Do grades matter on your CV? There are hundreds of employers in just about every industry that still care about a job candidate’s school grades. According to The Wall Street Journal; Stephen Robert Morse, a candidate for a communications job was asked by his recruiter to be ready to discuss his scores in a coming interview.
Mr. Morse, 28 years old, said he was “shocked” that a potential boss would be interested in the results of a test he took more than a decade earlier. In the end he passed on the opportunity which is evident that employers can be putting good candidates off for what most people would consider an irrelevant exercise.
Despite putting some candidate’s off, low scores at Senior school level doesn’t necessarily put an end to a person’s chances, instead, employers are saying that they believe A levels, GCSE’s and other college entrance exams help when comparing candidates with differing backgrounds or deciding whether someone has the raw brainpower required for the job or just in fact a good communicator.
Some may say that they worked hard for their grades and want to show them off on their CV and that they went to school for a good proportion of their young lives to achieve the end goal of being attractive on paper to a future employer. Others may argue and say that they are irrelevant to finding a suitable candidate for a job vacancy, especially if the job is not primarily based around academics. The fact of the matter is, GCSE’s, A levels and other academic grades remain a relevant part in the recruitment process because they are reliable, if imperfect way of measuring a candidate’s ability. This despite the fact that there are now so many ways of qualifying a candidate such as personality tests, data analytics and behavioural interviews have given employers more information about a candidate than ever before. Academic research has proved that cognitive ability can predict job performance, but there is significant evidence linking high scores with employee success during employment.