Subj : Re: Academic grades should be USELESS
To   : comp.programming
From : Phlip
Date : Sun Jul 24 2005 05:33 pm

James wrote:

> I don't know why these software companies put a lot of stress on the
> academic grades.

I haven't seen any that do in a long time, when I look at the senior end.

> The academic grades have nothing to do with the
> technical know-how of a person.

Right. It's orthogonal whether you can figure out a way thru the paperwork
maze, show up for class on time, and happen to get good teachers.

> I have a just an average academic
> grades and because of this I was not able to sit in the interviews of
> most of the companies, which visited my university, inspite of the fact
> that my technical know-how is the among the best in the
> university.What's more the toppers of my class who doesn't even know
> the fundamentals of programming, were eligible to sit in the company
> interviews.

Okay, that's different. What happened there is some boss ordered that
company to harvest the local crop of graduates' resumes, and to interview
the top 10% and discard the rest. That was to avoid the cost of letting a
professional recruiter or software engineer read the resume. The boss just
said "collect them, don't read them, and call the top 10% in, by grade."

This is, of course, yet another example of how corporations are designed to
insulate the bosses from the bad effects of their decisions. For example,
this boss told its minions to interview the people most likely to get
multiple offers from other companies with similar policies. So to avoid the
cost of reading resumes and finding real matches, the boss incurred the cost
of multiple interviews with people they then couldn't hire.

> Fortunately, not all company guys are fools and I got a job in none
> other than     IBM via off campus interview. Presumably, they were
> impressed my extra-curricular projects and gave me the interview call.

And that's how it will always be (for those lacking the irrelevant talent of
playing the scholastic game). Once a resume is past HR, and in a very small
batch, your personal odds go way up that someone will identify a match. So
the goal is to _network_ relentlessly, and hear of the job lead from
potential colleagues, before it is posted.

-- 
  Phlip
  http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?ZeekLand

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