4 ms·

Still only matters for first job and then if you have nothing else to show. As a hiring manager, its a minus for me to see unless its for intern. But surprisin

Still only matters for first job and then if you have nothing else to show. As a hiring manager, its a minus for me to see unless its for intern. But surprising how often i see on cvs. (Speaking as former top of ChE class and frequent outlier to be removed on grading curves.)

MaxBarraclough 8y ago
How can good grades ever be a minus?
- protonimitate 8y ago
  I think he's saying that if you are applying to a job and have more than 0 experience, you shouldn't be relying on your GPA as a selling point. And I agree - GPA is pretty irrelevant to anything in the business world. All it proves is that you can play by the rules in the school system - not a real indication of your experience, skills, or relevant knowledge.
  - vkou 8y ago
    Success in much of the business world requires you to play by the rules of the business system, which may be as capricious, arbitrary, pointless, stupid, and orthogonal to relevant knowledge [1], as success in the school system. For every hiring manager who takes the approach that anyone putting their GPA on their resume is an asshole or an idiot, there's three others who think that there's something wrong with a junior applicant who doesn't put their GPA on their resume. Unless you tell the applicant what you want to see, they have no idea which of these two hiring managers you might be. Instead of downmarking people for having the audacity to present this information to you, perhaps you could just ignore it? [1] Which the hiring manager in this thread has unironically demonstrated.
    - pythonaut_16 8y ago
      Without any evidence to back up your claim I could just as easily claim that for every hiring manager who cares about seeing a GPA on a resume there are three others who think there's something wrong with an applicant with any experience who does put their GPA on their resume.
- cirgue 8y ago
  If you have to use it as a selling point, it means you don't have more compelling things to show.
  - vkou 8y ago
    Including 7 ASCII characters on your resume does not imply that you don't have more compelling things to show.
- Retric 8y ago
  Yes, I have seen a 4.0 taken as a negative sign for people that are overly focused on following the rules. Less common is some people have a GPA limit and will not higher people over it. That limit can be as low as 3.2 in one case. This more for undergrad as most people are expected to pull a ~3.8-4.0 in grad school making the number meaningless. PS: On average I suspect it's a net gain for your first job, but adding a GPA after that is likely a larger risk than you might think.
- pc86 8y ago
  They're not a minus in and of themselves. But more than a few hiring managers will prefer someone who obviously worked hard and has a transcript that moves from a B/B+ average to A's the last several years than someone who has an A in every class they're ever taken. If you're not going into academia or research it's much less important that you be a genius and much more important that you're willing and able to put in work over months or years to achieve an objective.
- randomdata 8y ago
  Getting 100% on a math quiz in elementary school is also not a minus, but approaching employers with that information as a means to sell yourself leaves them thinking that you have nothing to offer the workplace.
- bjourne 8y ago
  Dumb people prefer the company of other dumb people.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
Your GPA is just about around 5 characters or so on your CV, why not put it there? It seems odd to leave it out, but it definitely doesn’t need to be the focus of your CV.
- sodafountan 8y ago
  Because it's an arbitrary number that's increasingly becoming meaningless.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    For me when I was reviewing CVs, if it wasn’t there, I would wonder what they are trying to hide. If it was there, as long as it wasn’t especially low (for the school in question), then I would ignore it. There is no difference between a high and normal GPA, but a low GPA is probably some kind of flag.
commandlinefan 8y ago
I really hate the catch-22 that this sort of thinking puts applicants into - just like the "I would never hire anybody who had a degree or who had a certification" assertion you see on here so often. Since you're just as likely (if not more likely) to find somebody who's going to pass over you or weight you negatively for NOT including your GPA (on the assumption that you're not including it because you have something to hide), applicants are in a difficult position of trying to gauge whether or not they're facing somebody who weighs certain accomplishments _negatively_. Ignoring a credential is one thing, but counting it against somebody strikes me more as sour grapes.

MaxBarraclough 8y ago

How can good grades ever be a minus?

protonimitate 8y ago
I think he's saying that if you are applying to a job and have more than 0 experience, you shouldn't be relying on your GPA as a selling point. And I agree - GPA is pretty irrelevant to anything in the business world. All it proves is that you can play by the rules in the school system - not a real indication of your experience, skills, or relevant knowledge.
- vkou 8y ago
  Success in much of the business world requires you to play by the rules of the business system, which may be as capricious, arbitrary, pointless, stupid, and orthogonal to relevant knowledge [1], as success in the school system. For every hiring manager who takes the approach that anyone putting their GPA on their resume is an asshole or an idiot, there's three others who think that there's something wrong with a junior applicant who doesn't put their GPA on their resume. Unless you tell the applicant what you want to see, they have no idea which of these two hiring managers you might be. Instead of downmarking people for having the audacity to present this information to you, perhaps you could just ignore it? [1] Which the hiring manager in this thread has unironically demonstrated.
  - pythonaut_16 8y ago
    Without any evidence to back up your claim I could just as easily claim that for every hiring manager who cares about seeing a GPA on a resume there are three others who think there's something wrong with an applicant with any experience who does put their GPA on their resume.
cirgue 8y ago
If you have to use it as a selling point, it means you don't have more compelling things to show.
- vkou 8y ago
  Including 7 ASCII characters on your resume does not imply that you don't have more compelling things to show.
Retric 8y ago
Yes, I have seen a 4.0 taken as a negative sign for people that are overly focused on following the rules. Less common is some people have a GPA limit and will not higher people over it. That limit can be as low as 3.2 in one case. This more for undergrad as most people are expected to pull a ~3.8-4.0 in grad school making the number meaningless. PS: On average I suspect it's a net gain for your first job, but adding a GPA after that is likely a larger risk than you might think.
pc86 8y ago
They're not a minus in and of themselves. But more than a few hiring managers will prefer someone who obviously worked hard and has a transcript that moves from a B/B+ average to A's the last several years than someone who has an A in every class they're ever taken. If you're not going into academia or research it's much less important that you be a genius and much more important that you're willing and able to put in work over months or years to achieve an objective.
randomdata 8y ago
Getting 100% on a math quiz in elementary school is also not a minus, but approaching employers with that information as a means to sell yourself leaves them thinking that you have nothing to offer the workplace.
bjourne 8y ago
Dumb people prefer the company of other dumb people.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

Your GPA is just about around 5 characters or so on your CV, why not put it there? It seems odd to leave it out, but it definitely doesn’t need to be the focus of your CV.

sodafountan 8y ago
Because it's an arbitrary number that's increasingly becoming meaningless.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  For me when I was reviewing CVs, if it wasn’t there, I would wonder what they are trying to hide. If it was there, as long as it wasn’t especially low (for the school in question), then I would ignore it. There is no difference between a high and normal GPA, but a low GPA is probably some kind of flag.

commandlinefan 8y ago

I really hate the catch-22 that this sort of thinking puts applicants into - just like the "I would never hire anybody who had a degree or who had a certification" assertion you see on here so often. Since you're just as likely (if not more likely) to find somebody who's going to pass over you or weight you negatively for NOT including your GPA (on the assumption that you're not including it because you have something to hide), applicants are in a difficult position of trying to gauge whether or not they're facing somebody who weighs certain accomplishments _negatively_. Ignoring a credential is one thing, but counting it against somebody strikes me more as sour grapes.