<p>Person A: With a degree in electrical engineering with 2.7 GPA with some co-op/interships</p>
<p>Or </p>
<p>Person B: With a degree in electrical engineering with 3.3 GPA with NO co-op/internships?</p>
<p>Why would you hire the person you chose?</p>
<p>Neither… really lame GPAs in both cases. If I had to choose, the 3.3 isn’t so bad, I suppose. Depends on the company.</p>
<p>My company does not hire college graduates with GPAs less than 2.8. That being said, I prefer students with lower GPAs (3.0-3.4) and internships and co-ops to those with perfect GPAs and no experience.</p>
<p>If my company has a 3.0 cutoff, I won’t even look at the resume of Person A. Even if I tried to hire him, HR would cut him.</p>
<p>If I didn’t have a cut-off and both got into an interview, Person B would probably perform much better. To get past the interview you need to demonstrate certain competencies. These competencies are very hard to show without work experience. In fact, I’ve never seen it done.</p>
<p>In general, GPA, school, major, and company names on your resume will get you an interview, but your experiences, successes, and ability to communicate will get you a job.</p>
<p>So most of the companies prefer candidates to have co-op experience as well as above 3.0 GPA? </p>
<p>Does it matter if a degree is from a prestigious school or not?</p>
<p>Typically, the larger the company the stricter the hiring rules are. My company (I am now retired) would round file any resumes below 3.0, no matter what else you had going for you. Last year, they had so many applicants, they raised the floor to 3.4. </p>
<p>The typical college hire was from a top 10 engineering school, had a GPA 3.5 or above, usually with some kind of experience via an internship. Some, but not many, had less. If I had to choose, I would take the higher GPA. </p>
<p>Another point; How you came across personality wise was also important as you would have to fit into a team of other engineers working the problem. I did not hire several very high GPA people due to personality issues.</p>
<p>Smaller companies may have different criteria and may look more favorabily on the work experience. But a 2.7 GPA is kind of too low to get much consideration I would think. </p>
<p>Also, the competition for internships is kind of fierce. I would question how a person got an internship with such a low GPA. Did daddy own the company? Would devalue the internship in my mind.</p>
<p>That’s a good point you make. But the thing is, here at University at Buffalo, EE major have the lowest overall GPA average. Most of them below 3.0 due to curriculum being very rigorous compare to other Engineering majors. Even finding is co-op/internship is really competitive here in Buffalo. Does that mean that when EE majors graduate, they will have hard time finding work? </p>
<p>Also how important is your GPA after you land your first job? Other words, when do employee stop worrying about your GPA and start looking at previous job experiences? Do employers even ask for your transcript?</p>
<p>At the company I worked for (big aerospace) you would not get hired without providing your transcript. </p>
<p>5 years used to be about the range when an employer won’t be asking for your transcript, but who knows these days. My wife changed jobs a few years back with over 25 years experience and they still asked for an official copy of her transcript.</p>
<p>GPA is VERY important to getting a job out of college. A lot of engineering programs have low average GPAs, so that is the norm. It is against that norm that the big companies have the 3.0 cutoff. Smaller companies may not have such a cutoff and that is where a lower GPA person would likely get a first job.</p>
<p>You left out an important factor. Interview performance skill of each candidate!</p>
<p>And another important factor, it’s not what you know, but who you know!</p>
<p>What do they do during your first interview? Do they ask you engineering questions?</p>
<p>First interviews can vary widely between companies.</p>
<p>When I was interviewing college applicants I would ask them to discuss their prior internship work or a senior project that they worked on. Most of the applicants were from top engineering schools and had very good GPAs, so I wasn’t as concerned about their ability to do the work. I was more interested in finding out how well they could communicate their knowledge and how well they interacted with others. The applicant would meet with about 4 to 6 people, one at a time (no need to really gang up on the applicant, that can be very intimidating).</p>
<p>My son had a midling GPA, so he was looking at smaller companies. I was kind of surprised when a couple of companies that he interviewed with started him off with some kind of testing. One was a visualization test, another a true engineering problem set. With the latter, the hiring manager then sat down with him to discuss and go over the test. He must have passed, they hired him.</p>
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<p>Engineering first round interviews are pretty consistent from company to company - it’s a 45 min to 1 hour interview on campus with 1 to 2 recruiters. They almost never ask any sort of engineering questions.</p>
<p>It’s usually the second round where things might get more technical. I’ve seen just about everything: a group of students invited on site and put into “teams” to solve problems (and their group decision making recorded on video), IQ tests, engineering exams, a case study, technical interviews, etc. But the most common scenario is where they ask all behavioral interview questions with no technical questions at all. This is especially true if you have a good GPA.</p>
<p>On the original question (although I am not in a hiring position at my company), I would definitely take the 3.3 GPA student over the 2.7 - while experience is really important, that is a huge difference in GPA and a 2.7 suggests either a general weakness or some specific problem (mathematical ability, discipline, etc) that might impair you in your career. It might not, but it is worrisome.</p>
<p>When I was job hunting, my first round of interviews was on campus with 1-2 recruiters, took about half an hour, and had only a little bit of informal technical questioning (“Can you explain what s-parameters are?”) with more focus on my experience and interests in engineering. My second interviews were on site and actually included no technical questions at all - it was just meeting with different departments and trying to gauge mutual interest. That was it - no written test, no math, just a couple of concepts in that first round.</p>
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<p>The problem is that the lack of experience means that there might be an issue with that person’s ability to work in a team, to lead others, to take direction, to achieve results, to work with ambiguous direction, etc. You just can’t tell, and frankly being competent in those skills is more important than engineering knowledge.</p>
<p>If I get someone who is a poor engineer but can communicate and work with others well, I’ll find a place for that person. Maybe it’s in project management, maybe it will involve tedious calculations for a non-critical part of the facility, maybe it will be in a non-engineering role like client relations. While it’s less than ideal, I can put that person somewhere. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if I get someone who doesn’t work well with others, is considered a jerk, can’t follow direction, likes to “rebel” against authority, etc (and I’ve seen people like this), that person is basically useless. Maybe in some fields you can have that person do CAD work in a basement by himself all day, but in most cases an isolated position like that doesn’t exist. You’ll have to let that person go before he destabilizes the entire office environment.</p>