But they were very specific when they asked for Perl and MySQL skills, which suggested that they knew what they were looking for.

To me "Perl and MySQL skills" isn't very specific. What kind of MySQL experience? What kind of Perl experience? What kind of application needs to be developed? What kind of other skills need to be developed? Etc.

This could be anything from moving a bunch of data from some Excel files to a MySQL table all the way up to building something like Amazon.

But if it's a programming job and it could be done with Perl and MySQL, it puzzles me that they should specifically seek persons with a degree in CS or Mathematics.

I don't know for sure - we'd have to ask to be certain :-) It could be something as simple as a degree-only hiring policy.

However my bet would be that when they wrote "Perl and MySQL skills" what they got was a bunch of CVs from people who didn't have the necessary experience for the task at hand. So they chose the shortcut of specifying a degree as a quick way to winnow some wheat from the chaff. Of course by doing this (and sticking to it) they'll also throw away a lot of wheat and keep some chaff - but they only need one good grain so they don't care.

From the general reading I get from the above, while a degree in CS or Mathematics certainly helps, it's not a prerequisite in some areas of programming.

Oh I agree completely. But just because it's not a prerequisite for doing the job doesn't mean it won't be a prerequisite for getting the job. Sad, but true.

In reply to Re^3: Mathematics eq CompSci by adrianh
in thread Mathematics eq CompSci by kiat

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.