do tech employers look for good GPA?

[ggavinmoss]

Like everyone else says, if you have experience your GPA (so long as it's reasonable) doesn't matter too much.

However, some places use GPA as a pre-requisite for getting an on campus interview. It seems silly, but that's how it is.

-geoff

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: guyver01
I know when I do interviews... i couldn't give a rats a$$ is you were on the deans list, or participated in "after school activities" .... i just care about your experience, and knowledge... if you can't pass the test i give you on first interview... you have no shot.

But that's after tossing 90% of the resumes away, right? And didn't you look at the GPA when deciding which to keep / toss, or did someone else do the resume screening?

When I was reading resumes before interviewing people for a couple of entry-level software development jobs, GPA was a major factor since most applicants had no work experience.

To all reading this, if you were trying to decide which of two recent grads to invite in for a job interview, would you pick the 2.9 or the 3.4?

The 2.9 person might even be better for the job, but you don't have time to interview more than a fraction of the applicants, so you have to go with what you can infer from the resume for most of them.

A high GPA tells you that the person has self-discipline and the ability to learn. A low GPA can mean the person only does well when something interests them, and blows off the rest of their work. Since real-world jobs are a mix of interesting and boring work this means many low-GPA people will only do a good job part of the time (for example good coding, lousy documentation and testing).

[edit] again this is about a recent grad. Once you prove yourself with work experience the GPA stops mattering.

 

[josphII]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: guyver01
I know when I do interviews... i couldn't give a rats a$$ is you were on the deans list, or participated in "after school activities" .... i just care about your experience, and knowledge... if you can't pass the test i give you on first interview... you have no shot.

But that's after tossing 90% of the resumes away, right? And didn't you look at the GPA when deciding which to keep / toss, or did someone else do the resume screening?

When I was reading resumes before interviewing people for a couple of entry-level software development jobs, GPA was a major factor since most applicants had no work experience.

To all reading this, if you were trying to decide which of two recent grads to invite in for a job interview, would you pick the 2.9 or the 3.4?

The 2.9 person might even be better for the job, but you don't have time to interview more than a fraction of the applicants, so you have to go with what you can infer from the resume for most of them.

A high GPA tells you that the person has self-discipline and the ability to learn. A low GPA can mean the person only does well when something interests them, and blows off the rest of their work. Since real-world jobs are a mix of interesting and boring work this means many low-GPA people will only do a good job part of the time (for example good coding, lousy documentation and testing).

a high gpa doesnt say jack about ones ability to learn, but it does say a lot about their willingness to conform. There's practically no correlation between how intelligent you are and your gpa, thats just fact. weather or not i had a high gpa didnt mean anything cause i knew just from talking to my peers that i was more intelligent than them. so i didnt turn in a homework assignment or two, so? just because i may have been lazy as far as homework doesnt mean id be lazy on the job. homework and work work are polar opposites. weather or not you 'prove' your intelligence by being a monkey/drone all throughout school and giving 100% effort all the time is completely different. you can throw the gpa out the window as far as im concerned. do you know how many people ive met that think they should be hired just because of their gpa? its ridiculous. for me, the classes i got A's and B's in were the classes i worked smarter, not harder. I coppied homework, obtained past years exams (which are re-used), etc. Does that make me any smarter? does it make me any more knowledgable in that topic than the classes i wasnt able to cut corners and may have ended up w/ a C?

there are many more ways to decipher who would be a good candidate to interview - their level of professionalism, their profile (aka where theyre from, etc). if you have concerns about their work habbits or their intelligence, well, thats what the interview is for! you can tell more about somebody in 5 minutes during an interview than you can by any number of test results. personally i dont put my gpa on my resume because i dont want to be stereotyped by the stigmas associated with low gpa. i give people the credit that after reading my cover letter and reviewing my resume they can tell id be a good employee.

as for your question to whom you would interview - i would exam many other factors before i settled on gpa as the deciding factor as to whom to interview. gpa would be a last resort.

now i dont blame companies for using gpa as a factor for whom to interview becasue frankly its the easy way out and time is money. but to try to justify that method as being the best is just plain silly.

 

[wyvrn]

I wouldn't hire you with that attitude, that's for sure. I had that attitude for a long time and it reflects in your personality, whether you think it does or not. People stay away from you, because they are attracted to good people. When I changed my attitude is when I started having more success inside and out of school. I think grades have a lot to do with what type of person you are.

Originally posted by: josphII

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: guyver01
I know when I do interviews... i couldn't give a rats a$$ is you were on the deans list, or participated in "after school activities" .... i just care about your experience, and knowledge... if you can't pass the test i give you on first interview... you have no shot.

But that's after tossing 90% of the resumes away, right? And didn't you look at the GPA when deciding which to keep / toss, or did someone else do the resume screening?

When I was reading resumes before interviewing people for a couple of entry-level software development jobs, GPA was a major factor since most applicants had no work experience.

To all reading this, if you were trying to decide which of two recent grads to invite in for a job interview, would you pick the 2.9 or the 3.4?

