The 9 things that matter more to employers than grades

Sure, your grade point average is important, but once you graduate and hit the office, these skills far outweigh your grade from stats class.

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This story first appeared on Ragan.com in November 2011.

A friend who works with the alumni association at my alma mater asked an interesting question on Twitter.

Listening to students worry about their GPA, does it really matter what it is?Is that an accurate summary of how you’ll be as an employee

— Tim Bograkos (@timbograkos) April 27, 2011

The tweets poured in, and the overwhelming sentiment was that college GPA matters very little in professional success.

Grades are the determining factor for performance in school. But in the professional world, that’s not how it works. Your bosses won’t tell you which questions will be on the test.

Your college GPA is a combination of several factors but isn’t really the best indicator of how you’ll perform in the working world. We all know that person with perfect grades who struggles socially or that person who couldn’t care less about school but seems to have no trouble making great things happen in their life. Book smarts and street smarts are very different things.

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