Should your GPA prevent you from getting your next job?
I hope not!
I recently had a great conversation with one of the managers at Microsoft. He was telling me that a certain company had been reaching out to him in regards to applying for some senior positions within their company. As all smart people do, he entertained the offers, seeing what they had to say (side note: I think everyone should always be looking for their next opportunity. If anything, it's good interview practice and always nice to see what your market value is).
Anyway, back to the story. So this manager went through the process, and then it came to the time where they asked him to fax over his transcript. He let them know that he did NOT meet the requirement for employment, as it was below a 3.0 (he said it was 2.9999, which I think is what everyone says). The company insisted that he fax a transcript, so he went to his parents house, dug through his old paperwork, and ended up faxing them his report card from 3rd grade instead. I thought that was a great story- the company did appreciate the humor in it as well.
This got me thinking- do the grades you earn in college really matter? I know that there were some classes I slept through in college (I'm talking about Principles of Accounting 210), and there were some I did great in.
Is it fair for this record to follow you all the way through your career? Should there be a cut-off point where it doesn’t matter anymore?
I know Microsoft employees who love to ask about GPA, but to me it doesn’t make an ounce of difference.
What are your thoughts? Do grades even matter? Should they matter to potential employers as you progress in your career?
- Janelle
P.S. In case you were wondering, the manager didn’t take the job.
43 Comments
said:
It doesn't matter at all.
Criteria like that are for hiring managers or HR staff who are too lazy to think, and tell you all you need to know about the company before you start.
Aaron said:
Are you suggesting that if you had time to interview 1 candidate, yet you had two with nearly identical resumes, except their GPA's were substantially different (say a 3.9 and a 2.5), that you wouldn't be inclined to only interview the 3.9 candidate?
Or if you get a 1000 resumes, with very little else to go on (maybe you typically only get college grads), that you shouldn't establish some sort of minimum?
What's the cutoff? I don't know -- but what's the harm in asking? It could help you better understand the effort/attitude/aptitude of the candidate. Obviously, on the job experience is great, but it's hard to get good honest feedback these days from former employers.
said:
I think that if grades are going to count one the grades for the last degree granted should count. That is to say if you have a Masters degree no one should care about your undergraduate grades. Also I think that after a year of good employement those last grades should not matter anymore either.
And in my case, if someone who wasn't born yet when I got my BS degree ever asks to see my transcript the interview is over. I have much too long a professional resume to put up with that sort of sillyness.
Also I have taught school. Elementary school, middle school, a lot of high school, and some college. I know what grades say about a person. I would probably not ask for them unless there was nothing else to go on. But honestly if all they have on their resume is school I would probably not call them in for an interview.
Nick said:
Obviously, people who have high GPAs are going to object to disregarding their GPA... especially since they have put so much time and effort into their schooling, only to have employers say, oh I don't care about that. I'm a senior right now in CS, and its quite funny that I heard my mentor at my internship said the exact same thing today! I got kind of frustrated when I heard that.
It represents the dedication a person has.
Nick Christian said:
I don't think grades should matter at all for a number of reasons. First, I know plenty of people that are absolutely brilliant but are not inclined to a) get up and go listen to someone lecture to them and b) are forced to take classes that aren't really of interest to them. Second, I think that grades are generally opinion based. At the collegiate level, unless you are taking strictly math courses, the grades are left for the professor to decide. With so much grey area it leaves a lot of room for variance. Also, grades can't be compared from university to university.
Is there a difference between someone with a 2.8 or a 3.2? Sure, but minimal at best. Is there a difference between a 2.8 at Harvard and a 3.9 at a local community college?
Grades are based on too many variables. In the end character and personality is what will get you the job.
said:
It's been my observation that work experience means everything, and college courses/grades mean almost nothing. I have my education on the second page of my (2-page) resume, and I don't think anyone reads that far. Folks only care about GPA if the person just graduated and has never held a full-time job.
Not saying that this is right or wrong, it's just what I've observed.
Lu said:
I think GPA should not be a factor when making a decision. At most, I would consider it one of the things to consider when deciding whether to even do a preliminary phone interview whose resume tells you nothing extraordinary or interisting. In this case, factors such as high GPA, going to a very good college, might mean a phone interview.
