How relevant are your college grades to finding a new job, AFTER you’ve completed your first job?
General consensus seems to be: GPA is a big factor to finding your first job, but after that, GPA becomes only marginally
important after Work history, connections, and social skills.
I’ve personally never seen a GPA filter used outside of on-campus recruiting. (In fact, in my industry campus recruiting and experienced-hire recruiting are very different for multiple reasons). The only situation where I’d imagine it would come up for an experienced employee who lost their job and went back to school to retrain for a different position. But even then it’s unlikely - GPA is often used as a proxy for those other professional skills for college students because they usually don’t have long professional work histories to draw upon. Once you have that, GPA doesn’t say a lot.
My mediocre grades in college have never hurt me after my professional career started.
It may depend how long you work at your first job. If that first job is a short term one, a new employer may want to see your grades.
But once you have gotten successful experience in your field, the strength of your experience will matter more, on my opinion.
I’m on my 3rd employer since graduation. After the 1st job, not only do the employers not care about your GPA, they also don’t care what college u went to.
For my overseas work visas, the host countries only wanted to see a diploma. I could have shown them a sheepskin from Elmer Fudd College for all they cared.
Outside on campus recruiting, I have never been asked for my GPA. It could be the name of the school was enough but I doubt it. The longer you work, the less relevant your education will be and your experience and skills will be bigger factors.
Employers rather see strong work skills relevant to the position than high grades. That’s the big reason to get internships and work experience while in college.
What @GMTplus7 said times 1,000. I can’t remember the last time I saw a resume with a GPA on it. In my workplace we often joke about the relative success of varying colleges and GPAs represented in our organization.
Some people strongly feel that the school name on the diploma gives you an edge on getting promotions into management in certain big companies regardless of how long ago you graduated. Not GPA though, unless it’s easily recognized bragging rights (cum laude etc).
Teachers usually have to submit transcripts when applying for jobs. I had to submit transcripts from both my undergraduate and graduate schools when I applied for teaching jobs, even though those transcripts were 20+ years old. I sat on a hiring committee for my daughter’s high school, and we looked at those transcripts more for coursework than grades/GPA.
I agree grades don’t matter so much after the 1st job, however, if you are job hunting and making specific course references to bolster your credibility, employers should see a decent grade on your transcript.
Grades are important for first job and if you decide to apply to grad school down the road.
GPA being a factor really depends on the field even for the first job. I’ve never needed to give mine.
I attended a reception for a judicial candidate recently. He was a classmate, but I really didn’t know him. Somebody mentioned that he graduated either third or fourth in his class back in 1987 or '88. When I heard that I was impressed and voted for him. He was elected. Perhaps it’s more important in law, but I think if you have top-of-the-class grades it can be important years down the road.
Many grades Rick Perry got in college were Cs and even Ds. He was a failed pre-vet. However, this does not prevent him from having been elected as Texas’s governor twice. (He likely thinks quite highly of himself that he could possibly follow G. W. Bush’s foot step to the White House!)
It seems to me that the GPA has little to do with being successful in politics. (Some people even think that being too brainy makes a person unable to connect with the common citizens.)
Seriously, in some career path, the talents and experience outside of what you could learn from schools could be more important. What does Rick Perry have but all those valedictorians do not have? Surely, not so many valedictorians would look like Ronald Reagan than he does. Good looking does help. (I guess few valedictorians would be interested in cheerleading activities while in college. LOL.)
Importance of college grades beyond first job depends on type of position and employer. Most of the time, it won’t come up unless there’s something really unusual or prompts a red flag such as a background check finding the GPA is much lower than stated or worse, one claimed a degree he/she didn’t actually earn.
I believe this says much more about the culture of our political elections and society in general than anything else.
Attending an elite college, high college GPAs and academic/intellectual achievements don’t matter and sometimes could work against you due to the faux populism idea that folks with those factors are “too elitist”, “lack the common touch”, etc. There’s a reason why one popular rock album was named “American Idiot”.
In contrast, in other countries, having a mediocre college grades like W or Perry…especially at a non-elite institution means the candidate’s campaign is likely a non-starter. Especially if he/she isn’t apologetic about it or worse, parades it as a badge of honor.
More of the electorate in those countries have the idea their leaders should at least provide some proxies one is highly intelligent and/or hardworking. MORE IMPORTANTLY, they don’t want candidates who are viewed setting a “bad example” for children/adolescents such as W’s speech at Yale making light of his mediocre undergrad performance at Yale. While it’s considered lighthearted self-deprecating humor, a candidate in other countries may provoke outrage over the perception he/she’s undermining respect for their society’s valuing of education and encouraging younger kids/adolescents to follow their “bad example”.
I know one law firm that always wants to see the law school transcripts even if the applicant worked in ten different law firms before.
@cobrat " In contrast, in other countries, having a mediocre college grades like W or Perry…especially at a non-elite institution means the candidate’s campaign is likely a non-starter. Especially if he/she isn’t apologetic about it or worse, parades it as a badge of honor."
Could you say more about which countries you have in mind? Which candidates have had their campaigns hurt in this way?
My son has an 2nd interview this week with a Fortune 500 company. This would be his first job out of college. I am going to ask him if they asked for his GPA. I have seen his resume and I know it’s not on it.
Most large companies don’t “ask”- either the “resume drop” requires that a transcript be attached (which has the GPA on it), or there is an online form which accompanies the resume which will have fields for GPA, foreign language fluency, etc.
^ahh.
So can I assume if this was so for this company they already have that info and he, at least, passed the GPA test since he is onto 2nd interview?