The 2.9 person might even be better for the job, but you don't have time to interview more than a fraction of the applicants, so you have to go with what you can infer from the resume for most of them.

A high GPA tells you that the person has self-discipline and the ability to learn. A low GPA can mean the person only does well when something interests them, and blows off the rest of their work. Since real-world jobs are a mix of interesting and boring work this means many low-GPA people will only do a good job part of the time (for example good coding, lousy documentation and testing).

a high gpa doesnt say jack about ones ability to learn, but it does say a lot about their willingness to conform. There's practically no correlation between how intelligent you are and your gpa, thats just fact. weather or not i had a high gpa didnt mean anything cause i knew just from talking to my peers that i was more intelligent than them. so i didnt turn in a homework assignment or two, so? just because i may have been lazy as far as homework doesnt mean id be lazy on the job. homework and work work are polar opposites. weather or not you 'prove' your intelligence by being a monkey/drone all throughout school and giving 100% effort all the time is completely different. you can throw the gpa out the window as far as im concerned. do you know how many people ive met that think they should be hired just because of their gpa? its ridiculous. for me, the classes i got A's and B's in were the classes i worked smarter, not harder. I coppied homework, obtained past years exams (which are re-used), etc. Does that make me any smarter? does it make me any more knowledgable in that topic than the classes i wasnt able to cut corners and may have ended up w/ a C?

there are many more ways to decipher who would be a good candidate to interview - their level of professionalism, their profile (aka where theyre from, etc). if you have concerns about their work habbits or their intelligence, well, thats what the interview is for! you can tell more about somebody in 5 minutes during an interview than you can by any number of test results. personally i dont put my gpa on my resume because i dont want to be stereotyped by the stigmas associated with low gpa. i give people the credit that after reading my cover letter and reviewing my resume they can tell id be a good employee.

as for your question to whom you would interview - i would exam many other factors before i settled on gpa as the deciding factor as to whom to interview. gpa would be a last resort.

now i dont blame companies for using gpa as a factor for whom to interview becasue frankly its the easy way out and time is money. but to try to justify that method as being the best is just plain silly.

 

[ChrisIsBored]

GPA only matters if you're going for a co-op/internship.

Any other company that's asking you your GPA as a requirement is a fvcked up place to begin with.

 

[arcas]

GPA doesn't matter in the employment scene so long as it's 3.0 or higher. Employers are generally looking for someone with a specific set of skills who can come up to speed quickly. Employee education costs time and money and given the current IT economy, someone who the employer thinks will first need to be trained for six months before becoming productive is likely to be passed over regardless of GPA. If you have skills, it's in your best interest to list them on your resume. This is the key to scoring interviews in the IT job market.

Good employers will subject their prospective new hires to a barrage of interviews (one friend who recently hired on at a network storage company had to go through nine (9!) separate interviews before they made an offer). It's during these interviews that the new hires are separated from the wannabes. And not all "interviews" are "character interviews" (eg. you play question-and-answer with the managers). Those are pretty ineffective in gauging a potential employee's dedication. Some examples of more effective types of interviews that might take place after the basic character interview:

1) Your tasked with determining exactly which software tools and libraries are required to compile, link and package one of the company's software products that consists of 1500 source files and 3.5 million lines of code. Obviously since you're not an employee (yet), you're not allowed to look at the source code. You have 5 minutes to explain how you would do it. The applicants who pass this step are reasonably competent with complex build procedures and are resourceful. This means the company won't have to spend as much time hand-holding this employee. I laughed when an IRC friend told me he had to do this during one of his interviews. But after I thought about it for a while, I realized this is a great way to gauge how much an applicant really comprehends.

2) (If you've applied for a software-development position...) Your interviewer might ask you to name the 5 or 6 programming-related books from your personal library and textbooks don't count (if you have to stop and think, you probably don't own it). The idea here is to separate those who have a love for the field (ie. dedication) from those who merely see it as just a way to pay the bills. This is one interview where someone with a low GPA can shine while a straight-A student can fail miserably. Anybody who lists books like "Teach Yourself XXX in 21 days" is automatically shown the door 🙂

3) Quizzes are not uncommon. A certain three-letter company used to require all employees to pass an exam within a few months of being hired lest they would become un-hired. Other companies administer simple quizzes during the interview process to weed out bad applicants. You'd be surprised how many people applying for a system administrator position can't write shell scripts. Another company I know of asks interviewees to write a Perl program to do X.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: chrisisbored
GPA only matters if you're going for a co-op/internship.
Any other company that's asking you your GPA as a requirement is a fvcked up place to begin with.

No it's not. At a small company we received over 75 resumes for two development positions. We didn't have time to stop working long enough to interview 75 people, or even 25 people. Since most of the applicants had no work experience GPA was one of the only factors we had to judge them by. That's the real world.

[edit] Same story at a large company, except then it's picking the 25 out of 1,000 to interview.

 

[CrazyDe1]

If I were to own my own company for entry level positions I'd put one of my recruiters in as a TA for classes that are relevant for the type of job I'm going to be hiring for. I'd have them secretly judge students and throughout the course of a few weeks you would know which people are hireable and which aren't...and I'd make them offers