The thing is, GPA only has meaning when trying to land your first significant job straight out of college, and even then its very unreliable.
Plus, for anyone from other countries, just forget about asking about GPAs alltogether. As an example, I'm from Spain, where grades are from 0 to 10, but once out of high school you decide what career you're going to study, and most of your classes are compulsory, and passing a class is much harder than in the US never mind getting a good grade -- for example, in Telecom Engineering where I study the average number of years to do a 5 year career plan is 7. If I just told a recruiter that top grade is 10, they might think that a reasonable cutoff grade to consider resumes might be 8 .... that would be ridiculous! Yes, there are people with that kind of grades, but they are not in the "good" or "very good" boxes, rather in the "extraordinary". Also, what I said before about the type of university education can bring a lot of people down and burn them out as far as their studies are concerned, which would bring their average grade even further.
On the other hand, I came to the US to study a masters and found that, hey, if you work you will get a good grade. Amazing, who would have thought? But even though I got a good GPA I'm not proud of it; and it also makes me realize that for things like a one or two-year MS, GPA can also be unreliable, because one bad class, or one bad experience with a professor, will have a huge impact, since your won't have that many classes to obtain your GPA from.
Bottom line, I will never include my GPA in my resume, either one of them. It's no-ones bussines, if you want transcripts you can ask for them and I will give them to you; but if they are asked before even a phone screen or interview takes place I will loose a lot of respect for whatever company that was and its selection process.
Steve said:
Along the same lines do you think that a Degree should prevent one from getting a job? About 2 years ago I toured MS (building 36, Office) as a friend of mine works there. I met a number of bright people on my friends team (Operations Team) and I was surprised to hear that a fair/small number of people did not have Degrees.
This gives me a bit of hope of someday working for Microsoft. I am just worried that recruiters hold this a bit heavily against the applicant by today's standards. Are there any comments/suggestions regarding this? As a side note I currently work for Symantec which I was very surprised that I even got the chance to try for the position with a not so strong resume. Thank you
-Steve
Cheong said:
[quote user="Aaron"]
Are you suggesting that if you had time to interview 1 candidate, yet you had two with nearly identical resumes, except their GPA's were substantially different (say a 3.9 and a 2.5), that you wouldn't be inclined to only interview the 3.9 candidate?
[/quote]
It depends.
As I'm responsible for hiring in my company, I can tell you that someone with 2.5 GPA tend to do better in developing applications than someone with 3.9 GPA. People here with higher GPA tend to do things in fixed way, and don't bother to know why they should choose that way (other than "it works"), and people with lower GPA tend to adapt the way the code run closer to the situation.
Then again it's just my experience and impression.
======
Back to the original question, I think GPA is only worth to be considered in the first few job (in terms of developer). If the candidate already has more than 1 - 2 year working experience in the field it should be neglected.
After all, the technology you learnt in school might be irrelevant to the skill set the position requires, so whether the candidate do well in school cannot reflect to whether he/she'll do well in here, and "exams testing short-term memory" (That's how I called school exams) will fade by 1 - 2 years.
There's nothing better than a written test to find out if the candidate has adequate basic concepts.
Nicolas Jackson said:
I have a good, GPA 3.61 if you really want to know. But, I have found that my grades have nothing to do with my understanding of the classes subject matter. I would rather be judged by my interview and portfolio then my school GPA.
said:
Grin... :)
Look's like Janelle's stirred up a good smokey debate with this one...
Makes for good reading!
Steve Kaplan said:
NYTimes had an interesting article on this a couple months ago...
<a rel="nofollow" target="_new" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/technology/03google.html?ei=5088&en=e71cadb22a20a3c4&ex=1325480400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all">http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/technology/03google.html?ei=5088&en=e71cadb22a20a3c4&ex=1325480400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all</a>
They talk about how Google crunches numbers on different data relating to their candidates. As it turns out, GPA has diminishing returns after a certain point and they found that the interview is one of the worst predictors of on-job performance.
said:
I'd happily give up two weeks of my time no charge to Microsoft just for them to get a "Feel" of me... ;)
Saurabh Garg said:
Allow me to quote Futurama:
Leela: Don't take this the wrong way, Fry, but you don't seem like the educated type.
