3.0 GPA is that sufficient??

[Woodie]

i remember having a huge argument with my roommate sophomore year about how meaningless GPA is. his argument was if you have a low GPA, you wont get hired at a job you want. my argument is why the hell would anyone care what grades you got in college.

Once you have some experience, most people don't. But when the only thing an employer knows about your professional potential is what you did in college, GPA can be very important. It is an indicator of your work ethic, dedication, and ability/willingness to learn. Of course it doesn't say anything difinitively, but for recent college graduates, employers do tend to view a bad GPA as a red flag. Now sometimes it can be explained away during an interview, but the trick is getting the interview in the first place...and a poor GPA may get you a lower spot on the interview list, making the chance you actually get that opportunity much less likely.

also, i have asked several people if GPA should go on your resume. in school, they told me anything above a 3.2. one of my internships i asked one of the people that does the hiring and she said, its not entirely important but if you have a 3.8 it should go on there.

Not having GPA on the resume of a recent college graduate can be a red flag...it may give the impression that you are hiding something. With that said, I would definitely not put a bad GPA on my resume. From the recruiter's perspective, it at least leaves the possibility that it was omitted because of a stylistic decision, and not definitely because it was bad. So there is a chance they may give you a call to clarify...providing you with the perfect opportunity to explain what the problem was.

[Ncstatefan]

Just got done with freshman year.. my gpa is 2.5, business management is my degree

[Woodie]

It should go without saying that this is all just my opinion and the way I do things.

As someone who worked the educational system about as hard as it could be worked I dont see a GPA as anything other than a marker of how well you test. It is in no way an indicator of work ethic or dedication or ability/willingness to work. The only thing it indicates is that the person can meet a deadline and retain knowledge at least as long as the next day. Beyond that its a false metric for determining someones performance in the workplace. Case in point I work with a woman that graduated with honors from UNC and went on to receive a masters from the same institution in in her chosen field. To say she is dumb as a box of rocks seriously shames the rocks. While she has demonstrated the ability to excel in the world of academia she routinely makes those that work with her wonder just how much that forged sheepskin set her back.

My reaction when scanning resumes is generally the opposite of what you suggest. I tend to view GPAs on resumes as a type of boasting. Its been my experience (the most recent I detailed above) that GPAs on resumes have little to no bearing on weather or not a given candidate is right for the organization and rarely has any bearing on who I call for an interview.

Just to establish some credentials, I have worked in recruiting in a fortune 100 company, employment agency (thus working with multiple employers), as well as a government agency. And in my experience, your approach is not typical. Trust me, I understand where you are coming from, but for recent college graduates, there is little else other than GPA to give any indication of what to expect from a candidate (pre-interview, that is). And for most employers, they want to whittle down the candidate pool to a manageable number since they only have time for a limited amount of interviews.

I agree that GPA is very limited as a hiring tool (and virtually useless for anyone other than a recent grad). And no, it doesn’t show anything absolutely about a person’s work ethic, etc. To be clear, I used the term indicator more as a potential red flag that there could be issues, not that it shows there definitely is. Look at it this way, if someone sends in a resume with a 2.0 GPA, and there is no other telling data such as some sort of professional work history, the recruiter can only evaluate them based on the info they have. And a bad GPA does raise the question of why is it so bad. It might be like you say, and the person was just not a very good test taker, or there was a family illness, or simply that the person went a little crazy being away from home and totally bombed during their freshman and maybe even sophomore year before turning things around. But it could just as easily be that the person didn’t work hard enough, or care enough, or struggled trying to learn new things. The problem is that the employer doesn’t have any idea what the reason is without talking to the candidate about it. And when they have a huge stack of resume’s for the same position sitting in front of them, chances are that the employer is going to set the bad GPA aside as a potential red flag to be revisited later if needed. So unless there aren’t any better resume’s or if everyone interviewed didn’t pass muster, that candidate’s resume is likely to end up buried at the bottom of a drawer somewhere.

And believe me, I’ve seen my share of people with masters or doctorates that don’t have a lick of sense, and others that don’t have anywhere near the credentials that are stellar employees. But that’s what the interview is for. The problem for a recent college graduate with a bad GPA is that they may not get that call for an interview, so may not have a chance to explain away their grades and sell themselves as the best candidate for the job. Of course there are some (like yourself) that don’t value the GPA at all, but that is more the exception than the rule…and also depends on the field, level of specialization, need, number of resume’s typically received, time and availability to interview, etc..

Just out of curiosity, since you do not look at GPA, when you get a recent college graduate without much of a work history applying for a job, how do you determine whether or not to bring them in for an interview? Or do you typically try to bring everyone in…or at least do a phone interview with each of them?