Do you hire based on grades and/or the college attended?

If so, give yourself an F — for being a hiring dinosaur and ignoring the data.

Way back in the 1980s, when I was a tech recruiter, one of the best/smartest engineering vps I ever worked with told me he didn’t care about GPAs or college attended. He said that the value of a technical degree lost approximately 20-25% of its value each year, because the tech world changed so fast.

He also said that grades were more the result of a good memory and the ability to regurgitate information on demand than actual knowledge.

Fast forward to Adam Grant’s most recent column. Grant is one of the smartest people I read and I read a lot. Not because he has a PhD, but because he has more common sense than almost any other three (four? five?) combined.

The evidence is clear: Academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence. Across industries, research shows that the correlation between grades and job performance is modest in the first year after college and trivial within a handful of years. (…)

Academic grades rarely assess qualities like creativity, leadership and teamwork skills, or social, emotional and political intelligence.

Take a good look at that list. It encompasses all the skills that bosses, no matter their level, claim they want, but frequently pass on.

Why? Because candidates with those qualities don’t as easily “fit” into rigidly framed jobs.

Whereas one thing that can be said for straight A students is that they are expert at coloring inside the lines, so are usually easier to manage.

Getting straight A’s requires conformity. Having an influential career demands originality.

“Valedictorians aren’t likely to be the future’s visionaries,” Dr. Arnold explained. “They typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up.”

Moreover, hiring with the assumption  that you can reshape their embedded code when it is convenient for you is totally unfair and sets you both up for frustration, at the least, or outright failure.

This might explain why Steve Jobs finished high school with a 2.65 G.P.A., J.K. Rowling graduated from the University of Exeter with roughly a C average, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. got only one A in his four years at Morehouse.

So the when you go to fill your next opening give serious thought to what you are really looking for.

Image credit: Adam Grant

Over the years hundreds of bosses have explained to me why top colleges and high GPAs were critical to hiring the best people.

They explained why hiring only from top schools assured top candidates.

They enlightened me as to the importance of high GPAs in their hiring decisions.

What they never did was convince me.

They blustered when I told them neither had much value when evaluating candidates.

And they got downright irate when I added that whatever value they did have dropped 20% a year, since much (most?) of what they learned was rendered irrelevant in the next five years.

Actually, the value probably drops faster now, since the world has sped up a lot since I said that.

If you find yourself disputing this and still putting your faith in ‘brand-name’ schools and high GPAs I suggest you pay close attention to Harvard’s grade inflation.

“It’s really indefensible,” Harvey C. Mansfield, a faculty member for more than five decades, said in a telephone interview. (…) “I thought the most prevalent grade was an A-minus, which is bad enough,” when I asked the question [about the most frequently given grade], it was worse.”

But even Mansfield goes along with it.

Mansfield described how, in recent years, he himself has taken to giving students two grades: one that shows up on their transcript and one he believes they actually deserve.

“I didn’t want my students to be punished by being the only ones to suffer for getting an accurate grade,” he said, adding that administrators must take the lead in curbing the trend.

While I agree grade inflation isn’t limited to Harvard, I’m willing to bet it’s more prevalent at brand-name schools.

Hopefully, the next time you find yourself dazzled by a combination of school and GPA, you’ll remember Professor Mansfield and take both with a pound or two of salt.

Flickr image credit: Sage Ross

What impact does a student’s graduation speech really have? 18 year old Justin Hudson’s had a giant impact on NYC Hunter College High School, Elena Kagan’s alma mater and the most prestigious high school in the country.

“More than anything else, I feel guilty,” Mr. Hudson, who is black and Hispanic, told his 183 fellow graduates. “I don’t deserve any of this. And neither do you.”

They had been labeled “gifted,” he told them, based on a test they passed “due to luck and circumstance.”

As a result, the third principal in five years resigned and shortly after a committee of Hunter High teachers publicly announced a no confidence notice to the president of Hunter College, who is the ultimate boss of the high school.

At issue is the entrance exam for the high school.

Mr. Collins [director of the Hunter College Campus Schools] acknowledged that the notoriously difficult test, which has math, English and essay sections and is given in the sixth grade, “isn’t a good indicator of giftedness, it is a good indicator of whether you will be successful at Hunter.”

Those who pass the test are typically from upper class families heavily focused on education and can afford extra tutoring as needed.

Luck and circumstance, as Justin Hudson pointed out.

But a lot of good things are happening across the educational board.

• Schools across the country are abolishing ‘D’ grades, leaving kids with the choice of earning a ‘C’ or flunking.
• New research from economists has proved the value of “great teachers and early childhood programs” on adult earning power.
• A new website lets kids bet on their future grades and pays off when they perform.
• Non-profit Teach Plus helps schools field teams of teachers willing to spend extra time mentoring and acting as leaders in school turn-arounds.

Of course, anytime Federal dollars are up for grabs the sharks circle and the money earmarked for education is no different— companies with no experience are touting their ability to change the course of education.

It would make a nice change if Washington wasn’t snookered by great presentations and white papers, but I’m not holding my breath.

Historically, Washington is  the place where rhetoric wins the game and smoke and mirrors gets you further than substance.

If you’ll excuse the pun, it’s par for the course.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/the-lees/134610871/

Steady readers of Leadership’s Future know that I am thoroughly alarmed and dismayed by the Millennial MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) regarding such mundane stuff as accountability, honesty and entitlement along with the No Child Left Behind fiasco and its focus on grades-for-funding.

Two articles caught my eye this week, both on a very positive note.

Education

The first is an overview discussing what Arne Duncan, the new education secretary, did in Chicago and wants to do nationally. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot more than we’ve seen in years. Not only that, but the price tag per school isn’t that outrageous considering what I’ve seen previously and he doesn’t seem to expect states to pull the funding out of thin air as NCLB did.

It won’t be a silver bullet (what is), but maybe we’re finally moving (glacially) in a positive direction.

Parenting

The second article is even more encouraging, since it looks at parents—who are at the heart of this mess.

Like most other things, parenting styles change—call it parenting-by-fad.

But I see this new fad as a move in the right direction. It’s about letting kids play, doing less and (maybe) realizing that your kids are not the center of the universe or even your primary purpose in life.

How’s that for revolutionary?

Can you imagine? Instead of having every minute of every week packed with scheduled functions, parents would expend some of that energy making sure that their kids used the free time to run around, play using their imaginations, read, think and dream, as opposed to texting, keyboarding or watching TV.

They could use some of the extra time and energy that went into keeping their offspring on schedule to staying involved with their spouse and some more on feeding their own soul.

They might even have enough energy to learn to say ‘no’ and stop indulging their kids to the point of entitlement.

Sounds like a trip to Fantasy Island, but who knows, it might be part of the recession’s silver lining.

Your comments—priceless

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Image credit: Bill A on flickr