Fry: Oh, yeah? Read it and weep. I'm a certified college dropout.
Leela: Please! Everyone knows 20th century colleges were basically expensive daycare centers.
Moving on, I disagree that folks with higher GPAs value their education more. If anything, they often times find shortcuts to getting good grades instead of actually assimilating the material. In my perosnal experience, the high GPA folks tend to be actually very bad with basic concepts and theories. Getting good grades depends on doing good in exams, and we all know that there are tons of ways to prepare for the exam, much more than there are ways to prepare for a degree.
Then, in the engineering sciences, we have people who prefer to learn by doing actual experimentation rather than working on some pre-deduced formulae/conceptions. These people have a very firm grasp on the fundamentals, but they are not the first people to work out a question, or even be able to complete exams on time.
Now, in the software world, what you learn in school often times means nothing in the real world. There is nothing you could have learned better in school, not to mention that grades you received in some physics class are a very bad pointer of your actual coding skills. Sure, you use physics and math in programming, but if you don't understand coding as an art, all that knowledge is useless. That understanding of this art comes from actual curiosity and practice, not by completing month long school projects in short notice or going through a professor's past exams to target his favorite topics for a good grade.
That said, every company cares about GPAs. More often than not, the recruiters are too lazy to actually investigate a candidate's real capabilities, so they just depend on the GPA to gauge someone.
My question to you as a recruiter is would you call me over to the Microsoft campus for an interview session if I told you my college GPA was 3?
You probably would try to get rid of me by the 2nd or so phone interview, because you know you have a supply chain of 4.0's waiting to get hired.
Janelle said:
Sarurbha - i have to comment to you first- Futurama is my FAVORITE tv show ever- (i especially like the episode where Gunter the monkey wears the hat that makes him a genius, and at the end he must decide whether or not he wants to wear the hat and be isolated from the other monkeys, or whether he wants to take the hat off and become a monkey again - and I love how he stomps on the hat, and decideds to me a middle mangement monkey and go back to business school--- i went to business school--- i love that episode) - just had to share.
Anyhoo--to answer your question, i would call you for an interview if you had a 3.0--- if you had other things on your resume that were of interest to me - like your work history, your project, and your leadership skills. I would rather take a person with a 2.5 who worked for all 4 years of school and can code like a machine than someone who has a 4.0, but can code 100 lines with the text book in their hand.
Off to get my year end review score- will comment later on the rest- wish me luck :)
-Janelle
Tahmid Munaz said:
I agree that GPA has nothing to do for getting your 1st or even your next Job.
From my experience in hiring, sometimes i got lower GPA holder candidate competing a high GPA holder candidate for the same post with more experience or knowledge base. GPA is a record what was his past at his Ungergrad school. GPA never certifies how communicative/smart/knowledgeable/experienced/creative the candidate could be. If it's YES! - then why we need to takeInterview?
Personally - My GPA is below 3. And it was for mostly of my Business courses (Accounting + Business + Sociology + History + Marketing). But i did fine in my Computer Courses. Not sure whether Microsoft or Google (or any Fortune 100 companies) ever gonna call me, but i am not doing that bad! Still rocking with my career and hope to be doing well in future :) I started working from my 3rd year of Undergrad where i found more challenging on working for commercial projects in part time. I found it more challenging than passing extra time on my Business courses. May be i could have taken care of my GPA, But i didn't.
I know few guys who didn't pass their undergrad yet, but they are working great. How did they get their place to work? At last it's not all about GPA. GPA could give you a past record but not future :)
James said:
"middle mangement monkey"
Probably just a typo, but I found it funny in this context anyway Janelle! Best of luck with the review score, if I'm not too late. Keep your parents away from the punch bowl, keep your hat firmly in place at all times and you'll be fine! :-)
I don't have a GPA as such - wrong country for that - but I agree with the commenters saying grades and interviews are both a poor prediction of developer skills. (My own alma mater is notorious for harsh interviews, although I feel my two were fine.) Most of the skills I actually use these days were either learned entirely outside university, or by osmosis from extra-curricular things rather than in the lectures.
said:
Grades (or GPA, as it seems to me you call that in USA) are completely *useless*, IMHO.
