Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
To be honest I'm a bit of two minds on this. On the one hand, I can understand wanting to see accomplishments up front. On the other hand, very few recent graduates will have actually accomplished anything. In fact, even with working professionals, very few have accomplished something so significant that it separates them from others. Most accomplishments are just finding a thousand dollar way to say "I did the jobs I was assigned to do."
Since a new college hire is a first time job, I don't expect a huge accomplishment list. What I want to know is did you learn the basics of the field, are you trainable, are you a self starter, and will you produce the quantity and caliber of work expected from a new grad. And honestly, a big one that modern resume formats don't support very well, can you communicate?
I completely agree. Unfortunately, colleges are telling their college grads to put all of what you say at the very end of the resume.
Some of the complaints are how out of touch academia is, job skills, separating students from the pack, etc.
Well, if 20 students all heed this advice- you've now got 20 similar resumes and you're back in the same boat.
I've hired for jobs. It take less than 2 minutes to read and dissect a resume.
If you're receiving more than 50 for a job, and you've got some qualifications that all candidates meet, there's a bigger problem here.
Actually, no. I'd end up with 20 resumes with format that is easier for me to read.
I'm only saying people should put their skills and accomplishments at the beginning of the resume, not at the end. Since these are college grads, I don't really expect them to have a glowing job history. When I review their resumes, I always look for the section that tells me what they've learned in their years studying the subject matter and what kind of skills they will bring to the table to contribute to my team.
Look at it this way. I review resumes to hire straight out of college engineers for me and others to train. According to their school counselor, they should put that job as a sandwich artist at subway right after their education (school, degree, gpa). At the very bottom of the resume, then I get to see what they did for their senior project and what they accomplished and learned from it.
How does that make sense exactly? And yet, engineering grads after engineering grads tell me their college career counselors told them to put the projects, skills, accomplishments, etc. at the very bottom and their jobs at walmart and subway at the top right after education.
Isn't that just vacuous BS? I've never had "objectives" on my resume at all.
Well, objectives are not a must. But having one gives me an insight into what the candidate is looking for as well as what he is expecting from the job.
Actually, no. I'd end up with 20 resumes with format that is easier for me to read.
I'm only saying people should put their skills and accomplishments at the beginning of the resume, not at the end. Since these are college grads, I don't really expect them to have a glowing job history. When I review their resumes, I always look for the section that tells me what they've learned in their years studying the subject matter and what kind of skills they will bring to the table to contribute to my team.
Look at it this way. I review resumes to hire straight out of college engineers for me and others to train. According to their school counselor, they should put that job as a sandwich artist at subway right after their education (school, degree, gpa). At the very bottom of the resume, then I get to see what they did for their senior project and what they accomplished and learned from it.
How does that make sense exactly? And yet, engineering grads after engineering grads tell me their college career counselors told them to put the projects, skills, accomplishments, etc. at the very bottom and their jobs at walmart and subway at the top right after education.
If you've had no relevant professional experience, then by all means, lower those Subway jobs on the resume.
If you're in a certain area, you're probably going to get a lot of graduates from a pool of universities with similar programs. Most graduates from those schools are going to be in the middle of the bell curve. There is likely little they can do to differentiate themselves so soon after graduation. By putting references from low end jobs, they are at least confident they can get a positive reference that they were a good employee.
How would you feel if they had a sterling academic record but little to nothing at all professionally?
If you've had no relevant professional experience, then by all means, lower those Subway jobs on the resume.
If you're in a certain area, you're probably going to get a lot of graduates from a pool of universities with similar programs. Most graduates from those schools are going to be in the middle of the bell curve. There is likely little they can do to differentiate themselves so soon after graduation. By putting references from low end jobs, they are at least confident they can get a positive reference that they were a good employee.
How would you feel if they had a sterling academic record but little to nothing at all professionally?
Everyone gets a clean slate from me. Many people will disagree with me on this one, but I simply don't place such heavy emphasis on academic record.
Study after study keep showing that there is no correlation between GPA and job performance. Google, for example, has stopped asking people for their GPA because of this. My company doesn't really care much about it either.
I've had new hires with perfect 4.0 GPAs and could not for the life of them apply what they learned to the real world. I've also had new hires with less than stellar GPAs and no internship experience at all that performed amazingly well.
I've had the pleasure of working for one of the best engineers I've known who admitted to me one time that he graduated with a 2.x GPA.
Everyone gets a clean slate from me. Many people will disagree with me on this one, but I simply don't place such heavy emphasis on academic record.
Study after study keep showing that there is no correlation between GPA and job performance. Google, for example, has stopped asking people for their GPA because of this. My company doesn't really care much about it either.
I've had new hires with perfect 4.0 GPAs and could not for the life of them apply what they learned to the real world. I've also had new hires with less than stellar GPAs and no internship experience at all that performed amazingly well.
I've had the pleasure of working for one of the best engineers I've known who admitted to me one time that he graduated with a 2.x GPA.
Agreed a GPA might not be a good indicator of professional. But how are you going to gauge potential from a college student with limited, at best, professional experience?
If everyone is basically a clean slate aside from GPA, how do you differentiate without interviewing everyone?
Agreed a GPA might not be a good indicator of professional. But how are you going to gauge potential from a college student with limited, at best, professional experience?
If everyone is basically a clean slate aside from GPA, how do you differentiate without interviewing everyone?
And this is why I keep urging people to put their skills, accomplishments, what they've learned, etc. at the top of the resume rather than at the bottom.
