Is it time (again) to Rethink GPA?

"I could tell that Simone was nervous. Like thousands of job seekers before her, Simone WANTED this job, and she knew a lot was riding on the discussion we would have over the next hour. I asked my basic intro questions: How did you learn about the job? What led you to decide to apply? What research did you do on the company? After a very pleasant conversation, I scanned Simone’s resume and felt her tense up; we were about to reach the topic she’d been dreading: CUMULATIVE GPA 2.5."

The quote above is an excerpt from my talk at TEDxMontclair, "The Urgency of Mentorship," held on June 24th, 2025 at the Montclair Mezzanine. My TEDx talk centered around the story of Simone, a young woman I interviewed several years ago whose story of perseverance and mentorship was so moving, that it was the only time in more than 40,000 interviews where I was brought to tears. (more on my TEDx call to come.)

I highlight this quote specifically because the fact that Simone graduated college with a 2.5 Cumulative GPA is important. I had seen it on her job application and resume, and she seemed to know I was going to ask her about it, but rather than avoiding the topic or making excuses, she hit the topic head on and owned her story. Simone's GPA wasn't so much a story of struggle as it was a story of overcoming the odds. Simone pulled her GPA up to a 2.5 after an extremely challenging first year, and went from academic probation to Dean's list in two years. When faced with failure, Simone was a young woman who had learned a big lesson in a tough way - that she COULD do it when the circumstances seemed to suggest otherwise.

And yet I knew that she'd likely had other job applications rejected or ignored because of the GPA alone.

So I posed the topic on #LinkedIn this week with this post. If you are reading this and want to weight in on GPA as a hiring metric, please comment below and visit that thread to see what others have said!

In 2019, roughly 3 out of 4 employers used GPA as a primary metric for screening applications and resumes. By 2024, that percentage had dropped to just below half, but with applicant tracking systems becoming more equipped with the latest AI, I think we have reason to be concerned. Even in a time of "skill-based hiring," if humans train AI to regard applicants with higher GPA's as more desirable than those with lower GPA's without the additional nuance, then the road becomes more treacherous for individuals whose GPA fall below that threshold.

Is GPA a good predictor of employee success? Not according to the University of Iowa and Inside Higher Ed. It's not that GPA is irrelevant - far from it - but that its role as a pure predictor of success has waned in validity over the years.

There are too many factors that can affect a student's GPA to take it as unassailable truth.

• A student who must work part- or full-time to put themselves through college may not have the same academic outcomes as students whose family can afford the college experience without concern.

• A student from a socioeconomically disadvantaged background with limited access to mentors as a youth may find the transition to higher education more challenging than a student who spends their younger years surrounded by mentor figures.

• A student who experiences health or family issues during their college experience may struggle to keep up with their classmates whose years in college are less eventful.

• A non-traditional student, such as an adult learner or a military veteran who attends college after separating from the armed forces may experience college differently from the student who attends with their friends at a more traditional college age.

• The schools and professors themselves may have a significant effect on GPA. I heard of a professor at my Alma Mater who told students during their first day that he "didn't give 'Montclair A's', he gave 'Columbia C's."

• Experiences outside of the classroom can have an effect on academic performance, from athletic pursuits to extra-curricular activities and much more.

I argue that to rethink GPA in the recruitment process - especially for recent graduates - we simply need to avoid the temptation to use the quantitative ease of GPA as a way to decrease application volume. Talent Acquisition professionals are in a tough spot - a single job posting can get hundreds, even THOUSANDS of applications, many of which come from job seekers that use a "spray and pray" approach to their job search, applying for hundreds of jobs hoping for just one or two responses.

Think about it this way: if a recruiter spends an average of 8 seconds reviewing a resume when first submitted, and a single job posting gets 1,000 applications, that recruiter will spend more than 2 hours just making initial glances at resumes for this one job. Some of those resumes are clearly not aligned with a role, others demand a closer look. If a phone interview takes 30 minutes, just a 10% applicant-to-interview ratio would mean 100 phone interviews, which equates to 50 hours of initial phone interviews. This is just the initial process for one, single job posting. For many recruiters, any metric that can help thin the stack of resumes is a welcome addition to the process.

On top of that, AI has created what is essentially an arms race in the job search/recruitment process. Job seekers may turn to AI tools to write their resumes and help complete applications, while recruiters are being pressured by hiring managers and executives to employ expensive AI tools to identify their unicorn hires more quickly and efficiently.

I'm thankful that I never used a minimum GPA to screen out applicants, because if I had, I never would have met some of my best hires. The students who overcame barriers to their education and refused to quit when the going got tough. The students who developed valuable skills at jobs, internships, sports, and activities instead of focusing strictly on academic outcomes. The students like Simone, who struggled with the transition from high school to college but refused to drop out and found a mentor, overcoming early failures to become their first in their family to graduate.

To re-think GPA as a hiring metric is to understand that one's quantitative measure of academic achievement is a chapter in a candidate's book, not the entire story.

To inquire about having Chris Fitzpatrick speak at your conference, organization, school, or other event on any of his popular topics, please reach out directly!

"Maximizing Mentorship," "Dispelling the Many Myths of Mentorship," "You, Inc." (personal branding), "Becoming a Fan" (organizational culture), and many more topics are available for your consideration.

Chris Fitzpatrick (he/him/his) is a Professional Speaker & Emcee, an Aspiring Game Show Host, a Future Author, and a Below-Average Charity Golfer. Chris is also a TEDx speaker, having shared his idea on "The Urgency of Mentorship" at TEDxMontclair in June 2025.

#GPA #TalentAcquisition #Interviews