Only stupid companies pay attention to grades, grades are useless also because grades are not a "scientific" thing: they depend on the particular course, on the particular teacher, etc.
There are super-bright people who *don't* have a degree, like Bill Gates :) (or Steve Jobs!)
andre said:
some people hasn't the best alumni of your class. but this people are great in all that they do. i think GPA's don't matter at all.
bigkissy said:
Wow I can't believe what people are saying in these comments. It seems like there's so much anomosity towards those who got high GPAs. It's almost like the person with a high GPA is being painted as some robot who is only capable of memorizing a text book and the person with the low GPA is some genius who is simply to bored with and is above learning in the classroom.
Please.
First off, learning in the classroom can take a lot of creative thinking, especially when the teacher is not good, the book isn't clear and the concept is difficult. You have to write things down on paper, play with different ideas and keep perservering until the concept makes sense to you. If you go to a good institution, a lot of your teachers will challenge you and make you apply these concepts to unfamiliar situations which takes outside the box thinking to solve. That's why theres a bell curve in the class for the test, and not everyone gets A's.
And another common theme I see throughout this post is that "maybe the person doesn't like their teacher, or the subject matter"...well I have news for you, no one likes all of their teachers, and most of us comp science majors want to have nothing to do with all of the extra non programming related classes we have to take. I'd love to sit around all day and play with stuff and work on projects I've been thinking about and neglect school but this isn't the most intelligent thing to do imo. Maybe you guys noticed but a lot of these upper echelon software companies place a lot of emphasis on GPA and make it so having a good GPA can only benefit you greatly. A lot of college is forcing yourself to do stuff that you don't want to do, and I think for the person who is able to do this, it says a lot about them.
Also, I have to take issue with what Saurabh said that people with higher GPAs are "good at finding shortcuts and don't assimilate the material". In most classes (in my experience), around 60% of the grade is usually from midterms and finals, and then sometimes there is also a quiz grade. The person with the higher GPA usually has to score in the upper echelon of his in-class test grades to maintain his / her high GPA, and I'd say it's impossble that you can get by on shortcuts, cheating or memorization in order to consistently do this. The person who is scoring high must have a good grasp of the concepts and also works hard.
So, back to the original question: should your GPA prevent you from getting your next job? I believe out of college GPA is important, and if you have a poor GPA then you need to have some great accomplishments / experience / projects to compensate, ESPECIALLY if you want to get into top tier companies like Microsoft. So GPA can play a strong role and I think it should, though obviously I don't think it should be the end all.
What about after you've had some experience after college? I can understand why companies still want to ask for your GPA, especially if they have statistics on characteristics of their more successful employees. A high GPA can be representative of a certain personality type: someone who's smart, works hard, can manage their time, is very driven and to a certain extent humble as well. Even though it may have been some years ago since the person was in college, it's unlikely that that person will have changed their habits, it's who they are. Also, you can't blame them just for asking, it might just be a small part of their decision process. I believe in this situation the manager acted really immaturely and passed on a potential opportunity.
Janelle said:
bigkissy - you bring up some really interesting points- i think that there are some assumptions being made that getting good grades = memorizing a text book. I think its more than that of course, but one of my main arguments is how LONG should your GPA follow you, haunt you, etc. I think for a lot of people who didn't have work experience in college, and focuses heavily on school it should HELP you find a job for the first few years out of college, but I think that often recruiters ONLY look at that number, and assume that they are getting a certain type of person. Again, all these are just generalizations... and there are exceptions to ever rule.
And i also agree with maybe a high gpa shows a person to be a specific type, ie over achiever, type a... but I think that to knock someone OUT of the competition for that reason is a mistake. I enjoyed reading your comments! they are much appreciated.
Sys- interesting you mention teachers, courses-- those all have to do with grading yes, but i would hope that a person would at least have a few fair teachers and courses that are interesting to them - if not, then they should probably transfer to another school... and fast.
