Hannah Maruyama says she wouldn’t be as happy — or successful — at work as she is now if she’d followed any of the career advice she was given in her teens and 20s.
Her teachers told her she “wouldn’t get far” without going to college and getting a bachelor’s degree. Friends warned him not to change jobs too often.
Maruyama enrolled part-time at Georgia Southern University in Savannah as a high school student at the encouragement of one of her teachers, but dropped out after a few semesters to avoid student debt.
For a while, she thought her career options without a college degree would be limited to low-wage jobs or becoming an entrepreneur.
During her 20s, Maruyama worked as a lifeguard, bartender and even as a bartender on a dolphin-watching boat, never earning more than $30,000 a year.
Now on the verge of turning 30, Maruyama is making $100,000 working in AI without a bachelor’s degree. She works remotely from Houston, where she lives with her husband Ryan.
The 29-year-old says she landed her “dream job” as head of operations at Neo License, a startup that builds AI software, in 2021 by ignoring a common piece of career advice: don’t apply for a job if you’re not qualified almost none of the requirements.
The benefits of taking calculated risks in your job search
Maruyama decided to pursue a career in technology four years ago after losing her customer service job due to pandemic lockdowns.
Finding a remote job felt like a “safe bet,” she recalls, and most of the remote listings she saw online were for technology roles, including web designers, product managers, and software engineers.
She took an online course to become a Salesforce Certified Administrator in April 2020 and, three months later, landed her first tech job as a remote Salesforce developer at a business management consulting firm.
Most of the jobs Maruyama applied for did not require a bachelor’s degree, but required several years of experience and a list of technical skills needed to fulfill the job’s responsibilities.
Maruyama says she largely ignored the requirements of the jobs she applied for. “I targeted jobs that I wasn’t qualified for on paper because those were the jobs I was excited about and felt I could grow the most,” she explains.
Of course, you can’t ignore all the demands of a job. Degree requirements can be flexible—especially as more companies get rid of them—but if a job is hiring for a specific technical skill or certification, a hiring manager will likely bring it up in the interview.
She applied the same approach to her most recent job search in 2021. “If you want to move forward in your career, you want to reach higher than where you are and challenge yourself,” she says. “Worry can be a catalyst for growth.”
For each of these jobs achieved, “I would note on my application or during the interview that I will learn everything I need as soon as I can,” adds Maruyama. “I think the exact phrase I used was, ‘I’m a shiny new penny!’
Being confident and having a proactive attitude, she says, helped her land the operations role at NeoLicense – even though she didn’t tick most of the boxes in the job description.
“If you don’t have what they’re looking for, show them you’ve done the research and have a plan to get that skill, whether it’s taking an online course, getting a certification, or shadowing someone who has that skill on the job “, says Maruyama. “Most employers just want to see that you are motivated and willing to learn.”
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