe overnight, but those success stories do exist.

The median salary for project managers is estimated to be around $116,000, including freelancers. In fact, Upwork reports that the standard ‘beginner’ rate for freelance PMs is $25 per hour, while advanced freelancers earn around $160 per hour.

 

Programmers

Computer programming, software development, cybersecurity - these have always traditionally been “self-taught” fields. Much of Silicon Valley was built by garage programmers, and much of that ethos continues today, even though computer science and programming courses are much more widely available.

One argument for pursuing a degree in programming isn’t so much what you’ll learn, but how it will demonstrate your ability to work with teams, something tech corporations value. Big tech corps will look down on self-taught coders with no teamwork experience nowadays.

There are ways around this. Of course, you should obtain relevant certificates to the programming fields you’re pursuing, but also make an effort in contributing to community coding projects. Open-source community projects are good resume padders, for ticking the “works well with others” checkbox.

Programming and software development has a lot of career trajectory, and many different niches to pursue. “Information Technology” itself is an umbrella term for dozens of specialized skills, so there really is a lot of lateral and vertical freedom within these industries, as long as you remember to stay current on new methods and technologies.

 

Writing

Oh, freelance writing - well, that’s a field I have a lot of experience to wax poetic about. To be honest, there are only two reasons to go to university for writing. One, if you want to become a journalist for a major media publication, and two, if you want to teach writing.

There are so many avenues to take with writing, there’s really no shortage of ways to sell words. Fair warning though, the writing industry chews up and spits people out like a Nerf gun chaingun. This profession probably has the highest percentage of alcoholics than any other, except maybe comedians.

It’s difficult to frame how many avenues of writing as a career there are because most of them are so obvious. Blog and copywriting are the big ones for freelancers, but honestly, there’s no shortage of people willing to pay writers to write things. Literally, all kinds of things.

It’s a very stressful industry for a myriad of reasons, but if you survive in the writing industry, you’re like a Marine. Not like the going to war parts, but like the absolute mettle of character it takes.

 

Sales Representative

Sales reps can earn a quite decent bank if they’re persuasive and charming. I mean, how many salespeople have gotten rich writing about being salespeople? Think about it. You can literally sell sales techniques, and if you’re persuasive and charismatic enough, you don’t even need any sales experience. That’s the beauty of the sales industry.

In all honesty, cutting your teeth in the sales industry requires a ton of self-motivation, and accidentally getting involved in a pyramid scheme or two. It’s like a rite of passage, but you’ll learn a lot about overcoming objections.

The cornerstone of sales is the five steps of motivated sequence, which taken to its logical conclusion, really means you can sell just about anything.

• Get attention.
• Establish the need.
• Satisfy the need.
• Visualize the future.
• Action/Actualization.

   

This literally forms the backbone of any sales training. Throw in charisma and a persuasive personality, and you can just about sell yourself up the sales industry ladder.

 

Electrician

It may come as a surprise, but you do not need a university degree to play around with extremely dangerous live wires. But it’s actually not all that dangerous. In fact, “There were 166 electrical fatalities in 2019 [...] The construction industry had the highest rate of fatal electrical injuries (0.7 / 100,000)”, according to the Electrical Safety Foundation International (ESFI).

The road to becoming an electrician starts with an apprenticeship, and it’s a crucial part of getting into the industry. Moving up the ladder will be based on your skills and job performance, as well as your ability to be a team player.

Electricians earn a median salary of around $56,180 per year.