James- your "parents in the punch-bowl" comment made my day. (and yes, I did well on my review--- so i guess today im feeling especially lovey with Microsoft, and am drinking the koolaid so to speak (out of the punchbowl... perhaps)?
Great comments everyone- this is a discussion I have been sharing with the managers and recruiters on my team as well as we all have our opinions (and i think peoples opinion lie heavily on what THEIR OWN gpa was in college... interesting....)
I wonder if the same is true for people on both sides of the arguement.
-Janelle
JosephT said:
i think that people who say grades don't matter must not have done very well in school- otherwise you would be fine with them following you from job to job. I like showing them to employers, and am offended when recruiters don't ask- as I should get a better job/higher pay because of them. My 2 cents.
said:
Janelle.
Make sure you share the punch "Virtually" with the rest of us eh?
It's fueled up some interesting fire here. I would say the GPA is part of the mix. You shouldn't hire somebody "Just because" or not on the same token. It's part of the overall mix. So a person with a 4.0 GPA that spent their life assemblng toothpicks (Can't SEE that, but just an example) vs a 1.3 that's worked in a pile of industry jobs for the right thing (AGAIN, pushing the extremes with the example).
It should help determine the qualifications. And in most of these instances probably does.
IQ can also help but I guess the whole point is probably the companies going to this level are fielding an enormous pile. They need to have SOMETHING to go on.
There, 'nuff said. I've said my bit.
Now I have to go off to work. And keep applying for Microsoft in the off hours... B)
said:
And AHA! I beat the staffing agent again! Have to get up PRETTY early to beat me to the postings silly agent... :)
If any of you havent' set up a profile on the careers website, the agent is a great way to filter through the pile!
Of course I'm still pulling out the jobs and getting in there before the agent tells me about it....
I think it's just ESP, or maybe a really good alarm clock and a blast of java!
Sean
TI said:
I think when considering grades, they should also consider the strength of the program and type of classes the candidate took. Some schools are pretty hard on giving A's and some are quite lenient. When screening resumes, I pay a very close attention to major GPA (CS/Math classes). My advice is if you have a poor overall GPA but a good Major GPA then try to highlight that instead of the overall GPA.
said:
Grin.... so hurry up with that ticket to Redmond... B)
Ens said:
As somebody who got a very high GPA from a very respected University, I would really selfishly like GPA to be all that, but realistically I know it's not. Still, some of the comments here about people with high GPAs actually being moronic robots are shocking and amusing. I'll grant that when people like JosephT claim they deserve higher pay on the basis of something they did somewhere else for someone else years and years ago, it can get a bit frustrating and you might want to rail against the system. But it's a bit much to suggest that people who achieved success at one stage of their life must necessarily have done it in some way that will make them unsuccessful later in life.
I don't stick my GPA on my résumé, although I do put the University's name down and mention honours -- I am, after all, a new grad; I need this -- later my experience with Microsoft will help carry me through. I would find it a little strange for them to ask for my grades during the interview process, but that wouldn't offend me and I don't see why it should offend anyone or drive them away. For all you know it could be one of those people who think anyone with a high GPA must utterly lack creativity ;). I have, however, been asked to fax over transcripts, but these were always after the job offer -- once it was in part for security clearance purposes and once it was for international immigration (helping to prove that my degree was fully earned).
GPA isn't the only thing, but it is a thing and it indicates something, some of it positive (precisely what it indicates varies from degree to degree, and school to school, and individual situation to individual situation -- I don't expect somebody who had to work two part time jobs to get through engineering to do very well even if they are the world's greatest genius; I was lucky, I only had to work summers and "mommy & daddy" took care of the rest -- school is much cheaper in Canada than in the US, mind you). Especially early on. People do change, and a GPA is a very imperfect predictor of workplace efficiency, whereas workplace efficiency in other jobs is a better predictor, so it only makes sense to phase the GPA out as new data comes in. Twenty years later, you have far more data too, so the GPA is a smaller relative dataset and a less relevant dataset. Exactly how much GPA matters right out of school is up for debate; but of course GPA should matter less and less over time. People far nerdier than I am can go about arguing exactly what curve the "GPA importance factor" should follow, although I'd say it descends pretty quickly indeed and then flattens out just barely above 0.