I recently pushed through a fresh out of college guy with less than stellar academic record. In his resume, he stated in detail the various engineering projects he was engaged in. He stated very specifically his roles and what he learned from his research. Ignoring the fact that he put all of that at the bottom of his resume and his job at subway at the top (he later told me his career counselor insisted on putting his job experiences at the top right after education) and how densely packed his resume was (he had a lot to say in his resume but his career counselor insisted that he kept it in 1 page), the carefully crafted details he laid out in the resume about his projects and his skills caught my attention. One of his references was a professor. I spoke with the professor and the professor told me the guy would spend extra hours in the lab late into the night on some occasions to work on those projects.
His GPA was 2.9, pretty low for an engineering grad. I told my boss I wanted him, and he ended up in my office a few weeks later. After a few months training him, I'm glad I got this guy. I don't recall training a newbie before that's never asked a single stupid question. With newbies, I generally expect stupid questions in the first few months. This guy was always on top of everything I assigned him and never asked a stupid question. He always does his own research before coming to me for help. As I explain to everyone I train, nobody knows everything. I certainly don't know everything. My boss doesn't know everything. What makes a good engineer is his ability to know how to do proper research and make sound decisions.
We've talked about his job hunt before. He said he got automatically disqualified for a lot of positions before he applied at my company just because of his low GPA. I personally think companies that disqualify candidates because of low GPAs are missing out on some of the best candidates out there.
I'm not saying all people with low GPA are good and all people with high GPA are bad. I've had new hires with high GPA that performed extremely well. I've also had new hires with high GPA that never stopped asking stupid questions even after 6 months on the job.
I guess it really depends on their attitude and the way they apply what they learned. Engineering is, after all, applied science. One can be The **** when it comes to theory, but applying theory to reality is an entirely different matter.
Case in point. One of my environmental engineers last week in our meeting recommended new layouts for erosion control. I looked at her proposed plan for a few minutes and asked her if she'd considered the cost? She said no. I worked out the cost estimate in front of her and showed her that her proposal would cost an additional $40K. Unless she could come up with $40k from somewhere, I'm not implementing it. Money doesn't grow on trees, despite popular belief among young engineers.
Again, how much differentiation is there honestly going to be with new entrants to the labor market from a similar academic and internship pedigree?
I'm not trying to be difficult, but it sounds like this guy actually knows what is going on in the labor market and what notes to hit (who knows - he could be trolling the work and employment forums like we do). Were his projects THAT much better than candidates of similar backgrounds, or did he just articulate it better? That makes him more informed, but not necessarily a better engineer. Not saying he won't be either.
That said, I totally agree you can't count on GPA. Nor would I count on the recommendation of an academic, as they are so out of touch to generally be irrelevant to the labor market outside of academia.
Again, how much differentiation is there honestly going to be with new entrants to the labor market from a similar academic and internship pedigree?
You'd be surprised. I don't know about other disciplines, but in engineering it's pretty easy to tell which students really strived to stand out and wanted to go after a successful career in engineering versus which students just went along for the ride.
For example, there are many newly grads that talk about concrete canoe project that they participated in as if it gave them real life experience. Concrete design, reinforced concrete design, and concrete structure happen to be some of my specialties. Trust me, talking to someone like me about concrete canoe doesn't really impress. Neither is doing transparent concrete for a senior design project.
The people who impress me are the ones that actually tried to do something practical. I had a candidate that talked about his design project where he and his team designed reinforced concrete beams using basalt fiber rebars rather than steel. But that's not all. They went ahead and actually built those beams. He showed me pictures of them actually mixing the concrete and pouring them into the forms that they prepared. They then spent many hours applying force on those beams at various positions to come up with the data that they could compare with the classical data from steel reinforced beams. To someone like me, it was very obvious he was an active participant in the project and not just going along for the ride.
Now, compare the candidate I just described above versus someone who did a design project on a structure based on pre-existing design plans. I've had a few candidates trying to impress me with the plans they brought in hoping I wouldn't notice that they completely ripped those off of classical design plans.
Or how about the candidate that came in hoping to impress me with his work on transparent concrete. Sounds pretty impressive, right? Again, I happen to know a thing or two about it. Sorry, not impressed with something so impractical. When it came down to it, all they did was look up a known design plan and repeated someone else's experiment.
Anyway, hope you get my point. I don't really care what GPA they come in with. I want to know if they actually tried to become an engineer during their time in college or if they just went along for the ride.
Quote:
I'm not trying to be difficult, but it sounds like this guy actually knows what is going on in the labor market and what notes to hit (who knows - he could be trolling the work and employment forums like we do). Were his projects THAT much better than candidates of similar backgrounds, or did he just articulate it better? That makes him more informed, but not necessarily a better engineer. Not saying he won't be either.
Well, I didn't mention that when he first came in he was pretty green. He had practically zero experience in real world engineering challenges. What convinced me was how he actually tried to learn practical stuff instead of just going along for the ride. And his professor pretty much confirmed to me that he spent many hours late into the night in the lab working on his projects.
Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of places where book smart engineers thrive. I've worked with plenty of them back when I was a design engineer. But leading construction projects require more than book smarts. We always run into situations where no amount of book smarts will help. The world is a lot different than the perfect world drawn in the plans. The thing is schools don't teach students how to really problem solve in real world situations. They always give the most impractical problems. I could go on and on how inadequate college classes are in preparing the next generation of engineers...
Quote:
That said, I totally agree you can't count on GPA. Nor would I count on the recommendation of an academic, as they are so out of touch to generally be irrelevant to the labor market outside of academia.
Professors have their usefulness. They are the keepers of the cumulative knowledge that's been acquired by the greatest minds who ever lived. I give them a lot of respect.
That said, sometimes they make students learn the most outdated methods in engineering. Back in grad school, I had a professor who at one time admitted that nobody uses the structural analysis method he was making us learn. After a number of years working in the industry, thinking back I sure wish he had taught us the modern methods that are utilized today instead of making us go through sleepless nights trying to learn outdated methods. But what do I know...
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
