What Metrics to Replace GPA?

You can read this post on LinkedIn as well.

If employers can't and shouldn't rely on GPA to evaluate candidates' competence, what can be used as a litmus test?

It's a long-lasting debate, as the well-known higher education system reformation conundrum. Some voices claim that GPA is pointless, but they rarely come up with an alternative. As we know, critique is much easier to do than innovation.

One project manager proposed a solution.

He suggested using a thinking-process-centered filtering approach to seek the right talent. So that the employers can avoid the popular STAR method and its downsides (a.k.a The Ultimate Storytelling Competition).

Come up with a scheme that the candidates will face or that your team is facing.

For instance, a robot arm doesn't have precise and timely force control. Ask the candidate what the underlying problems can be. For industrial robotic arms, it may be the lack of force/torque sensors or lengthy codes pulling down the running efficiency.

For medical devices exhibiting signal distortions between stages, it can be caused by parasitic capacitance or inductance. In some cases, some input pins leave floating while they should be grounded. (Not the stay at home order, but this will let your ICs stay safe as well.)

For semiconductor manufacturing or integrated circuit design, there are several product grades. At least there are commercial-grade, industrial-grade (the chipsets used in your neighbor's Model 3), and military-grade. How do you know which parts of these dies are the military-grade and automotive-grade? They're not sold at the same price.

For digital marketing, what tool should you use? What are the pros and cons? Posting in a video format on YouTube or TikTok? Hosting a blog on Medium, Blogger, WordPress, or Tumblr? Message-centered twitter or photo-oriented Instagram? Or the old school approach—marketing emails?

What Your Candidates Say Demonstrates Their Understandings

If your candidates know the lack of force/torque sensors are due to cost and weight, they may have a good understanding of hardware and product development. If they mention the running efficiency of the embedded systems, they may have a specialty here.

If a college new graduate talks about the parasitic capacitance or inductance between stages, they may have strength in Analog or RF circuit design. If they point out input pins could be floating, they at least have hands-on experience in a lab.

If an interviewee would collect the manufacturing data from fabs and testing data from Test Engineers to analyze the key factors to consider, they may be really interested in this industry and talk to some professionals already.

If you interview a candidate who says posting articles is better than uploading video ads, they may not be walking at the edge of the marketing world.

What's Next?

If the opening lists communication protocols, circuit/PCB design, embedded system, signal processing, electromechanics, and PLC as requirements, then you can gauge (not gouge, definitely not price gouging) their understanding in these domains. You can question the rationale and logic of their answers while evaluating the atmosphere if you are comfortable working with them.

Don't be bound by oral communication. You can ask your interviewees to plot as well. The candidates could be intimidated when talking to a potential employer. In my case, I twist my tongue in the first one or two minutes in an interview every now and then. As the conversation goes, things become easier to handle for me.

Problems are Gone like a Miracle?

Nonetheless, nothing is perfect. As you may know, this process consumes a lot of time and energy. For start-ups and small companies, it may work. For brand name companies like Tesla, Apple, Google, Analog Devices, Boston Scientific, Texas Instruments, and BD, they have hundreds to thousands of applicants to one single opening. How do you start with this huge pile of applications? Especially at this challenging time, many people are facing layoffs.

You probably need to feed them into ATS and filter with shared connections and GPA again.