somebodyCool said:
I dunno.. I have a pretty crappy GPA .. a 2.1 .. one reason is that i transferred after my first year.. so this is the gpa for the last three years..
then i double majored.. so this includes comp sci and the other unrelated major..
also, i like logic.. but dont like math too much (yes.. odd i know).. and i had to take a *lot* of math courses... i also made some mistakes like taking on extra courses in a show of "i can do it bravado" and paid for it..
still, I landed some top notch internships, have really good team skills and can "get stuff done" .. I would make a decent programmer.. and a rock-star PM .. nothing to do with the gpa really...
gpa is just a metric to easily sort students who are otherwise hard to distinguish from reach other.. if someone has an internship or research or something.. then that should take definite precedence over a gpa..
also.. if I have an A in Operating systems and you have a C.. does that mean I am better than you at OSes?.. no.. it means I am better at taking tests.. or there is hig grade inflation going on.. or the teacher likes me .. or you took the course with a different prof (even within the same university).. or at a different cmapus... or a 100 other things!
its interesting.. i was never asked about my gpa during my Microsoft interview.. for some 6 hours we talked only about past internships and technical puzzles.
Thats the right way to do it. If you really are *smart* then this will show it - irrespective of your gpa.
said:
Good answer! Good answer! Applause! Applause!
I think that sums it all up!
V said:
For me my gpa represents hard work that I'd like a company to consider I'm capable of. It is the only thing I have to represent It was above a 3.5. Perhaps my opinion on GPAs is based on it.
When looking through 100's of resumes a day, how do you distinguish a 2.7 GPA from a slacker who got an internship at his uncle's backyard business and occasionally typing out some html for a webpage... from a 2.7 GPA who completed a really challenging internship with a growing startup and didn't have time to concentrate as much on school?
How, by just looking at the resume? They could write very similar things.
No offense to the hard worker outside school/genius doesn't go to class because its boring 2.7's out there, but knowing and being told throughout college that GPA is one of the distinguishing factors on a resume (not THE factor, just one of them), perhaps working on your GPA a bit wouldn't hurt. Just to differentiate yourselves from the can't handle it/slackers/don't cares out there...?
I preferred to slack at times, and I would have rather had more $$ and job experience but, realizing that GPA was important I made some sacrifices elsewhere.
That said, GPA shouldn't even be considered once you've had 2-3 full time jobs or a couple of years experience on the job. At that point you can just call the work references of the interviewee. I would not work for any company that asked my GPA now that I've been employed a while.
bigkissy said:
"Grin.... so hurry up with that ticket to Redmond... B)" - ever heard of subtlety????
said:
I've worked in the field long enough to learn that it's good to be polite.
It's excellent to be subtle.
But sometimes if you don't "speak up", you don't get heard. It's ok. I am patient and Redmond will happen, I am quite confident in that part.. ;)
I'm just enjoying myself in the meantime. The good people in HR (or Microsoft College or whomever is reading this) seem to have a good sense of humor. (Humour in Canada eh?)
Just along the same lines of "It's December 1st, Christmas hurry up" or whatever appropriate Holiday strikes you...
Hee hee hee hee.....
BD said:
Personally, your GPA should have no impact on you getting a job or not. I am a director for a large trade association in the technology department and I have no college degree and I had a very low GPA in HS.
I have a few college classes that I have taken over the years but not a high GPA. I passed the classes and was able to take what I learned and apply it to my job.
My last job was 5 years of doing GIS...some of which was for homeland security. I never attended a single class to start doing it, I just taught myself how to do it.
To many businesses want you to have a degree to do this or that or to be in a certain position. That shouldn't always be the case. If you have years of experience doing that same job, that should make you the best canidate; not the person right out of college that doesn't have any personal skills or only knows "the book".
I work with a lot of people that have great college degrees, but like somebody else said, that doesn't mean they have any common sense whatsoever.
