A reader writes:
What do you make of employers asking job applicants about their high school performance? Besides the fact that I barely remember SAT or other score results from high school or college, is this even a real way to see how someone would perform at work? It feels infantalizing and not the best way to get a sense of someone is “smart” or whatever they’re looking for. Is this a red flag?
For reference, this is a general administrative position, exact questions below:
How did you perform in mathematics in high school? (dropdown menu of choices)
How did you perform in your native language in high school? (dropdown menu of choices)
Please share your rationale or evidence for the high school performance selections above. Make reference to provincial, state, or nationwide scoring systems, rankings, or recognition awards, or to competitive or selective college entrance results such as SAT or ACT scores, JAMB, matriculation results, IB results, etc. We recognize every system is different but we will ask you to justify your selections above.
What was your bachelor’s university degree result, or expected result if you have not yet graduated? Please include the grading system to help us understand your result, e.g. “85 out of 100,” “2.1 (grading system: first class, 2:1, 2:2, third class),” or “GPA score of 3.8/4.0 (predicted).” We have hired outstanding individuals who did not attend or complete university. If this describes you, please continue with your application and enter “no degree.”
Universities around the world score degrees in different ways. Please indicate your result, or expected result if you are close to graduation, along with information about the grading system.
It’s a flag for something, all right.
It’s one thing to ask for GPA when candidates are right out of school and don’t have much of a work history to point to. In that case, it’s a rough — and extremely imperfect — stand-in for “smarts and accomplishments” for candidates who don’t have a track record at work. But (a) it stops being relevant as soon as people have a bit of work experience under their belts and you can look at actual accomplishments instead, and (b) even for candidates who are right out of school with little work experience (which will not be all of them), this is still an excessive focus on academics, particularly for an admin role.
GPA and other test scores are a horribly inaccurate gauge for how someone will do in a job. Lots of people with high test scores end up doing mediocre work, and lots of people with middling test scores end up excelling professionally. Raw “intelligence” or “knowledge” doesn’t always correlate with achievement … plus, it’s pretty well established that tests that purport to measure intelligence often correlate with demographic and socioeconomic background more than anything else.
And going all the way back to high school, not just college, amplifies how weird this is. Just as college tests stop being relevant once you’re in the work world, high school tests stop being relevant once you’re in college (or otherwise out of high school).
You almost have to wonder if this is an attempt to screen out older workers, or at least signal that that’s not who’s envisioned for this job.
