Comments on: Career Q&A: How to get a job when you have a low GPA

By: dreamer

dreamer — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:48:20 +0000

I myself graduated with a high GPA from UCLA in engineering (honors)

But I don’t even list my GPA on my resume because nobody, and I mean it, nobody cares about your GPA for technical jobs.

They care about skills/experience/references, as well as the interview (here they ask technical questions…so what’s the point of a GPA?).

So the moral of the story is: If you have a low GPA take an unpaid internship to boost your technical knowledge.

Note: This applies for “technical” jobs. I don’t know how it is in other fields. But, I imagine it would be absurd to judge humanities majors applying for an HR position on GPA; we all know, your Behavioral Sociology class means squat in the real world.

By: Lindsey Pollak

Lindsey Pollak — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 10:57:30 +0000

@Motivated- That’s great and encouraging! Thanks for sharing with us.

By: Motivated

Motivated — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 18:00:34 +0000

Out of 25 jobs I applied to I got interview for 20 of them , even though I have a poor GPA. The only reason I got so many interviews was that I had great experience in my field which I was able to build through relevant volunteer work. So I completely disagree on the point that lower gpa can not get you a good job. I eventually ended up in the top company in North America

By: Lindsey Pollak

Lindsey Pollak — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 23:53:27 +0000

@Anna- Thank you for sharing your experience. I’m sorry that you are having a difficult time. If you haven’t already, perhaps you could use the career center at your former institution as a resource. It’s always helpful to have someone review your professional portfolio with you. Best of luck!

By: Anna

Anna — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 21:19:50 +0000

I’ve graduated with a GPA of 2.1 in Aerospace Engineering from top 10 schools in a country. I don’t have experience. I can’t get a job anywhere. Period. I should have gone to lower ranked school and get higher GPA. Right now I have useless piece of paper (my diploma) on me and whole bunch of student loans. It’s been 8 months of having no job.

By: Lindsey Pollak

Lindsey Pollak — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:21:34 +0000

@CPME- thanks for commenting.

By: CPME

CPME — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:24:06 +0000

I graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree (and 2.7 GPA) from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Here, the average graduating GPA for ME’s is around a 2.65-2.7. GPA is not necessarily an indicator of intelligence, ambition, etc. It also indicates how much a$$ your school kicked academically. Hiring companies should also take that into account

By: Lindsey Pollak

Lindsey Pollak — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 19:46:54 +0000

@Cstudentwithgoodcareer – Thanks for sharing your perspective!

By: Cstudentwithgoodcareer

Cstudentwithgoodcareer — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 16:07:08 +0000

Most of us take our hats off to A and A/B students; they deserve respect. Undergraduate years tend to be the immediate post teen years and each person responds differently to living away from the nest.

Average or poor grades are not necessarily a sign of lack of all responsibility; kudos to those who try journalism, writing or a social science when they are math geniuses. Same to poets and intuitive sensitive folks who take up STEM fields or quantitative majors.

In so doing you may be assuring yourself a 2.0-3.0 GPA but you will emerge a rounded employment candidate with rare insight for your type of mind, humility, team work attitude and often sympathy from an interviewer — not always in your first job but certainly at promotion time and over the decades of your work life. Take it from a 2.0 [ Patton, Powell, Edison, Graham Bell, Churchill and Major were poor students too ]

4.0′s know that the number falls on deaf ears after a job or two — the question is not if you can memorize but can you problem solve — even more can you work efficiently to identify the problem and solve it. More and more folks with no college at all are doing this very well.

Truth Teller

By: Lindsey Pollak

Lindsey Pollak — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 18:35:33 +0000

@Martin,
As you know from my post I disagree with you, but thank you for taking the time to comment and share your perspective.
Lindsey