The CV of the person without a degree was ignored. The person with a degree was brought in for an interview. The person making the decision was the company works manager who has no qualifications himself that I'm aware of other than being one of the welders off the shop floor, the laziest one I'm told. He usually fights for the shop floor having as little work as possible, sometimes you'd wonder how we can stay business with his attitude.
The person with the degree was shown round by my senior colleague and after he had gone he told me he didn't think much to him he was not really interested in the workplace and just walked around listening to what he was told no interaction at all. My colleague said he was a little uncomfortable about him. But the works manager insisted that he was the man for the job because he was a very clever bloke having a degree. He is a nice chap I get on fine with him although we had a little bit of a clash at one point when I was training him because he felt I was not being fair. Fact is I was becoming quite concerned about his ability to deal with situations to have the initiative to work out what to do and get on with it. After all I was having this person dumped on me and he was clearly not up to it and his degree was totally pointless to us. I was quite concerned about the amount of extra work my senior colleague would be shouldered with once I left the department because being only 2 of us if one can't cope the other one ends up helping out. I worked in a mechanical engineering company quality department, when I came to the job I knew how to use all of the mechanical measuring equipment at least the basic mechanical stuff like calipers and micrometres my colleagues were in fact surprised that I knew how to use them despite no experience, but I had been shown how to use them in school where I did some mechanical staff alongside electronics and because I understood exactly how the instruments worked and was intrigued by them because I have a genuine interest in how things work I remembered how to use them over 10 years later. The first time I gave him a micrometre he looked at it and try to use it as though he had never seen one before. And I had to politely show him how to use it whilst making it look like the most natural thing in the world that he should not have a clue how to use a micrometre despite claiming on his CV he had used said instrument and many more complicated ones in a previous job role, I mean heaven forbid I upset him.
I don't know the nitty-gritty of how he copes these days I get the impression he does not get as much work under his belt as I used to but then I actually cared.