Re resumes:
- Resumes are designed to sell the candidate. Each resume (as opposed to a job application) will highlight the candidate's strengths (not weaknesses); if a resume contains "holes" (e.g., a year spent in jail would show up as a missing year when the resume is broken down), the holes stand out to people who are accustomed to reading and analyzing resumes. Missing information (e.g., grades when most resumes contain grades) will always be assumed to lean against the candidate.
- As a person acquires work experience, their college stats become less important; at some point performance in college/grad school becomes irrelevant as work experience demonstrates competency.
- when I was an interviewer for jobs which were extremely well paid (for recent law school grads), kids with good grades/ranks put that right at the top; any resume missing this was a red flag - no one got through the first cut without that.
- when I actually hired (and paid essentially out of my pocket since I owned the biz) people during the depths of the recession, I would get Masters degrees looking for an unskilled minimum wage job; that was good enough for me - the worst well educated person was generally better than a HS grad for our needs.
- as my kids moved through college, each would send the resume home for proof reading. One thing that struck me was - for internships early in college - their HS stats were included. I would object that HS was irrelevant to a college job; was overruled by the career services office - who we accepted as experts in employment issues for that college.
- when applying for several SBA loans, the bank required a detailed resume of the owners; the bank wanted to know not only from where you graduated, but also how well you did (expressed in GPA, honors, awards, whatever) (interestingly, this was never a requirement for regular commercial loans)
- as my kids moved into real permanent jobs, we proofed each resume. No HS stats; but overall GPA, individual classes (with grades), honors and awards were right at the top. Essentially a candidate was demonstrating competence in an area which was important to the employer - competence was reflected in a grade.
- strong candidates have lots of selling points; "beating" your competition is one - which is expressed through better results (generally) in head to head competition (grades).
- the less well paid the job, the fewer potential employees (absent a huge recession). The less well paid the job, generally, the cheaper it is to train an employee. Therefore, there is less monetary risk in a shallower pool for an employer - hence college performance isn't that important. The higher paid the job, the more competition. The higher paid the job, the more monetary expense there is to the employer to train (and even relocate) the employee (generally). With more on the line, the more competition, the more important the objective measures become; early in the working career, those objective measures are college performance.
As we discuss resumes, we actually may be saying the same thing: for some jobs grades/school matter; for others not so much. The point is how does a parent of HS freshman know which will be important in a decade; the least risky approach is to get to the top of the "pyramid" and then have the choice to work anywhere.