Grades or Personality?

When applying for a job, there are two key things which are considered important – grades/qualifications and personality.

But what is more important?

Grades that you’ve achieved throughout your education are obviously significant and sometimes they are the crucial piece of information which decides whether or not you’re hired; but I believe personality should trump grades.

Yes, your qualifications show what you’ve achieved and which areas you excel at, however, nowadays they are more to do with how well you can memorise information and your ability on the specific day of the exam.

You could have worked really hard throughout the years, you could spend hours revising and learning all the content; but when it comes to the day of the exam, you could be nervous, stressed and not feel great – this then impacts your ability and therefore your final grade doesn’t truly reflect your knowledge and hard work.

Having a grade which doesn’t truly reflect your hard work could be more prominent this year, especially. Ofqual and exam boards have said that a “third” of grades given by teachers will have to be downgraded because teachers have been too generous.

Whilst we’re in difficult times, and it’s a new challenge for teachers to predict grades in this way, having grades downgraded for some could be detrimental.

If there are two schools (X and Y) and the students are all predicted B grades and above, the students from X might be downgraded because that school doesn’t usually do that well whereas Y always excels. However, students at X might actually be worthy of an A grade, more so than students from Y, but might not receive that.

This whole scenario, I think, reflects why personality is more important (in my opinion) for jobs.

If you have work experience, a passion for something and can demonstrate a variety of skills – not just academic ones – and are a friendly person, then you could be more suitable for a job than someone fresh out of education.

For example, if a company is hiring and there’s two candidates – one is a new graduate with a degree and the other has worked in a call centre for 3 years – then the person from the call centre could be more suited to the job because they’ve shown they can hold down a job, take action when they want change, and they must have good people skills.

Grades aren’t everything. My parents told me the other day that as you get older your qualifications become less relevant because they get older, just like you, and reach a point where they’re too old.

However, experience and personality never get too old. They are always important. And so, I think the most important aspect of a person when applying for a job is personality.

Until next time…