CG said:
I have a really high GPA ( > 3.8 ) but I agree that one should not only look at the GPA but what one has achieved as well. I've been running a software company before I even started uni but I had to keep up my GPA as I was on a scholarship. :) I basically do whatever it takes to distinguish myself from the rest of the pack so to speak, hence I wanted a high GPA. Things taught at uni are not necessary up to date with the outside world or considered useful. I actually found my diploma education more relevant to the real world as it was a lot more practical.
Anthony Ramos said:
Recent thinking in personality typology models shows that extrinsic factors to the individual, such as Person-Environment fit, are as impactful as a person's individual traits.
I know that, as an ENFP type according to Meyer's Briggs Typology indicator, we shirk mundane tasks but typically thrive upon creative thinking and peer-instructor interaction, as well as working in groups. These tendencies as well as environmental attributes such as course size meant that I tended to do poorer in large lecture-hall courses, but thrived in smaller, more social learning environments.
c said:
I'm late to this post but I really have to write something after reading those comments!
1. I went to a university where actual assignments were things like writing the VM of a kernel and a compiler. I think high marks at this university indicate ability with the most difficult of programming tasks. Just because not all universities are like this doesn't mean that you should disregard marks entirely.
2. The argument that a student might not have paid much attention to university because they were more interested in other things at that time, is well, interesting. If they didn't pay attention to university, why do you think they'll pay attention to work?
3. I think high marks imply someone who is very competitive and can deliver results. Note that this is a one way implication -- I think you can be successful without high marks. However, if you have high marks it is an indicator of something.
As the speaker at our graduation said "those in industry who pretend that your university education was worth nothing probably didn't do very well at university".
I think disregarding the difficulty of obtaining the highest grades and preferring someone with high grades (but relatively mediocre, in comparison) who happened to be president of a society is a major recruiter mistake. You end up with large companies full of people who are presentable but not good at actually delivering products. I've tried both -- going for high grades and being president a society -- and I can tell you that high grades are far harder to get.
Microsoft's JobsBlog said:
Dear Jobsblog : I'm a college student heading into my last semester, and my GPA is good but not great.
Janelle said:
This is a great discussion - keep it coming!
Let me address some of these issues... first - Aaron. I do agree that there should be limits to the types of people I hire, however there is a difference between someone with a 2.0 and a 3.8. Even I can admit that. However, I think as recruiters its important to understand the story behind the candidate (granted I can't do this for every one) but if I think someone has a compelling resume, and the GPA doesn't seem to add up I still want to talk to that person- perhaps they have a family, or work 3 jobs, or maybe they are a genius and don't attend class because their professors are terrible. I think that GPA is an indicator of how much people value their college education at that time, and thats about it. But i do agree that there should be a range for what we generally hire- I would say that a good majority of the candidates I hire have at least a 3.5 - but thats just an average- Ive hired people less than that, numerous people in the 3s, and a handfull in the 2s. :)
A suggestion to readers out there is that if your GPA is less than 3.0 you should leave it off your resume - as some recruiters really focus on that stuff- and when they do ask about it you can at least tell them a compelling story about why its that way (if there is a compelling story)
Kevin - I agree- i think some recruiters and hiring manager use GPA's as a crutch -and they probably had a 3.99999 :)
I personally like to see what people do OUTSIDE of their classes- as at every school people take the same classes, participate in the same projects, year after year. I like to see someone who went above and beyond on their assignments or thru a volunteer or work project. But again, thats just me.
-Janelle
said:
Well I guess my comment would be if your GPA was say 0.3, you MIGHT not want to even apply.... :)
I think that goes without saying. There are some schools that don't offer a GPA in their scoring (some of the private computer colleges I don't remember having them, at least here in Canada)
yaskil said:
In my oppinion GPA is not related with your IQ and your skills set. It only shows that you are successful or unsuccessful on your education. So from this approach GPA can only give an oppinion whether applicant is successful or unsuccessful. That is all. It does not show what you are capable of, how smart you are, are you having things done or are you creative which are very important on hiring.
So a good company, which is really seeking for good talents, should not directly decide on GPAs. They should try to give equal chance to each applicant without prejudice based on GPA degree. Consider an applicant who has very low GPA but is extremely creative and open minded. That can be possible. If company gives "no hire" based on GPA to this type of applicant, we cannot say that talent seeking operation went successful.
