If an academic record could be measured in altitude, Jason Nordin’s would be Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Nordin entered his first round of recruiting last year at Kellogg Graduate School of Management with a 4.0 grade-point average. He didn’t have to think long about whether to include that notable statistic on his resume. He landed the job he wanted with Marakon Associates, a management consulting firm in Chicago.
“It was to my advantage to disclose grades,” said Nordin, 30. “Whether that was a deciding factor [in getting the job], it’s tough to say.”
Nordin’s grades certainly didn’t hurt his chances. But he’s right. The grades question–how much do they matter in getting, or being denied, the job you want?–can be a tricky one. When asked, most recruiters and educators say, “It depends.”
And one of the things it might depend on is what school you attend.
Some recruiters won’t shoot you a glance if you’re not in the top 25 percent of your class and didn’t attend a top-tier school.
“It requires an interviewer to understand a little about where those grades are coming from,” said Glenn Sykes, director of career services and placement for Kellogg. “Does someone from school A with an easier grading system count as much as someone from school B with a tougher grading system?”
Hoping to avoid that scenario, students at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business last fall overwhelmingly passed a grade non-disclosure policy. Students, however, can disclose their grades after a job offer has been made.
“You want to make yourself the best you can be, instead of taking classes that are easier to get a better grade. This helps allay those fears,” said Neal Shah, president of the student government group that helped lead the effort to pass the student referendum.
Shah, a second-year student majoring in private-wealth management, is currently entertaining job offers and is set to graduate in June. Even before passage of the grade non-disclosure policy at the school, Shah said he didn’t include his GPA on his resume. But occasionally he was asked.
“I would tell them,” he said, adding that the non-disclosure policy passed last fall went into effect for first-year students. “It would be hard to tell a recruiter that I won’t give my GPA, because [the policy] doesn’t affect me.”
Some of the other top business schools, including Harvard Business School and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, have policies against disclosing grades during the recruiting process. It takes the pressure off students and encourages them to challenge themselves by taking a course that won’t be an easy “A,” officials say.
At Stanford University, there is no formal non-disclosure policy but students are discouraged from sharing their GPA with recruiters, said Cathy Castillo, news director for the business school.
Nonetheless, even if grades are not disclosed before the interview, they usually come up at some point during the interview.
“Typically, we will ask for that,” said Andrew Giangola, spokesman for McKinsey & Co. consultancy in New York. “We care about it; we consider it important.”
But Giangola said that McKinsey respects school non-disclosure policies and would not rescind an offer because of grades.
Jerry Bohovich, spokesman for the National Association of Colleges and Employers, said that most employers agree that if a job candidate has a 3.0 GPA or better, or has received academic honors, they should include that information on their resume.
“[Employers] assume if it’s not there, then [the applicant] hasn’t done that well,” he said. “But even if you don’t have a 3.0 or higher, if you have good experience that will certainly work in your favor.”
Still, grades are becoming a growing debate in the world of academia. Professors at colleges and universities are giving out a lot more A’s today than they did 30 years ago, studies show. Students, naturally, respond that they’re working harder to earn those marks. But some academics fear that so-called grade inflation could be a sign of diminishing education standards.
Cliff Adelman of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Education Research and Improvement disputes the grade-inflation argument, saying that GPAs have gone down from generation to generation. Grade-point averages don’t mean much on the graduate level, he added, because schools have such different grading practices.
“Some don’t give A’s, B’s, C’s and D’s,” Adelman said, which is why the his agency is unable to calculate an average GPA for MBA students.
While educators, students and employers might disagree on how much grades really matter, even in today’s hot job market they are used as a barometer by recruiters to select the cream of the graduating crop. Unlike seasoned professionals, students usually have less work experience, so grades can be used to determine how well a candidate might perform within the company.
But if cum laude doesn’t follow your name, don’t fret. A majority of recruiters are equally as interested in summer internships, prior work experience and involvement in extracurricular activities, and, most importantly, whether a candidate will be a good fit with the company.
In the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ 1999 Job Outlook survey, employers listed the top 10 credentials they look for in a job applicant. Communication skills and work experience came in first and second, respectively; grades were sixth, Bohovic said.
In its most recent survey, the organization posed a different question: If a candidate has good grades and experience, what are the other key things employers look for in a new hire? Communication still came out on top, he said.
“There’s an old adage that employers don’t want to hire just a 4.0 student,” said Karen Shelton, director of career services at the University of Missouri-Columbia’s College of Business. “Business is interaction, communication. It’s those skills students need to foster to make it in the workplace.”
Nordin, for example, was not just a top management student. He also has an undergraduate degree in engineering from Northwestern University and has five years of work experience with Abbott Laboratories. In addition, as vice president of academics for the student government group at Kellogg, he has proven leadership skills.
“It goes beyond grades,” Nordin said. “I knew grades were important to the industry I was going into, so I wanted to do well to keep my options open.”
Indeed, some industries such as investment banking, consulting, technology and research put more weight on grades.
Companies, particularly professional-services firms, are selling “intellectual horsepower,” and grades provide a reference point, said Kellogg’s Sykes. “Other things matter, too. Interpersonal skills, interest in the position, how they answer questions. But if you’re not getting other data, maybe you’ll rely heavier on the grades.”
