Job Hunt Diary 2023: WTF with High School Questions?

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2023-01-24 18:30:07

I was just applying for a role with Canonical, makers of the Ubuntu Linux distribution along with other tools and products. Honestly, I was tempted not to complete it when I saw this section.

College GPA: I said this is not relevant unless you’re focusing on recent grads with no job history. I was on the Dean’s List for the bulk of my college career, had a 3.85 in my major courses, but I don’t tell them. Why? Because it’s not relevant. People grow, mature, find their calling… and many do most of that after college.

If you’re more than 5 years out of college, your professional resume is more important. By the time I was 5 years out of college, I had tech edited “Marketing Online for Dummies,” was an MPAA accredited entertainment journalist, worked as a Courseware Developer for Nortel, and was the Senior Editor for IMDb.com (which had been acquired by Amazon about a year earlier). And those are just some of the things I achieved.

High School: I got kicked out of AP English for insubordination in high school. The difference between my high-school performance in English classes and professional accomplishments as a writer is vast. On top of that, it’s possible that “cannot recall” will be taken as a sign of high school being far off in the distant mists of memory and lead to unconscious age bias.