Companies can ask for your diploma, but should not ask for your transcript if you are working for several years. So from this point of view, I found the company in the story unprofessional, they do not know the job they are doing. That is my point of view ;).
As a fact Bill Gates himself left school for Microsoft. He doesn't have GPA, but he is smart and successful. He has ability to see the future. As a result he is one of the richest people in the world. Assume that Bill Gates applied for another software company when he left the school (assume that he applied for Google). Does he have any chance without a good GPA. I don't think so. Consider that situation and decide whose loss that can be. Is it a loss for the applicant or loss for the company?
I did well in my school, but when I was going to school on my early 20s, I was a professional computer programmer for several years. I did have customers whom I had written software which are running on DOS and Windows 95. I learn most of my information on my own effort. School diciplines you, but if you don't like the computers and don't have passion, you cannot become a good developer. So good companies do not miss that.
@Janelle
You told that you hired people who has GPA around 2.0s. Did you hire anyone who doesn't have a degree?. I am wondering because it is possible on Microsoft's hiring process. I am wright, am I?
yaskil said:
JosephT, I said grades don't matter, but my GPA was very well. I finished my school with degree (second best, but this is not even mentioned in my resume). Wanted to share. From my point of view, if company is looking for my school performance (which is 4-5 maybe more years before, where the technology is old) and requests a specific degree, but not my past experience, i would think this tech company is unprofessional. They don't have any idea of self-training, they don't know about improvement, they don't know about experience etc. And that shows that they don't know the job they are doing. They are not looking for talent but looking for successful students. Also why would I work for a company who doesn't know the job they are doing? They don't know how to evaluate your past work experience and they need to check your transcript in order to be sure. How someone who cannot evaluate your past work experience will able to evaluate your current work experience? If I were the manager in the story and been asked for my transcript (which I have is very well), I would have not take the negotiations further and withdraw my application. And think of whom loss it can become. If I am smart enough, I can find another place to work. If company is not smart enough will they be able to find qualified workers, and will they survive in tough competition arena without good workers? Believe me that is not the way to hire bests ;)...
To Janelle, you did not answered my question :))... Comes again. Did you hired someone who hasn't got a degree? or If you have a chance will you hire someone who hasn't got a degree?
Janelle said:
Yaksil- sorry about that- i try to answer the questions in groups (I was up pretty late last nite and wanted to be fresh while answering your question)--- here we go.
As you know- our founder did not have a college degree completed until a few months ago--- I know that to be consdered for the positions I hire for you have to have a degree (as they are college hire positions- theres a shocker)
As for other positions within the company, if your resume and experience can show that you have strong skills without having gone to college you are just fine. Alot of this has to do with the TYPE of company. Tech companies are more forgiving, as they realize the worlds best coder or hacker could be someone who is self taught. I think that there are specific positions within the company where degrees are preferred-- some of them that come to mind would be more business type positions. But again, the key word is PREFERRED. If you are a great developer, and you built up your resume without that springboard of higher education, then there are places for you. That doesn't ensure that a hiring manager or recruiter may question that information-- but perhaps its also directly related to how many years of work experience you have--- if you have 2 years of experience, a recruiter may ask "did you go to college-- why or why not"... if you have 10 years of experience it may not even come up in conversation. Make sense? If you can back up your skills with concrete evidence other than college of why you would make a great employee then it shouldn't stop you from getting a job here.
My thoughts. :)
Sean- you are the earliest blog poster i know! I think your mention of IQ is an interesting one--- I for one don't know my IQ (uh oh, Im opening myself up for e-critics here). It would be interesting if we could give IQ tests to candidates--- maybe that is what the purpose of those old school microsoft moving Mt. Fuji puzzle questions were -- to level the playing field!
ps- I enjoy reading your blog as well!
-Janelle
said:
You also have to keep in mind
high IQ does NOT equal high common sense....
I am a perfect example... some days...
ok ok ok ... fine... MOST days... :P
So was I SUPPOSED to add oil to the car engine?